Every work order in TradelyHQ moves through a handful of clear stages. You'll see the current stage on the work order itself and on your Work Orders list. Here's what each one means and what to click to move it forward.

The stages

Draft — The work order is still being prepared. Drafts are hidden from your main Work Orders list and don't count against your monthly work-order limit. Use Draft when you're putting details together but aren't ready to share with your team or customer yet.
Open — Ready to assign to a tech. The customer can see that you've received their request, and your office sees it sitting in the queue waiting for a tech.
Hold — The job is paused for some reason — waiting on parts, waiting on the customer to confirm access, waiting on weather, etc. Everyone can still see it; you're just signaling "we know about it, we're not actively working it right now."
Active — A tech is assigned and the job is in progress. You'll see Active anywhere the work order appears.
Pending Authorization — A separate tab in the client portal for work orders that are waiting on the customer to approve or reject a quote before the job can move forward. Most teams won't see this on internal lists; it's mainly for the customer side of the workflow.
Completed — The tech finished the job in the field, the office authorized the completion report, and the work order is closed out.

Assigning a tech (Open to Active)

Open the work order, click the Tech dropdown, and pick a tech from the list. No Save button — the pick saves itself and the work order moves to Active. The job shows up on that tech's phone right away.

Handing the job to an outside contractor instead? Type the company name in the outside-contractor field and click Save.

Finishing the job (Active to Completed)

The tech opens the work order on their phone, fills in the completion report (diagnosis, fix, photos), and taps Flag Report for Completion.
An admin in the office opens the work order, reviews the report, and clicks Authorize Completion Report. The status flips to Completed.

Cancelling a work order

An admin opens the work order and clicks Cancel in the modal header. Confirm in the popup. The work order moves to the Archive (you can undo from there). No reason required.

If a CUSTOMER asks to cancel through the client portal, they fill in a reason. An admin approves or rejects the request from the office.

Reopening a completed work order

Open the work order and click Reopen due to issue. Type a reason (5 to 500 characters — for example, "customer reports leak came back"). The work order goes back to Active and the tech can pick it up again.

Reopen is only available for 3 business days after the work order was completed, and only if the customer hasn't already had the signature waived. After that, create a new work order instead.

History and audit trail

To see when a job was assigned, who put it on hold, or who reopened it, open the Audit Log page from the admin menu.