Logging Historical & Backlog Maintenance

When you adopt FreeMaint you can record maintenance that was already carried out earlier — so your asset history, analytics and audit trail are complete from day one. This is called historical logging (or backdating a work order).

When to use it

How to log a past intervention

1. Open the Work Orders list and click “Log past work” (top right). For a specific machine, you can also open the asset's Preventive Maintenance tab and click “Log past work”.
2. Enter the real completion date (it cannot be in the future) and, optionally, the date the work started.
3. Select the asset and — if it was a scheduled preventive maintenance — the linked PM plan.
4. Keep “Update this PM plan: shift the next due date based on this completion” checked so the schedule re-anchors from that date.
5. Add who performed the work and any notes, then save. The work order is created directly as Closed with the real historical date.

Who can do this

Logging past work needs the “Backdate work orders” permission, granted to Admins and Managers by default. Technicians do not see the button, which protects the integrity of your maintenance history. An admin can grant the permission to other roles under People → Roles.

How it affects your data

Each historical work order is stored as Closed with its real completion date, so it appears in the asset's maintenance history and counts toward analytics, trends and PM-compliance for the month it actually happened. When you link it to a PM and keep the rebase option, the plan's next due date is recalculated from the completion date — and the schedule is never moved backwards.