Machine Updates, Transfers and Site Previews
The machine file is a master file, and you can edit it directly. So why are there documents that edit it for you? Because a master file keeps no history: change the room and yesterday's location is gone. These three documents exist to leave a dated, numbered trail — one for changing a machine's data, one for changing its owner, and one for recording a site survey before an installation.
The first two change the machine file; the third is a record of the survey.
Required licence
crm-maintenance
The Machine Update Document
A document with a book, a term, an issue date and a value date, whose body is a near-copy of the machine's own attribute set: item, customer, contact, original customer and contact, machine type, category, warranty status, remarks, serial number, building, floor and room, the five classifications, the manufacturing, sale, installation and last-visit dates, warranty contract, warranty start, warranty period, default warranty period, default warranty start date, warranty end, the odometer readings and their dates, and the dimensions.
On 10 June 2026 the air-handling unit MCH-00318 is moved out of the equipment room into the pump room RM-MP01-B3. The maintenance office types MUPD-0007 against that machine, changes the room, and saves. On save the document rewrites the machine, and because the machine's own calculations and checks run afterwards, its warranty dates are recomputed at the same time.
Ledger: none. Stock: none. The document has no term configuration of its own, so its Term carries only the generic document settings.
What a Machine Update changes
Only the boxes that hold a value are written onto the machine. Picking the machine pre-fills most of the boxes from the current record. The alternative code, the manufacturing, sale, installation and last-visit dates, the default warranty start date and the warranty status start empty: fill one only when you want to change it. A box left empty leaves the machine's own value as it is, so an update that changes only the room touches nothing but the room. The flip side: a Machine Update cannot clear a value on the machine. To empty a field, edit the machine file itself.
Cancelling re-applies the previous update. Cancelling a Machine Update writes the filled values of the previous Machine Update document for that machine back onto it. When there is no previous update, the machine keeps the values the cancelled document wrote, so note the old values down before you commit a first update.
Two more behaviours worth knowing:
- The document is refused if a later Machine Update already exists for the same machine — later by value date, then by creation date. You cannot slot a correction in behind history.
- If you re-point a saved update at a different machine, the machine it used to point at is re-synchronised from its own latest remaining update document.
Finally, some of the machine's data is not on this screen and therefore cannot be changed through it: the second serial number, the task template and the tasks grid, the dependent-machines grid and the attachments. Those are edited on the machine file itself.
Last Visit Date and Warranty Status are typed
Last Visit Date and Warranty Status on the machine are manual fields: you type them on the machine file or write them with a Machine Update. Read Warranty End Date for the warranty answer.
The Machine Ownership Transfer Document
A hotel sells a chiller with the building; a branch is handed to another company. The transfer document records that, and keeps the chain.
Five fields carry the meaning:
| Field | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Machine | Mandatory |
| From Customer | Filled by the system from the machine's current owner |
| To Customer | Mandatory, typed |
| From Contact | Filled by the system from the machine's current contact |
| To Contact | Typed — but see the tip below |
| Description | Free text |
On save, the document gathers every committed transfer for that machine, adds itself, sorts them by value date and then creation date, and rebuilds the chain: the first document's "from" side is stamped with the machine's original customer and contact, each later document's "from" side is taken from the one before it, and the machine's current customer and contact are set from the last document in the chain. The machine's original customer and contact are frozen by the first transfer, so a machine that has never been transferred has no original owner recorded yet.
Cancelling a transfer rebuilds the chain without it, falling back to the original owner when no transfers remain.
Set the new contact on the machine afterwards
Treat ownership transfer as a customer-level operation: leave To Contact empty, save the transfer, then set the new contact on the machine file afterwards.
The Pre-Installation Preview
The site survey before an installation: customer, contact, machine, machine type and category, a from date and a to date, an attachment, From document, the serial number, a maintenance-groups grid and a discussion checklist. Picking the machine fills the serial, customer and contact.
The preview is a record of the survey: it has no buttons and no document term configuration, and it creates no machine, order, contract or work plan. To pass the survey's findings to the technician, put them on the maintenance order.
The document that does create machines is Generate Machine on the maintenance sales order — see Maintenance Sales, and note that it creates shells which must then be completed by hand.
None of this exists for the services suite
The service documents have no machine update, no ownership transfer and no pre-installation preview. A serviced site's data is edited on the site record directly, with no document trail.
Reporting: none. This module ships no system reports, and these screens have no print form. The machine file's own transactions tab is where the ownership chain is read; for update history use the list view filtered by machine, and its Excel export.