Where does work order processing get stuck?
The bottleneck is rarely the technician. They record what they have done, usually on paper or in an app, and hand in the slip. The bottleneck is what has to happen next: someone in the office rekeys the hours, looks up the correct time code, checks whether the materials match the quote and checks whether any additional work has been added. If a work order has five lines and the codes are missing or the description is vague, that easily takes ten to fifteen minutes per slip. Multiply that by dozens of work orders a week and you have a significant portion of a full-time role doing nothing but rekeying. Two specific problems keep coming back. First: missing or incorrect time codes. Technicians do not know the system's coding structure, or mix codes up. Second: additional work that never reaches the invoice. A technician notes it on the slip, the administration team misses it or books it under the wrong line item. The client does not pay for it and the installation company absorbs the cost.
What does automated work order processing look like in practice?
Automated processing does not mean no human ever looks at it. It means the reading and rekeying work disappears, and a staff member only approves or corrects. A tool like dottle reads the work order, whether it arrives as a photo, PDF or scan, and extracts structured data from it: work carried out, hours spent, materials used and any additional work. That data goes directly into your ERP or field service system. Fields that are missing or unclear are flagged so the staff member can fill them in where needed. That is the human-in-the-loop model: exceptions get attention, standard cases go through automatically. Variable layouts are not a problem. dottle works without fixed templates per technician or client. A slip from a self-employed contractor working for you has a different format than the slip from your own field service app, and that is no reason to interrupt processing.
How do you process additional work automatically without it falling off the invoice?
Additional work is a structural pain point in the installation industry. A technician carries out extra work, notes it on the work order, but the translation into a separate invoice line does not always happen. Automated processing helps here in two ways. First, the full content of the work order is read, including lines marked as additional work or lines that deviate from the original assignment. Second, those lines are delivered as a separate field to the system, so the administration team has to consciously approve or reject them. They no longer quietly disappear among the standard lines. This does require a clear process: what counts as additional work, how should the technician note it and which field in your system receives it. Automation reinforces a good process, but does not replace one.
When is automated work order processing not worth it?
To be straightforward: there are situations where automation does not make sense. If you process fewer than fifty work orders per month, the time saved per slip is probably not enough to justify the setup effort. The same applies if your source data is structurally poor: work orders so vague or incomplete that even an experienced staff member spends twenty minutes on them will not improve through automation. In that case, the first step is a conversation with the technicians about documentation discipline. A third situation: if your work orders are fully handwritten in hurried or illegible handwriting, the accuracy of automatic recognition is lower and manual review increases. That does not mean it is impossible, but the gain is smaller. With typed PDFs, app exports and legible scans, accuracy is considerably higher.
Which systems do you connect for automated work order processing?
Many companies in the installation industry run on packages such as AFAS Profit, Exact Globe or Dynamics 365 Business Central, sometimes supplemented with a field service or planning module. dottle connects to all of these systems. The work order arrives by email or upload, is read and the structured data goes via the integration directly to the correct project or work order in the ERP. Time codes are matched based on the description, material lines are recognised and additional work is delivered as a separate item. The office staff member only sees the exceptions: the slip where a code is missing, the additional work that requires a separate quote or the work order where the hours do not match the planning.