What is CMMS?

What is CMMS, and what does CMMS stand for?

CMMS stands for computerized maintenance management system. Taken word by word: computerized replaces the paper log and the spreadsheet. Maintenance is the work being recorded. Management means the system tells you what is due and what is overdue. System means the assets, schedules and work orders are linked, so a work order points at a real piece of equipment.

The plain CMMS definition is the database of what you maintain and what has been done to it. You will also see it written as CMMS software, a CMMS system or just CMMS. They all mean the same thing.

What is CMMS in maintenance terms?

A CMMS keeps an asset record for each machine: make, model, serial number and location. It attaches a preventive maintenance schedule to the asset, so the next inspection sits on a calendar before it turns into a breakdown. It raises work orders for planned and reactive jobs and keeps them against the asset when they close. Many also track the parts used.

The history is the payoff. A rooftop unit on its fourth work order in two months stands out when everything sits in one place. In a spreadsheet it hides.

Who uses a CMMS?

Plant and facilities maintenance teams use one to keep a single site running: a factory, a hospital, a school district, a building the company owns. The people raising work orders and the people doing them work for the same employer.

A service contractor is different. The equipment belongs to the customer, the sites number in the dozens, and each visit ends with an invoice. The CMMS ideas still apply (asset record, preventive maintenance schedule, work order, history), but the record has to travel across customer sites and the work order has to end up on a bill.

CMMS vs CAFM vs field service management

People search for all three because the products overlap. The quickest way to tell them apart is what each is built around.

Field Ascend is field service management software. The preventive maintenance and asset records inside it are the CMMS part, so a contractor searching for CMMS can find what they need there. The building side of the picture is covered under facility management software, and what field service management software is explains the dispatch and invoice side.

When a contractor CMMS is the wrong fit

Field Ascend's maintenance side is built for contractors who maintain other people's equipment. If you maintain one plant and nobody is invoiced for the work, an in-house CMMS is the closer fit, and a field service platform will bring features you never open.

What a service contractor needs from a CMMS

For a contractor the test of a CMMS is what happens when the due date arrives. Field Ascend answers that in the places below, starting with the asset record itself.

An asset with its parts underneath

Every asset record has a Parent asset box. Put a motor under its pump, or a compressor under a rooftop unit, and the parent's page shows a Child assets card while the equipment list indents the child under its parent. The child is a normal asset: it can go on jobs, quotes and tickets, and it carries its own preventive maintenance schedule and history. It stops at one level, so a child cannot have children of its own. Large sites can also be split into areas, such as a building or a floor, once Site Areas is switched on in Setup.

Preventive maintenance visits you can see before they are booked

Each asset's preventive maintenance schedule gives it a due date. The Visits tab turns those dates into a worklist, as a list or a month calendar, projecting every upcoming visit from the schedule's due date and frequency. A visit moves through Needs booking, Contacted, Planned, Confirmed and Done, or gets Skipped. Book / Re-plan takes a time slot and a technician, creates the job and drops it on the planner. Visits that are due but unbooked also show on the planner as a read-only strip, through the PPM due button.

The limits: booking reminders stay off until you tick them, and customers hear nothing about a visit that needs booking unless you build an automation on that trigger.

One quote across several sites

Say a contract covers twelve properties. With Quote several sites on one quote switched on under Quote Options, the quote editor can create a section for each site, and Copy to sites repeats one section's tasks and prices across the rest. A section marked Becomes its own job creates a separate job for that site when the quote is accepted, all listed under one main job that can invoice the finished sites together. The PDF can show a Sites Covered block.

Nothing changes until you switch it on, and you can price each site separately or give one price for the whole quote.

The cmms software page shows how asset records, preventive maintenance and work orders fit together for contractors.

Frequently asked questions