Repair History Tracking

[Lewis Clark]

Hi Everyone

I want to develop a system to track the repair and maintenance history for the equipment and infrastructure in our Homeowner Association. This would be analagous to an equipment status log for a manufacturing facility or utility.

Can anyone recommend a good software package that will allow us to enter the key information about each event, and permit easy searching of the database?

Thanks in advance for any recommendations!

 

[levindb]

I believe any database/spreadsheet software (Excel?) could meet your needs.

The difficult part is deciding what information you want to capture. Easy columns would include the infrastructure component, the date and the amount. More details like what work was done, who did it, any warranty information makes it a little more complex. Do you want a copy of the estimate, the invoice, or payment/check? Each of these might have their own dates as well. Someone with an engineering or accounting background might be helpful in getting something like this created.
It is not rocket science, but it will change over time as you become more aware of the type of things you wanted to capture and then search on in the future.

 

[Lewis Clark]

Thank you for your reply.

Excel was also my first thought, and I still favor using it over a dedicated software tool for several reasons.
* It is familiar to most Board members so there is little or no learning curve.
* No costs to buy, maintain, and learn additional software.

A quick search for existing Excel templates turned up a lot of available options but none were appealing for various reasons. I'm proficient with Excel and would have no trouble developing my own template. We have different types of infrastructure (gate equipment, guard house equipment, drainage pipes, drainage ditches, roads, and road bridges for example) and it might be useful to customize the template for the various equipment types.

One disadvantage of Excel is that it might not be practical to include copies of invoices. Yes, I know Excel can import images and screenshots, but the file size would get pretty large pretty quickly. The same is probably true for dedicated software packages. We're just starting to think about this project and lots of questions still require answers. Probably don't yet know all of the questions to ask, either.

The small group that started discussing the project thought a dedicated software tool might be better and I am starting to look to see what options might be available. To me, a dedicated tool would have to offer a lot of advantages to get my vote over Excel.

 

[ERD50]

.....

One disadvantage of Excel is that it might not be practical to include copies of invoices. Yes, I know Excel can import images and screenshots, but the file size would get pretty large pretty quickly. The same is probably true for dedicated software packages. ....

I'm not sure why the file size would be a concern, those invoices need to be stored somewhere?

But, you could keep the invoices in a folder, and link to them. Should be easy, the spreadsheet file would be small, but you'd need that folder to view the invoices.

I tested this for myself (in LibreOffice, which you may want to consider in case not everyone wants to pay for MS Excel), created the spreadsheet and 'invoice' pdf on a thumb drive - it saved the link to the document as the full path, so I was concerned that it wouldn't work if I gave it to someone else to copy to their computer. But it worked, the default is to use relative paths (even though the hyper-link shows the full original path).


https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/how-do-i-force-calc-to-use-relative-hypertext-links/8879/2

There is an option in:
Menu/Tools/Options/Load-Save/Genera - Save URL relative to file system.

https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/General_10#Save_URLs_relative_to_file_system 26

So you'd want to keep those invoices in a folder with the spreadsheet, but I guess you'd want that anyhow.

-ERD50

 

[homestead]

Look at Filemaker. Runs on PC or Mac, you can store text & pictures. Can share on a network or via the web.

 

[Lewis Clark]

I'm not sure why the file size would be a concern, those invoices need to be stored somewhere?

But, you could keep the invoices in a folder, and link to them. Should be easy, the spreadsheet file would be small, but you'd need that folder to view the invoices.

I tested this for myself (in LibreOffice, which you may want to consider in case not everyone wants to pay for MS Excel), created the spreadsheet and 'invoice' pdf on a thumb drive - it saved the link to the document as the full path, so I was concerned that it wouldn't work if I gave it to someone else to copy to their computer. But it worked, the default is to use relative paths (even though the hyper-link shows the full original path).


https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/how-do-i-force-calc-to-use-relative-hypertext-links/8879/2


So you'd want to keep those invoices in a folder with the spreadsheet, but I guess you'd want that anyhow.

-ERD50

File size is a concern because it only takes a few images before the file is too large for many email servers to allow as a file attachment.

The invoices will be in the HOA accounting system software in any case. Keeping them here would be a second copy for (possible) convenience.

Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[Lewis Clark]

Look at Filemaker. Runs on PC or Mac, you can store text & pictures. Can share on a network or via the web.

Thank you. I'll check it out.