Work orders

Work orders are how you dispatch maintenance to vendors entirely through email. There’s no vendor portal, no vendor logins, no app for them to install. You write what’s broken, AI triages it, the system emails the vendor, and their replies thread back into the work order automatically. When the job is paid, you can log it as an expense linked back to the work order.

Prerequisites

Two things must be configured before work orders will work:

• Email Inbox must be turned on. Work orders depend on your community’s inbox to thread vendor replies back to the right work order, so the Work Orders screen asks you to Enable Email Inbox until it’s connected.
• At least one vendor with an email address. You can save a work order without a vendor, but you can’t dispatch it until one is picked and has an email on file.

Add a vendor

Go to Work Orders in the admin sidebar, then click Settings in the top right. Click Add Vendor and fill in:

• Provider/Business Name - required
• Email, Phone, Website - email is required for dispatch
• Trades - pick at least one. These are what AI uses to match jobs to vendors: Plumbing, Electrical, HVAC, Landscaping, Pool, Roofing, Painting, Pest Control, General, Other
• Preferred vendor (HOA’s go-to) - when on, AI prioritizes this vendor when several handle the same trade
• Visible to residents in the directory - controls whether the vendor appears in the resident-facing Service Provider Directory
• HOA-managed details (admin only) - Payment terms, Insurance certificate with Insurance expires, and Internal notes. HomeHerald stores the certificate and its expiry date; it doesn’t send renewal reminders, so check the date before you dispatch

Vendors you add here are the same records as the Service Provider Directory, so a vendor residents added there can be dispatched to as well.

Create a work order

Go to Work Orders and click New Work Order.

1. Type a description. Be specific. Example: “Kitchen sink leaking in unit 142B, water collecting under cabinet.”
2. Optionally attach a photo. It helps AI categorize the issue and gives the vendor a visual before they arrive.
3. Let AI triage it. The system reads the description and photo and returns a trade (e.g., Plumbing), where the work is (a property or an amenity), an urgency level (Low, Medium, High or Emergency), a short summary written for the vendor, and a vendor suggestion from your existing list.
4. Answer the Quick clarifications if AI is uncertain. Questions appear as clickable chips. Common cases: which of two similar properties, which trade if it spans categories. Fields AI isn’t sure of are flagged for you to confirm.
5. Review and dispatch. Click Submit to save and email the vendor, or Save for later to keep it as a Draft. Each work order gets a unique number like WO-CRD2K3.

If the dispatch email fails, the work order is kept as a Draft and you can retry the send from it.

What the vendor receives

The dispatch email subject is [WO-CRD2K3] Title of work order, sent under your community’s name from your connected mailbox (or HomeHerald’s sending address if you don’t have one). The body includes the pre-approved spend limit (if set), the trade, the urgency, your HOA’s contact details, the description, and up to six photos. The vendor replies normally to that email - from their phone, their inbox, no app required.

The bracketed token (e.g., [WO-CRD2K3]) is the routing key, and the email asks the vendor to keep it in the subject. As long as it stays in the subject line of any reply, the system threads the reply back to the right work order. Most email clients preserve the subject automatically.

If HOA manages resident properties is on in Work Orders Settings and the work is at a property with a resident on file, the resident is copied on the dispatch so the vendor can coordinate access.

Vendor replies thread back automatically

The hourly inbox scan reads incoming email, matches the work-order token in the subject, and attaches the reply to the original work order. The email is tagged as a work-order reply in your Email Inbox and linked to the work order. The threaded conversation appears in the work order’s Activity, and the work order is flagged with a new-reply marker until you open it.

There is no fallback match: if a vendor strips the token from the subject, the reply lands in the Email Inbox like any other email and doesn’t attach. If a reply seems missing, check the Email Inbox.

Status lifecycle

Status	Meaning
Draft	Created but not yet dispatched
Requested	Dispatch email sent; awaiting vendor’s first response
Estimated	Vendor sent a cost estimate
Approved	Admin confirmed the estimate
Scheduled	Work date/time set
In Progress	Work underway
Completed	Vendor marked finished
Invoiced	Invoice received
Paid	Admin marked it paid
On Hold / Cancelled	Off the active flow

AI reads each vendor reply, pulls out any estimate amount, scheduled date or invoice amount, and moves the status forward when the reply calls for it: estimate → Estimated, schedule confirmation → Scheduled, completion → Completed, invoice → Invoiced. It only ever moves forward, never back. Admin can change the status manually at any time from the work order.

The list splits into Active and Closed (Paid or Cancelled).

Mark Paid logs the expense

Setting a work order to Paid opens Mark Paid, which collects the amount, the date, the payment method (and the check number for checks), and optional notes. Then it asks Log as Expense? Click Log as Expense and the system creates an expense record linked back to the work order, and the transaction shows the work order number - click it to jump back to the conversation thread. Click Skip if you’ve already recorded the expense elsewhere.

Editing and deleting

• Edit: open the work order and edit fields directly. Status changes log activity entries on the work order.
• Delete: available at any time from the work order. If it was already dispatched, HomeHerald warns you that the vendor’s email can’t be unsent. To keep the history, set the status to Cancelled instead of deleting.

Troubleshooting

• Vendor reply isn’t threading back to the work order. Check the subject line. If the token [WO-XXXXXX] was stripped, the email lands in the Email Inbox as a regular email. Ask the vendor to reply to the original dispatch email.
• Dispatch email never arrived. Check the email address on the vendor record first, then check your Email Inbox connection.
• AI suggested the wrong vendor. Override before dispatch. Pick the right one from the vendor dropdown.
• AI suggested no vendor. No vendor in your community handles that trade. Add a vendor under Settings, then pick them on the work order.