Work Order closure requirements
Closing a job or a Work Order in Fleet360 isn't a single action — it's the last step in a chain of checks that confirm the work is actually finished and accounted for. Those checks exist at two different levels: a job (line) has its own set of conditions that must be true before it can close, and a Work Order has a separate, much simpler condition that depends entirely on its jobs. This article explains what each level actually checks, which conditions can be worked around and which can't, and how the Ready for Review workflow fits into the picture. It's written for anyone who has hit a "can't close" message and wants to understand why, at a level deeper than the message itself.
This article is about the prerequisites for closing — not the mechanics of the close action itself (see Close or reopen a job and Close or reopen a Work Order for that), and not the overall status sequence a job or Work Order moves through (see Job lifecycle and Work Order lifecycle for that). It also isn't the place to learn what the Ready for Review status means as a status — see Work Order status values for that. This article is specifically about what has to be true before the system will let a close action succeed.
The job-level check: is this specific job actually done?
Before a job can close, Fleet360 runs a check against that job and looks for a defined set of conditions. If any of them are present, the job is not closable and the close attempt stops with an explanation instead of a confirmation.
The conditions checked are:
An open inspection — an inspection tied to the job hasn't been completed.
Technicians still clocked in — one or more technicians have an active shift against the job and haven't clocked off.
Unresolved required notes — notes the organization requires (cause, complaint, correction, or general notes) are missing or incomplete.
Open part requests — a part someone requested for this job hasn't been fulfilled yet. This is the same request-to-posting mechanism covered in How parts requests become postings; this article doesn't re-explain that mechanism, only that an unresolved request holds the job open.
Open warranty part returns — a warrantied part posted to the job hasn't been returned yet. This condition is skipped entirely (and silently cleared) when the organization doesn't use the part-warranty-return-verification switch — see Work Order system switches.
Open purchase order lines — a purchase order tied to the job hasn't been fully received or closed out.
Most of these are hard blocks: there's no button or permission that lets you close the job while they're present. The message you see lists exactly which conditions are in play — which technicians are still clocked in, which part requests are open, which PO numbers are unresolved — so the fix is always to resolve the underlying thing, not to override the check.
The one exception is the open-purchase-order-line condition, and only under a specific circumstance: if an open PO line is the only thing blocking the job (nothing else on the list above is also true), and the organization has a feature switch enabled that allows closing a Work Order with a linked PO still open, the job-close flow offers a different path. Instead of a flat "can't close" message, it shows the open PO numbers along with a Close option — but that option is itself gated by a separate permission. A user with that permission can close the job anyway, acknowledging the open PO; a user without it sees the same open-PO information but with the Close option disabled and a message explaining they don't have permission to close with an open PO. If that feature switch is off, an open PO behaves like every other condition above: a flat block with no override.
A couple of related things surface alongside the check but don't block anything themselves:
If the organization uses completion codes, closing a job prompts for one — this doesn't gate whether the job can close, only what information you provide while closing it.
If the job is linked to a prior PM job whose meter reading is older than the current one, closing prompts an optional checkbox to update that PM information. Also not a blocker — just an extra step offered at the moment of closing.
The Work Order-level check: has every job actually finished?
Unlike the job-level check, the Work Order-level check isn't a separate set of business rules. It's a rollup: Fleet360 looks at every job on the Work Order and reports back a list of the jobs that aren't yet in a closable state, each with its line number and current status. If that list comes back empty, the Work Order can close. If it comes back with anything in it, the Work Order cannot close, and the reason is simply that one or more jobs haven't reached a status that counts as done.
This is why closing a Work Order surfaces a very different kind of message than closing a job does: instead of a list of specific conditions (inspection open, technicians clocked in, and so on), you see a list of jobs and their statuses. To resolve it, you go fix (or close) those specific jobs — the Work Order-level check itself has nothing more to say than "these jobs aren't done yet."
There is no override for this. Every job must reach an acceptable status before the Work Order-level check will return empty — there's no permission or switch that lets a Work Order close around an unfinished job, the way an open PO line can sometimes be overridden at the job level.
Where Ready for Review fits in
Ready for Review is not a third, separate set of closure rules — it's what happens (or doesn't) immediately after every job on a Work Order becomes complete, depending on one configuration switch.
When the last job on a Work Order closes, Fleet360 checks whether every job is now done. If it is, and the organization has the switch that allows closing a Work Order directly from the paperless flow turned on, Fleet360 automatically attempts to close the Work Order right then — running the same Work Order-level check described above first, and only proceeding if it comes back empty. This happens whether the last job was closed individually or as part of a bulk-close action.
If that switch is off, nothing closes automatically. The Work Order simply sits with all of its jobs complete but the Work Order itself still open — which is the situation the Ready for Review worklist is built for. It's a queue of Work Orders in exactly that state, for a reviewer to work through: pick one (or select several at once), and use the Close action there. That action runs the identical Work Order-level check again before actually closing anything — Ready for Review doesn't skip or replace the check, it's simply where a person triggers the same check manually instead of it firing automatically.
Put another way: "all jobs complete" is the trigger, the Work Order-level check is the gate, and whether closing happens automatically or waits for a reviewer in Ready for Review depends entirely on that one configuration switch. Reopening a job after this point — on a Work Order that already reached Ready for Review, or that already closed — reverses this: the Work Order-level check will no longer report empty until that job is closed again.