The Technicians & suppliers page (Maintenance, then Technicians & suppliers in the sidebar) is one shared book for everyone involved in looking after your equipment: the technicians who service it, the suppliers who sell you spare parts, the businesses that do both, and your own staff who carry out maintenance.
Each record has a Type. The type decides what the record can do in the rest of the module.
The four types
Technician: an outside business or person who services your equipment. Technicians can be assigned to assets and picked on job sheets and preventative maintenance schedules.
Supplier: a business that sells you spare parts. Suppliers carry a parts and pricing list and can be chosen on purchase orders.
Technician & supplier: a business that does both, for example a refrigeration contractor that also sells you the parts. The record carries both sides: its parts and pricing list and the assets it is assigned to, and it is offered as a technician on job sheets and schedules.
In-house technician: one of your own staff. Pick the person from your staff list and their contact details come from the staff register, so there is nothing to retype. Assignment emails go to their staff email address.
A record can still be only a technician or only a supplier. Use the combined type only where one business genuinely does both.
The list
The list shows every record with its type, email and phone. Use the Type filter to narrow it: Technician shows technicians and technician & supplier records (everyone who can do the work), Supplier shows suppliers and technician & supplier records (everyone who sells you parts), and the other two options match exactly. The search box matches names, emails and phone numbers.
Adding a record
Click New in the top right of the list.
Choose the type. For an in-house technician, pick the staff member. For any other type, enter the business name.
Click Create. The record opens as its own page, where the rest of the details are filled in.
The record page
Clicking a row opens the full record. What you see depends on the type.
Details: type, business name, email, phone, address and notes. In-house technicians show the linked staff member instead.
Contacts: the people you deal with at that business, each with their own email and phone. Not shown for in-house technicians.
Parts & pricing: shown for suppliers and technician & supplier records. Each row is a spare part this business supplies, with its price, tax and the item code you order it under. The same prices show on each part's own record. Use Create new spare part to add a part that is not in your book yet.
Assigned to assets: shown for technicians, in-house technicians and technician & supplier records. The assets this technician looks after. Add or remove assets here, or from the Technicians card on each asset.
Changes save with the Save button at the top of the page. If you leave the page with unsaved changes, you are asked first.
Changing a record's type
Changing the type only changes which cards are shown. It never deletes anything. If you change a technician & supplier record to a plain supplier, its asset links stay in place until you remove them on each asset page, and a note under the Type field tells you how many there are. The same applies to a record's parts and pricing when it is changed to a plain technician. Change the type back and the card reappears with everything still in it.
Assigning technicians to job sheets
A job sheet has one Technician / assigned to field. It offers the technicians assigned to the job's asset, including any technician & supplier records and in-house technicians. A job with no asset can be given to any technician in the book.
Picking a technician also decides who is emailed about the job: an in-house technician is emailed at their staff address, and an outside business at the email on its record. Whether that email is sent is controlled by the assignment toggle in Maintenance settings.
Each preventative maintenance schedule has a Default technician, chosen from the same set. Job sheets the schedule creates are assigned to that technician automatically.
Who can make changes
Company admins and the maintenance administrators listed in Maintenance settings can add, edit and delete records. Everyone else with access to the module can view them.
Tips
Add your regular service contractors and assign them to the assets they look after before you rely on job sheets. The technician list on a job sheet is built from those assignments.
Give a business the technician & supplier type when you buy parts from the same contractor who fits them, so one record covers both the job sheet and the purchase order.
Keep the email on each record current. It is where assignment emails and shared job sheet links are sent.