Work Order KPIs Electrical Contractors Should Track
Work order KPIs for electrical contractors: pending and late orders per stage, execution status and pending extracts, to see where work is stuck and who holds it.
Quick answer
Work order KPIs tell an electrical contractor where every utility work order stands, stage by stage, and a work order dashboard puts them on one screen. The ones that matter are pending versus late orders in each stage, with late meaning past that stage’s time limit, execution statuses such as disconnection or notes, and pending versus approved extracts. The late figures should open the orders behind them and show who holds each one.
Key takeaways
- A good work order dashboard answers three questions each morning: where work is stuck, who holds the late orders, and what is holding up cash.
- A late order has exceeded its current stage’s time limit; an old order is not necessarily a late one.
- Review late and pending orders per stage, plus disconnection and notes statuses, daily; review order ages and pending extracts weekly.
- A metric with no owner and no action is vanity: move it to a periodic report, and treat totals as context, not the focus of daily follow-up.
- The full lifecycle report and a ZIP of all attachments form each order’s audit and handover file.
- In ELX, dashboard figures are recalculated on every open or refresh, scoped to a regular user’s own branches and districts, and a late slice opens the orders and who holds each.
In this article
An electricity-network contractor runs many utility work orders at once, each in a different stage with a different team: an order waiting for its site survey, a permit not yet issued, a crew waiting for power disconnection, a certificate nobody has prepared. Pieced together from spreadsheets and chat messages, that picture reaches managers late and incomplete.
A work order dashboard fixes this, provided it tracks the right work order KPIs. This guide covers which KPIs matter and which are vanity, how to define a late order, how to reach the person holding it, and how to build each order’s audit and handover file.
What should a work order dashboard show?
A work order dashboard is a screen that summarises where work orders stand in every stage, from registration to extract: where orders are piling up, which have overrun their limit and who holds them. Its value lies not in the number of charts, but in whether it answers three questions every morning:
- Where is work stuck right now? The stage where late orders are collecting.
- Who holds the late orders? A number that points to no named person rarely gets acted on.
- What is holding up cash? Completed work that has not yet reached an approved extract.
The size of the network makes these daily questions, not monthly ones. According to the Saudi Electricity Company’s Q1 2025 results as reported by Argaam, the utility served about 11.37 million customers, added about 60,300 new customers in that quarter alone, and ran about 816,000 circuit km of distribution network. These are the utility’s figures, not any contractor’s, but they show why memory and spreadsheets stop scaling.
Expectations have moved too. The UN E-Government Survey 2024 places Saudi Arabia at the forefront of Asia’s top e-government rating class, with 99% internet penetration and 98% of government services online. Managers who now complete government transactions in a browser expect to see their own pipeline there too, not in a weekly report compiled by hand.
How do you define a late order at each stage?
A late order has stayed in its current stage longer than that stage allows; it is not simply an old order. A month-old order can be on time after naturally long stages, while a week-old order can be late if it has sat in the survey stage past its limit. So build the dashboard on a time limit per stage.
- Within limit
- Still inside the stage’s allowed number of days.
- Late (limit exceeded)
- Past the stage’s limit; needs follow-up and a delay justification.
- Pending
- Waiting in the stage and not yet relayed to the next one, whether within limit or late.
- Order age
- Days since registration or stage entry, best read in buckets rather than as one average.
First, agree on when the clock starts: when the order is relayed into the stage, or when a user claims it. The first exposes slow dispatching; the second measures only working time. Our guide to the work order SLA covers setting limits and writing delay justifications.
Separate external waiting
Some orders wait on things outside the crew’s control, such as power disconnection or a permit. Track them as their own indicator, so no team is blamed for a wait it does not own and the wait itself stays visible.
Which work order KPIs deserve daily and weekly attention?
A contractor KPI dashboard earns its place only when each indicator points to a clear action. The table below groups them by review rhythm, with what each reveals and the action it should trigger:
| KPI | Review | What it reveals | Expected action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late orders per stage | Daily | Where work is stuck now | Open the late orders, read justifications, check who holds each |
| Pending orders per stage | Daily | Queued workload per team | Rebalance assignments before pending turns late |
| Orders in “disconnection” status | Daily | Work waiting for power disconnection | Chase the request; upload proof once done |
| Orders in “notes” status | Daily | Work held back by open comments | Read the notes and assign someone to clear them |
| Receipts per stage today | Daily | Whether orders are actually moving | Compare what entered each stage with what left |
| Order age buckets | Weekly | Old orders building up before they turn into complaints | Start with the oldest bucket and fix its cause |
| Load per user in each stage | Weekly | Uneven pressure on a person or team | Reassign orders or add support |
| Pending vs approved extracts | Weekly | Finished work not yet an approved claim | Chase approval of the pending extracts |
| Finished and maintenance/emergency orders | Weekly | Output and the share of urgent work | Read as context, not as a target |
| Material differences per work order | Weekly | Materials owed by the utility or the contractor | Settle them before the certificate is prepared |
Why no benchmark figures?
We suggest no target values, because stage durations vary from one company to another by contract, work type and city. Compare each indicator with your own earlier figures instead: fewer late surveys than last month tells you more than any generic benchmark.
Which dashboard metrics are vanity?
A vanity metric looks good in a meeting but changes no decision and points to no specific order. The usual suspects:
- Total work orders registered: volume, not status. Useful context, but it does not show where to step in.
- Average completion percentage: hides stuck orders behind nearly finished ones; an order can show a high percentage while it waits weeks for quality. In ELX, for example, completion stays at or below 95% during execution and reaches 100% only once quality passes, so a high percentage alone does not mean the order is done.
- Attachments uploaded or logins: activity, not results; uploading files does not mean a stage is complete.
- A percentage with no base: a general “late rate” that names no stage and no order count, so it reassures or alarms for no clear reason.
The working rule: put the numbers that have an owner and an action at the front of the dashboard, and keep totals beside them as context, not as the focus of follow-up. A number with neither belongs in a periodic report.
How do you get from a number to the order and the person holding it?
A high late count starts a question; it does not answer one. A good daily review runs like this:
Start with the most delayed stage
Pick the stage with the most late orders relative to pending ones, not the biggest total.
Open the list behind the number
See the late orders and who holds each one right now.
Read the reason first
Check the delay justification, notes and attachments before calling anyone.
Decide the action
Remove the obstacle, reassign the order, or escalate an external wait to the party concerned.
Check at the next review
Confirm the order has moved and the same cause is not repeating elsewhere.
This loop only works if every order has one known owner per stage and a record of when it entered and was claimed. “With the team” is not an owner.
What does a full work order lifecycle report include?
The full lifecycle report, sometimes called the work order details report, is each order’s audit file: one document, often a PDF, covering the order from registration to its latest stage. It is usually requested in extract reviews, quantity disputes and handovers. At a minimum it should cover:
| Section | What it holds | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Work order | Subscriber and mobile, city, district, branch, contract number, estimated value, expected duration, no-objection number, work description | Shows the scope as received |
| Site survey (Kashfia) | Match and material status, drill types and lengths, permit need | Ties what was built to what was surveyed |
| Permit | License and request numbers, municipality, dates, duration, status | Shows the licensed excavation window |
| Execution | Supervisor, dates, disconnection date, completion % and done-work value, meters, materials, priced items | Explains the quantities and values claimed |
| Quality, certificate, drawing | Evaluation result, certificate items, drawing files | Shows the work passed before billing |
| Stage dates | Relay and receipt date for each stage | Shows where the time went |
How do you archive and hand over each order’s documents?
A work order’s documents are spread across its stages: survey photos, the permit application letter, proof of disconnection, quality files, the certificate and drawing files. Left in email and chat, handing over one order becomes a long search.
A practical work order attachments archive keeps each file on the work order itself, in the stage that produced it, under a name that says what it is, and hands the whole set over in one go. Before any handover, run this check:
- Every file is on the work order in its stage, not in email or chat.
- Each file has a clear reference name, such as “disconnection proof” or “excavation photos”.
- The full report is current and covers every stage the order reached.
- The certificate and materials balance are ready to print and sign.
- Material differences owed by the utility or the contractor are settled or documented.
- All attachments are bundled in one ZIP named after the work order.
To settle quantities before handover, see our guide to material reconciliation per work order.
See the ELX per-stage dashboard
We show how the dashboard separates on-time from late orders at every stage, and who holds each late one.
How do the ELX dashboard and reports work?
ELX is a bilingual cloud (SaaS) service, hosted and operated by Matrix, that runs in the browser with no servers needed on the contractor’s side and carries each work order for electricity-network contractors from registration to archive. Its operations dashboard is the main screen, part of reports and dashboards, with figures drawn straight from the stages in work order management.
- Summary tiles: total work orders, finished (archived) orders, emergency and maintenance orders, and extracts.
- A chart per stage: from the work order and survey stages through permits, Projects, Connections, Replay, quality and the certificate to drawing, each split into within-limit and late orders.
- Extracts and statuses: pending versus approved extracts, plus the statuses not started, disconnection, notes, in progress and finished.
- From number to order: clicking a late slice lists its orders and who holds each; clicking “notes” lists the orders in that status with their notes.
- Fresh figures: recalculated every time the dashboard opens or is refreshed.
- Scoped per user: regular users see only their own branches and districts, while administrators see everything, based on each user’s links in permissions and settings.
If a late order turns out to be stuck with one person, a supervisor can use the re-assignment screen to move it to another active user or remove the assignment. To follow one order, the “work order status” search in the header shows its current stage, responsible user and status, linking to the full report, attachments, achievement certificate and materials balance. The report has a section for every stage reached, with relay and receipt dates, and downloads as a PDF with attachment counts per stage or opens in a print layout.
The unified attachments screen gathers the order’s files from every stage with each file’s source; download a single file, or select several or all of them as one ZIP named after the order. The achievement certificate and materials balance print on your company letterhead. Material reports, such as estimate versus actual, requirements and movement details, export to Excel.
The daily work order digest adds a message at a daily time set by the administrator, sent on Telegram, and on WhatsApp when enabled, with today’s receipts per stage, order ages in buckets (0–2, 3–7, 8–14 and over 14 days) and the load in each stage.
Good to know
The dashboard shows where orders stand now, not trend lines over time; to compare periods, note its figures once a week. Delay justifications are read from stage lists and distribution screens.
Comparing systems more broadly? Start with our guide to electrical contractor software. To see the dashboard on your own work order stages, request a demo and bring the list of KPIs you track today. If you need a report the dashboard does not show, ask about customisation: Matrix tailors screens, reports and stages to each contractor’s needs.
Want to see ELX on your own projects?
Request a demo from our team on WhatsApp and see how work orders, extracts and warehouses run in one system.
Frequently asked questions
Which KPIs matter most for tracking work orders?
The most useful KPI is late orders per stage set against pending orders, because it shows where work is stuck and which team owns it. Next come statuses that stop work, such as power disconnection and open notes, then pending versus approved extracts, which hold back payment. Totals on their own give useful context, but they do not lead to a decision.
How do I see late work orders and who holds them?
Define late as exceeding the current stage’s time limit, then review late orders stage by stage every day. In ELX, the dashboard shows each stage split into within-limit and late orders, and clicking the late slice lists those orders with the user holding each one. Delay justifications are read from stage lists and distribution screens.
Does each user see only their branch’s figures?
Yes. In ELX, a regular user’s dashboard figures and lists are limited to the branches and districts linked to their account, while administrators see all figures. The scope comes from how each user is linked to branches, cities and districts, or to every district of chosen cities, in user and permission settings.
How do I print a complete report for one work order?
In ELX, look the order up by number or name with the work order status search in the header, then open its full report. The report has a section for every stage the order reached, from work order data, survey and permit to execution, quality, certificate and drawing, with relay and receipt dates, and it downloads as a PDF or opens in a print layout.
Can I download all of a work order’s attachments at once?
Yes. ELX has a unified attachments screen that gathers a work order’s files from every stage and shows where each file came from. You can download a single file, or select several or all of them as one ZIP archive named after the work order, which makes handing over or reviewing an order’s file much simpler.
Sources & references
- Argaam — Saudi Electricity Company Q1 2025 results — Customer numbers and distribution network length
- UN DESA — E-Government Survey 2024 (Chapter 3) — Saudi e-government rating, internet penetration and online services