Preventive Maintenance Scheduling That Books Its Own Next Visit
Free in the app. Push reminders and the web dashboard are Pro.
A PM schedule is a standing instruction attached to one machine or to a whole building: what to do, how often, and when it is next due. Completing one writes the service log and moves the date forward in the same database transaction, so the plan and the history cannot disagree with each other.
What a schedule actually holds
A title, an optional description of the task, an interval, and the date it is next due. That is the whole form. Attach it to a specific unit, or leave it at building level for the jobs that are not about one machine — walking the roof, flushing the condensate lines in the east wing. A building-level schedule files its completed work against the site rather than inventing an asset to hang it on.
Intervals are counted in days, weeks or months, or set to once for something that happens one time. Six presets fill the form in a tap: Change Filter every 3 months, Coil Cleaning every 6, Belt Replacement every 12, Lube Bearings every 12, Condensate Drain Cleaning every 6, and General Inspection every 12. Every field they fill in is still editable — they are a head start, not a template system you have to live inside.
Completing one writes the service log
Marking a schedule complete asks for the date, the technician, the company and what was done, then does three things in a single transaction: it inserts a maintenance log against the equipment, links that log back to the schedule it came from, and advances the next due date. There is no state where the visit was recorded but the schedule still says it is overdue, or the other way round.
The completion screen also lets the tech tick the parts they actually replaced. Those parts have their last-replaced date moved, and the ones that resolved to a real installed part are named in the log entry — so the record says which filter, rather than leaving somebody to work it out from the date a month later.
A schedule set to once keeps the date it was planned for and switches itself off, instead of overwriting the plan with the day it happened to be done. Everything else advances by its own interval from the completion date.
The short-month problem, and why the date is right
A monthly schedule completed on the 31st has to land on a date the next month actually has. Adding a month naively produces 31 February, which rolls forward to 3 March — so a monthly filter change completed on 31 January skipped straight to March, and drifted further every cycle after that. On a filter or an inspection that is a whole missed visit, and nothing on screen would have told you.
The interval clamps to the last day of the target month instead: 31 January plus one month is 28 or 29 February. Worth saying plainly because it was wrong on the phone for a while after it had already been fixed on the dashboard, which meant the same schedule advanced to two different dates depending on where it was completed. Both now run the identical rule.
Reminders, and exactly what they need
A job runs once a day at 08:00 Eastern and looks three days ahead. Any active schedule whose next due date falls inside that window produces a push notification — to the teammate it is assigned to if it has an assignee, and to the account owner otherwise. Each due date is announced once and only once; completing the schedule sets a new date, and the clock starts again from there.
That reminder is sent from the cloud, so it can only see a schedule that has reached the cloud. Schedules are pushed up when Cloud Backup is switched on, and Cloud Backup is part of Pro. On a free account everything above still works — creating schedules, the calendar, completing them, the log, the next date — the phone simply does not get a nudge about them. That is the honest boundary, and it is worth knowing before you plan a year of PMs around a notification.
Where they turn up
The PM Schedules screen groups everything by building and sorts each group by next due date, with anything due today or earlier marked overdue. A schedule can be paused and resumed rather than deleted, which is what you want for a machine that is out of service rather than out of your life.
The maintenance calendar puts PM schedules on the same month view as equipment and part replacement reminders and open work orders, so one screen answers "what is coming up" instead of four.
On a crew, a manager or a tech can create, edit, complete and delete a schedule; a viewer can read but not write. Assigning a schedule to a teammate also redirects its reminder to them, so the person who has to do the work is the person whose phone goes off.
Frequently asked questions
Do PM schedules work without a signal?
Yes. Schedules live in the app’s local database, so creating, editing and completing one works with no connection at all — the service log is written on the device. The only part that needs the internet is the push reminder, which is sent from the cloud.
Is preventive maintenance scheduling free?
Creating schedules, completing them, the maintenance log each completion writes and the maintenance calendar are all free in the app. The daily push reminder needs the schedule to be in the cloud, which needs Cloud Backup, which is part of Pro — as is the web dashboard.
Can one schedule cover a whole building?
Yes. Leave the equipment field empty and the schedule belongs to the building. Its completed work is filed against the site rather than against a single machine, which is the right home for jobs that are not about one unit.
What happens to the parts I replace during a PM?
Tick them on the completion screen. Each one has its last-replaced date moved to the completion date, and the parts that matched a real installed part are named in the maintenance log the completion writes.
How far ahead does the reminder arrive?
Three days. The daily check runs at 08:00 Eastern and notifies on any active schedule due within the next three days, once per due date.
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