The Business tier ($99/mo) unlocks a set of operational features designed for established maintenance organizations. Here's what's included beyond Starter.

Automation & integration

• Unlimited workflow automations (lifted from 5/company cap)
• Unlimited webhooks (lifted from 100/day cap)
• REST + GraphQL API (read queries + write mutations) — 5,000 calls/day
• Custom dashboards (drag-drop builder)

Team collaboration

• Team chat with real-time WebSocket, threads, search, file attachments, typing indicators
• Advanced analytics & consolidated reports (Maintenance, Costs, Financial, Inventory, Labor)
• Priority in-app support
• 50 GB cloud storage

Data management

• Custom fields — per-entity (Work Orders, Assets, Parts) extensions
• E-signature — sign work order completion, LOTO and inspections
• Scheduled backups — daily/weekly/monthly to MinIO with retention
• Full audit logs — every create/update/delete tracked with user + diff

Operational planning

• Contracts — long-form supplier and service agreements with renewal alerts
• Projects — multi-work-order initiatives with milestone tracking
• Shutdowns — planned outage windows with task scheduling
• Task templates — reusable checklists across work orders and PM

Audit logs capture every state-changing action in FreeMaint — who did what, on which entity, with the before/after values. Available from the Business tier.

Compliance use cases

• ISO 9001 / ISO 55000 — maintenance traceability
• SOC 2 — change management evidence
• GMP / FDA 21 CFR Part 11 — electronic record integrity
• Internal forensics — who deleted that work order?

Export & retention

Export filtered logs to CSV for compliance audits. Retention is unlimited on Business and Enterprise — no auto-deletion.

What's tracked

• All CRUD on Work Orders, Assets, Parts, Locations, Vendors, Customers, Purchase Orders
• Status changes (open → in progress → completed)
• Assignment changes (technician, team)
• Custom field value updates
• User/role/permission changes
• Login attempts and password resets

Where to find them

Open the Audit Logs page from the sidebar (under Reports). Filter by entity type, user, action (CREATE / UPDATE / DELETE) or date range. Each row shows the changed fields with before/after values.

Custom fields let you extend FreeMaint entities with fields specific to your operations — without waiting for a feature request. Available on Work Orders, Assets, Parts and Purchase Orders (Business tier).

Creating a custom field

1. {"title":"Open Settings → Custom Fields","description":"Admin only."}
2. {"title":"Pick the entity","description":"Work Order, Asset or Part."}
3. {"title":"Define the field","description":"Type a Field name and pick a type, then mark it required if needed. The internal ID is generated automatically from the name — open Advanced only if you want to customize it."}
4. {"title":"Save","description":"The field appears immediately on every entity create/edit form for that type."}

Existing data

Adding a new custom field doesn't touch existing rows — they get the default value (or NULL if no default). Removing a field soft-deletes it; values are kept in audit logs.

Filtering and reporting

Custom field values are indexed and filterable in list views and reports. You can group, count and aggregate by custom field — same as built-in fields.

Organizing fields into sections

Give each custom field an optional Section name to group related fields under a sub-header on the form (for example 'Categorization' or 'Impact analysis'). Fields without a section appear under the default 'Custom Fields' heading. Use the up and down arrows on the Custom Fields settings page to reorder fields within a section.

Supported field types

• Text — single-line, max 500 chars
• Long text — multi-line, max 5,000 chars
• Number — integer or decimal
• Date — ISO date with optional time
• Boolean — yes/no toggle
• Select — dropdown with predefined options
• Multi-select — multiple options
• URL — clickable link with validation

E-signature lets technicians and supervisors sign off on critical events directly in FreeMaint — work order completion, LOTO procedures, inspections, document approvals. Audit-grade with timestamp, IP and witness fields.

Audit trail

Each signature includes user ID, timestamp (UTC + local), IP address and entity reference. You can prove who signed what and when — meets HIPAA, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, OSHA and ISO standards.

How signing works

1. {"title":"Open the entity","description":"Work order, LOTO step, inspection, etc."}
2. {"title":"Click 'Sign'","description":"A signature pad opens — draw with finger on mobile or mouse on desktop."}
3. {"title":"Confirm","description":"Signature is saved with timestamp, your user ID and the request IP. A copy is logged in the audit trail."}
4. {"title":"Optional witness","description":"If your workflow requires a witness, a second signer is prompted before save."}

Identity, roles and corrections

• Employee ID — each signature also shows the signer's Employee ID (from their People profile) so people with the same name are never confused.
• Configurable roles — an admin can define a fixed list of signing roles under Company Settings → Signatures; signers then pick from a dropdown instead of typing.
• Correcting a signature — the signer can fix the role or witness afterwards; the signature image, date and IP stay locked, and inspection and calibration signatures remain fully immutable.

Where signatures are required

• Work order completion — technician signs the closure
• LOTO procedures — sign apply and remove steps
• Inspections — sign each inspection point or the whole report
• Document approvals — sign new versions of SOPs and manuals
• Custom triggers — any workflow step you configure

Custom dashboards let you compose your own analytics views with widgets. Drag, drop, resize and configure — no coding. Personal dashboards stay private; shared dashboards appear for everyone in the company.

Building a dashboard

1. {"title":"Open Dashboards → New","description":"From the sidebar (under Reports)."}
2. {"title":"Pick a layout","description":"12-column responsive grid; widgets snap and resize."}
3. {"title":"Add widgets","description":"Drag from the library; configure data source, filters and visual options."}
4. {"title":"Save","description":"Personal (only you see it) or shared (everyone in your company)."}

Personal vs shared

Personal dashboards are private to your user. Shared dashboards appear in /dashboards for everyone in your company; only the creator (or an admin) can edit them.

Available widgets

• KPI card — single metric (e.g. open WOs, MTBF, downtime cost)
• Trend chart — line/bar over time
• Pie chart — distribution by status, priority, asset, technician
• Top-N table — ranking with drilldown
• Calendar heatmap — daily activity intensity
• List — recent items (work orders, requests, low-stock parts)

Scheduled backups create automatic snapshots of your company's data on a recurring schedule. Snapshots include database content + uploaded files (photos, documents, attachments). Stored encrypted at rest.

Configuration

1. {"title":"Open Settings → Backups","description":"Admin only."}
2. {"title":"Pick frequency","description":"Daily (02:00 UTC), Weekly (Sunday 02:00 UTC) or Monthly (1st of month 02:00 UTC)."}
3. {"title":"Pick retention","description":"7, 30, 90 or 365 days. Older snapshots are pruned automatically."}
4. {"title":"Toggle on","description":"First backup runs at the next scheduled slot."}

Downloading

From the Backups page you can download any snapshot as an encrypted ZIP. Use this for offline archival or moving to On-Premise.

Restoring a backup

Currently restores are admin-assisted — open a support request and we'll roll back to a specific snapshot within 4 business hours. Self-service restore is on the roadmap.

What's included

• All database tables scoped to your company (work orders, assets, parts, etc.)
• Uploaded files (photos, attachments, documents)
• Custom field definitions and values
• User and role data
• Audit logs for the period

FreeMaint's workflow engine lets you automate any maintenance process: when X happens, check Y, then do Z. Configure once, runs forever. Starter capped at 5 active automations; Business and above unlimited.

Anatomy of a workflow

• Trigger — what fires the workflow (work order created, status changed, meter reading exceeds threshold, etc.)
• Conditions — optional filters (priority = HIGH, asset category = pumps, work order overdue, etc.)
• Actions — what happens (assign technician, send email/notification, create child WO, update field, call webhook)

Step conditions (Business)

Beyond the trigger status, a step can carry conditions that decide whether it is enforced for a given record: cost thresholds on purchase orders and requisitions (the step applies only when the total falls within a min/max band) and request-type conditions on requests (the step applies only to the ticked types — e.g. improvements approved by the zone manager while repairs go to the maintenance manager). Both are Business-plan field-level add-ons over the standard builder; steps without conditions keep applying to everything.

Common patterns

• Auto-assign — new HIGH priority WO → assign to on-call technician
• Escalation — WO overdue 2 days → notify manager + raise priority
• PM trigger — meter reading > 10000 hrs → create PM work order
• Status sync — WO completed → update parent project + send customer email
• Webhook out — incident created → POST to Slack/Teams

Simple vs Visual mode

Switch between Simple mode (a form, one card per step) and Visual mode (a drag-and-drop canvas). Both edit the same configuration and save the same thing: a status trigger with its approval steps chained beneath it, running top to bottom. Edit in one, save, and the other shows exactly that.

Which transitions you can gate

A step fires when someone tries to move a record INTO its trigger status. Every status in the record's lifecycle is available.

• Work orders — Open, Scheduled, In Progress, On Hold, Completed, Validated, Closed and Cancelled. A step on Closed is the usual supervisor sign-off before a job is filed for good; one on Cancelled stops a job being dropped without review.
• Requests, purchase orders, purchase requisitions and work permits each expose their own statuses.
• When a rule blocks a transition, the button is hidden and the record explains why — which role must approve, or which fields are still missing.

Tier limits

• Core — workflow engine not available
• Starter — 5 active workflows max per company
• Business — unlimited workflows
• Enterprise — unlimited workflows + advanced triggers (ML, multi-company)

Webhooks let FreeMaint POST to a URL you control the moment something happens, so another system (ERP, billing, inventory, accounting, a chat channel) stays in step without anyone re-keying it. Configure from /company-settings/webhooks. Starter is capped at 100 deliveries/day; Business and above are unlimited. For the full payload reference, see API & GraphQL > Webhooks.

Tier caps

• Starter — 100 deliveries/day per company (counter resets at 00:00 UTC)
• Business — unlimited
• Enterprise — unlimited
• The counter is per delivery ATTEMPT, so three webhooks on the same event burn three units

Configuration

1. {"title":"Open /company-settings/webhooks","description":"Requires the company settings permission."}
2. {"title":"Click 'Add Webhook'","description":"Give it a name, an https:// URL and tick the events you want."}
3. {"title":"Copy the signing secret","description":"It is shown ONCE on creation. You can generate a new one later with 'Rotate secret', which invalidates the old one."}
4. {"title":"Watch the deliveries","description":"Open the delivery history on the webhook to confirm events arrive and to replay anything that failed."}

Delivery semantics

• POST with a JSON body: { event, timestamp, data }
• X-FreeMaint-Signature header — t=<unix seconds>,v1=<hex>, where v1 is HMAC-SHA256 of "<t>.<raw body>" keyed with your webhook secret. Verify it on every request, against the raw body
• X-FreeMaint-Event and X-FreeMaint-Delivery-Id are sent alongside
• Network errors and 5xx retry up to 3 times with exponential backoff (about 2s, 4s, 8s); a 4xx is a permanent rejection and is not retried
• Every attempt is logged under the webhook with its status, response code and attempt count — and any settled delivery can be replayed from there

Available events

• work_order.created
• work_order.completed
• request.created
• request.status_changed
• part.low_stock
• part.out_of_stock
• part.consumed — consumed on or returned from a work order
• compliance.chain_divergence (Enterprise)
• report.daily_summary — the day's completed work, once a day at the hour you choose