Facilities management software is a category rather than a product, and the products inside it disagree about what the job is. Some are maintenance systems with a space module bolted on. Some are space and workplace tools with no asset register worth the name. Some are property systems that treat the estate as a lease portfolio. All of them demo well, because a demo shows the reporting and the reporting is downstream of the part that actually differs. This page is about that part: the record underneath, what has to be in it, and the four figures it exists to produce. Work those figures first on the free sheets here and you will walk into every demo already knowing what you are asking for.
The record, in three lists
An asset with a location, a condition and an expected life. A space with an area and an occupancy. A work order attached to the asset it belongs to, with a status and the date it changed. Facilities management software is those three lists kept as one thing, and everything else in the product is a view of them. The single most useful question in a demo is to ask for one asset on one screen with its space, its condition and its open work orders together. If that needs three screens, the three lists are three tabs, and every figure below will have to be rebuilt by hand whenever somebody asks for it.
What facility management system software adds to a set of spreadsheets
Not the arithmetic. Utilization, cost per square foot, backlog hours and the sinking fund are divisions, and the free sheets on this site do them without an account. What a system adds is that several people can touch the record at once without forking it, that the history of a condition change survives the person who made it, and that the link between an asset and its work orders is real rather than maintained by hand. Those three are worth paying for and they are also the three that are hardest to see in a demo, which is why the question above is worth asking.
The four figures it should produce without a consultant
Utilization against desks provided, running cost per square foot and per person, backlog hours against technician capacity, and replacement value falling due. On this site's worked examples they read 60% utilization on 180 desks with $168,000 of a $420,000 cost carried by empty ones; $30 a square foot and $3,500 a person, 62% of it rent; a backlog of 850 hours growing 22.5 hours a week against three technicians; and $800,000 of replacement due within five years on a $2.4m base saving $90,000 a year against a $160,000 need. Ask each product for its own version of all four on your data.
Where the category boundaries actually fall
Facilities management software overlaps three neighbors and the overlap is where buying goes wrong. A maintenance system is built around the work order and the technician; if your pain is the backlog, that is what you want. A workplace or booking product is built around the desk and the meeting room; if your pain is hybrid attendance, that is what you want. A property system is built around the lease. Facilities management software is built around the estate record, and it is the right purchase when the problem is that nobody can say what you own, what condition it is in, or how much of the space is used.
Questions people ask about facilities management software
What is facilities management software?
Software that keeps the estate as one record: assets with location, condition and expected life, spaces with their area and occupancy, and work orders attached to the asset they belong to. Its purpose is to make four questions answerable as lookups rather than projects: how much space is used, what it costs, whether the backlog is growing, and what replacement will cost.
What is facility management software, and is it different?
It is the same category under the other spelling. Facility is the more common US form and facilities the more common UK one, and vendors use both interchangeably, sometimes on the same page. Neither spelling indicates a different kind of product, so do not read anything into which one appears in a product name.
Is an FM system the same as a CMMS?
FM system is the everyday shorthand for a facilities management system, and it overlaps a CMMS enough that many products claim both. A CMMS is organized around the maintenance workflow; an FM system is organized around the estate record. If the backlog is the problem, look at maintenance software first. If the problem is that nobody can say what you own or how much of the space is used, the record is what you are missing.
How much of this can a spreadsheet still do?
All of the arithmetic, which is why the sheets on this site are free. What a spreadsheet cannot do is let several people hold one record without forking it, keep the history of a change after the person who made it leaves, or maintain a real link between an asset and its work orders. Those are the things you are actually buying.
Which facility management software solutions fit which problem?
Match the product to the figure you cannot answer. If the backlog is the problem, a maintenance system built around the work order and the technician is the right purchase. If hybrid attendance is the problem, a workplace or booking product is. If a lease event is the problem, the space record with occupancy held over time is. And if the problem is that nobody can say what you own, what condition it is in or how much of the space is used, the estate record itself is the purchase. Buying across that line is the most expensive mistake available in this category.