What is a CMMS?
A computerised maintenance management system records every maintenance job, who is doing it and whether it is done, and schedules the routine work that keeps buildings running.
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What a CMMS does
Every CMMS is built around a small set of records. The names vary from product to product; the jobs they do are the same.
- Work requests
- Someone reports a problem: a tenant, a housekeeper, a member of staff. The request waits in a queue until a manager approves it, declines it or turns it into a job.
- Work orders
- The core record. One job, with a location, a priority, an assignee, a due date, a status and, when it is closed, an outcome. Everything else either creates work orders or reports on them.
- Preventive maintenance
- Routine work on a schedule: a boiler service every twelve months, a fire alarm test every week. The CMMS creates the work order when it falls due.
- Assets
- The equipment you maintain: lifts, pumps, air-handling units, appliances. Each keeps its own history of jobs, so a repeat fault shows before it becomes a failure.
- Locations
- Where the work happens: a site, then its buildings, floors, units or rooms. A report by location shows which parts of a building cost the most.
- Reporting
- Open, overdue and unassigned work; jobs done on time; whether the preventive schedule was kept. Answered without anyone compiling a spreadsheet.
- Mobile
- Technicians and the people reporting problems are rarely at a desk. A CMMS without a mobile app is a system the office uses and everyone else works around.
Some systems add spare-parts inventory, purchasing, meter readings and sensor data. These matter in manufacturing and are rarely needed for buildings, where the work is repairs, inspections and servicing.
Who uses a CMMS
Any organisation that looks after things that break, from schools and clinics to retail chains and sports venues. The emphasis shifts with the sector.
- Property management. Landlords, managing agents and residential blocks handle many small repairs reported by tenants, and need to prove to owners what was done. See property maintenance software for landlords and agents.
- Hotels. Housekeeping finds most faults, and what matters is how quickly a room goes back on sale. See hotel maintenance software.
- Facilities management. Several sites, plant rooms, statutory inspections and contractors. The first question every morning is which site is behind. See facilities maintenance software for multi-site estates.
- Manufacturing. Downtime is costed by the hour, so the CMMS leans towards asset records, spare parts and usage-based schedules, often alongside an EAM system.
CMMS vs spreadsheets, WhatsApp and email
Most teams start here, and it works until the volume rises or a second person has to rely on it.
- A spreadsheet holds a list, but not the photos, the conversation or who changed what. Only the person who maintains it can trust it.
- A WhatsApp group is fast to report into and impossible to report out of. Nobody can say how many jobs are open or how long each has waited.
- Email is where requests go to wait. Each inbox is a private queue, and the sender cannot tell whether anyone has read it.
A CMMS does three things none of them do: one shared list with a status on every job; a history of who did what and when; and figures such as the overdue count, produced without anyone compiling them. The price is discipline: every job has to be logged, including the ones fixed on the spot.
CMMS vs EAM vs CAFM
Three acronyms overlap, and vendors use them loosely. In plain terms, each has a different centre of gravity.
CMMS (Computerised maintenance management system)
Centre of gravity. The maintenance work: requests, work orders, preventive schedules, asset and location history.
Typical buyer. Maintenance, property and facilities teams
EAM (Enterprise asset management)
Centre of gravity. The whole life of an asset, from purchase to disposal: procurement, inventory, depreciation, contracts. Maintenance is one module, often tied to the finance system.
Typical buyer. Utilities, manufacturing, transport
CAFM (Computer-aided facility management)
Centre of gravity. The building as a workplace: space, occupancy, floor plans, room bookings, moves. Maintenance is one module among several.
Typical buyer. Corporate real estate and in-house FM departments
| System | Centre of gravity | Typical buyer |
|---|---|---|
| CMMS | The maintenance work: requests, work orders, preventive schedules, asset and location history. | Maintenance, property and facilities teams |
| EAM | The whole life of an asset, from purchase to disposal: procurement, inventory, depreciation, contracts. Maintenance is one module, often tied to the finance system. | Utilities, manufacturing, transport |
| CAFM | The building as a workplace: space, occupancy, floor plans, room bookings, moves. Maintenance is one module among several. | Corporate real estate and in-house FM departments |
If your question is "is the work getting done?", you want a CMMS. If it is "what do our assets cost over their life?", that is EAM. If it is "who sits where and how do we use the space?", that is CAFM. Many products straddle the lines, so judge on the features you will use rather than the label.
Reactive, preventive and predictive maintenance
A CMMS is the tool; these are the strategies it supports.
Reactive maintenance
Fix it when it breaks. Unavoidable for a dripping tap or a broken door closer, expensive for a boiler in January. The question is how much of your total it makes up.
Preventive maintenance
Planned work at fixed intervals, by time or by use, to stop failures before they happen. The US Department of Energy's O&M Best Practices Guide estimates that a preventive programme costs up to 18% less than a reactive one. That is a figure from federal buildings, not a promise for yours, but the mechanism is plain: a scheduled visit costs less than an emergency call-out and the damage that comes with it. See how preventive maintenance software turns a schedule into work orders.
Predictive maintenance
Intervene just before a failure, using condition data: vibration, temperature, run hours, sensor readings. It needs instrumented equipment, a history of data and the engineering to interpret it, which is realistic for production plant and rarely worth the cost for a block of flats or a hotel. Every CMMS supports the first two strategies; predictive maintenance needs sensors and analysis that most CMMS products, Maintis included, do not provide.
How to choose a CMMS
Ten questions to put to any product, including ours.
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Start from the work, not the feature list. Write down the five things that go wrong today, from the request nobody saw to the owner you could not answer, and judge every product against them.
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Reporting from the field. Can a tenant or a housekeeper report a problem with a photo from their phone, without training and without signal?
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A lifecycle with an outcome. Clear statuses, a required result on completion and an activity log nobody can edit.
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Schedules that create the job. The work order is raised on the due day, and never a second one while the first is still open.
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Boundaries enforced on the server. A technician sees their own jobs, a manager their sites, a unit owner never the rest of the building.
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Contractors without a seat. Outside trades can send notes and photos without a paid login and without seeing everything else.
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Reports ready on day one. Overdue work, jobs done on time, preventive maintenance kept, by site, without building the report yourself.
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Data in and data out. CSV import for the lists you already have, CSV export whenever you want to leave.
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Pricing you can predict. Priced by users or sites, no limit on work orders, and a trial that does not ask for a card.
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Where your data lives. Which country it is hosted in, how it is encrypted, and who at the vendor can open your account.
Your first week with a CMMS
Setting up maintenance software for buildings takes days, not months, if you resist entering history. Start from today; the record builds itself.
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Day 1: Add your sites and locations
Each site, then its buildings, floors, units or rooms, from CSV if you have the list. Go as deep as a technician needs to find the job.
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Day 2: Invite the team and set response times
Administrators, managers, staff and technicians, each assigned to their sites. Decide how many days a high-priority job and a normal one may take.
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Day 3: Register the assets that matter
The boiler, the lifts, the pumps. Not every socket and door handle. An asset earns a record when you will want its history.
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Day 4: Create the preventive plans with legal weight first
Fire alarm tests, emergency lighting, boiler servicing, lift inspections, water hygiene. Add the rest once these are running.
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Day 5: Log every job for one week
Including the ones fixed on the spot. On Friday, open the dashboard and read what it says. That habit is what the system depends on.
Where Maintis fits
Maintis is a CMMS for property managers, facility managers and maintenance teams in residential blocks, hotels and multi-site estates. It covers requests, work orders that close with an outcome and an activity log, preventive maintenance plans, assets, nested locations, a dashboard and reports, and a mobile app for managers, staff, technicians, tenants and owners, with secure links for contractors who have no account. The full feature list has the detail.
It does not do spare-parts inventory, purchasing, meter readings or sensor-based predictive maintenance; for those you want an EAM system or a CMMS built for manufacturing. Every plan includes unlimited work orders and requests and begins with a 14-day free trial, no credit card.
Maintis
One job, from report to proof.
Request, work order, outcome, log, in the browser and on the phone.
See every feature
Frequently asked questions
Not answered here? Email [email protected] and the product team replies.
What does CMMS stand for?
What is the difference between a CMMS and work order software?
Is a CMMS the same as EAM?
Does a small team need a CMMS?
How long does it take to set up a CMMS?
How much does a CMMS cost?
Know every repair is done.
Add a site, invite the team and follow the first job from report to proof. 14 days free, no credit card.