About

Why this exists

"Completed" means something different to every contractor, every company and every system a repair passes through. Open Repair Record gives it one shape that all of them can read.

One word, many meanings

Ask four people involved in the same repair when it is complete, and you get four answers:

• The contractor: when they leave. The work they were sent for is done, as far as they can tell.
• The coordinator: when the ticket can be closed and the invoice approved.
• The resident: when the problem stops, and stays stopped.
• The owner: when they know what was done, what it cost, and that it will not be back next month.

Contractors differ among themselves too. One technician writes "done" after a full test. Another writes "done" after a temporary fix, meaning "done for today". A third closes the job when the part is ordered. The word is the same; the work behind it is not.

Every system has its own "done"

Systems add their own meanings. A contractor's app may mark a job Completed when the technician taps a button on site. A helpdesk may mark it Resolved when the contractor's e-mail arrives. A CAFM may close it automatically after a few days without news. A spreadsheet just says done. When one repair passes through the property manager's system, the FM company's CAFM and a subcontractor's app, the same status is set three times, and nobody can say which meaning it carries.

The result is familiar. The job shows as completed everywhere. A week later the resident writes that the leak is back. And nobody can tell from the records what was claimed, what was checked, and what the resident ever said.

One shape, whatever the system

Open Repair Record does not replace any of these tools, and it does not try to settle whose "done" is right. It writes down the parts separately: who says the work is done and what exactly they did, what was checked and what was not, what the resident answered, and who closed the record and why. Each company keeps its own system; the record is what they can hand to each other, as a page anyone can read or as a small JSON file any system can import.

Who is behind it

Open Repair Record was initiated by the team behind PMFriend, the AI bridge between property management and facility management. PMFriend automates the whole repair loop, from the first message to the resident's confirmation, and the work around it, from compliance certificates to owner reports. The guide and this tool are deliberately useful without it: no account, no PMFriend footer on your reports, and anyone, including other software vendors, is welcome to use and implement the format.

Despite the similar name, Open Repair Record is not connected to the Open Repair Alliance and its Open Repair Data Standard, which collect open data on electronics repairs from community repair groups.

Licences

• The guide, the template and the examples: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Credit "Open Repair Record, openrepairrecord.com".
• The builder's code and the JSON Schema: MIT.
• The examples are fictional. Any resemblance to real people, companies or addresses is coincidental.

Taking part

The format is at version 1.0, and every 1.x version only adds. If you run maintenance, do repairs, or build software for either, we would like to see a real (anonymised) completion report and hear what this gets wrong. Write to support@pmfriend.com.