Jobs vs job records
Maintenance in Tero.Ops uses two concepts that look similar but mean different things:
- A Job is a unit of planned or required work. “Service main engine — 500-hour service.”
- A Job record is what actually happened when that job was performed. “Serviced 14:30 on May 12, 2026 by John, took 3.2 hrs, used parts A and B.”
Why two layers
Real maintenance never matches the plan exactly. A 500-hour service might be done early, with different parts, by someone other than the assigned tech, taking longer than estimated. The plan stays clean and reusable; the record captures reality.
This matters for:
- Reporting — “How many engine services have we actually done this year?” answers from records, not jobs.
- Lifecycle costing — every record has parts and time. Aggregate across an asset to see true cost.
- Recurring schedules — a recurring job spawns one job (the next scheduled occurrence). When it’s completed it becomes a record, and the next scheduled occurrence is generated.
In practice
You usually only touch jobs when planning. You touch records when looking at history or generating reports. The two-layer model is invisible most of the time — but it’s why Tero’s history is so useful for audits and analysis.