Equipment maintenance log template: what to record, and a sheet you can copy
Six columns, one line per event, filled in at check-in rather than at month end. A maintenance log for gear that moves between people — with a table you can copy straight into a sheet.
In this article
- The six columns
- The seventh column that is a trap
- The one rule: log it at check-in
- What else belongs on the item, not in the log
- Condition at check-in, which is half the point
- When the sheet stops working
- Where Itefy fits
The PA amp died mid-service. The camera body came back with a cracked screen. In both cases the first question is the same — when was this last looked at, and by whom? — and in most teams the honest answer is that the log is in somebody's head, a notebook in a drawer, or a spreadsheet tab last updated in March.
A maintenance log is not complicated. What makes it work or fail is a small number of decisions about what goes in it and when. Here is a template you can copy, and the reasoning behind each column.
The six columns
| Date | Item | What was done | By whom | Cost | Next due |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-03-04 | CAM-014 | Sensor clean, firmware 2.1 | Ravi | £0 | 2026-09-04 |
| 2026-03-11 | AUD-108 | Battery door replaced after check-in damage | Sent to Sound Repairs | £68 | — |
| 2026-04-02 | LAD-002 | Annual ladder inspection, passed | Meridian Access | £35 | 2027-04-02 |
Date — when the work happened, not when you wrote it up.
Item — the individual item's number, not its type. This is the column that makes the log useful, and it only works if your gear is individually labelled. "Microphone" tells you nothing; AUD-108 tells you which of the six.
What was done — one line, plain words. Enough that somebody reading it in two years knows what happened. Not a form with twelve fields, because a form with twelve fields does not get filled in at 6pm.
By whom — a person or a company. Half of the value of a log is being able to ring the people who did it last time.
Cost — including zero. The zeroes matter: they are what let you see, a year later, that this item costs nothing to run and that one has had £400 of work.
Next due — the single most valuable column, and the one most logs omit. Without it the log is a history; with it, it is also the thing you sort by to answer what is due this month.
The seventh column that is a trap
Do not add a status column — pending / in progress / complete. It turns a log into a task tracker, which needs maintaining, which means it goes stale, which means people stop trusting it.
A log records things that have happened. What is going to happen is the schedule, which is a different sheet — see the preventive maintenance schedule template.
The one rule: log it at check-in
This is what separates a log that reflects reality from one that does not.
The moment to record something is when the item comes back, with the person who had it standing there. Not at the end of the week, not at month end. At month end nobody remembers whether the rattle was the C300 or the FX6, so the entry either does not get written or gets written wrong.
That has a practical consequence for where the log lives: it has to be reachable from wherever check-in happens. A file on the office PC is a file that gets updated by someone reconstructing the week from memory on a Friday afternoon.
What else belongs on the item, not in the log
The log is events. These are properties, and they live on the item's own record:
- Make, model, serial number
- Purchase date, price, supplier, warranty end
- The manual
- Photographs, including one of the serial plate
- Its service interval and who owns it
Keeping these in the log means repeating them on every line. Keeping them nowhere is worse: the warranty expires unnoticed, and after a theft you cannot produce a serial number.
Condition at check-in, which is half the point
The most useful maintenance entries are not services. They are the small observations that would otherwise evaporate:
2026-05-19 · CAM-014 · Card door stiff, still closes. Watch it. · Priya · £0
Three of those over eight months is a repair booked before the door fails on a job. One of them in somebody's memory is a surprise on location. Give the person checking gear in a way to write a sentence, and make it acceptable to write "seems fine but".
When the sheet stops working
A spreadsheet does this genuinely well up to a point. The point is usually one of these:
- Two people update it at once and one overwrites the other.
- The person holding the item cannot reach it, so entries are written from memory later.
- Nothing tells you a next due date has passed — a sheet can hold the date, but it will not raise its hand.
- One item's full history takes filtering and squinting.
- The person who kept it leaves.
There is a longer version of that test in maintenance tracking in a spreadsheet, including a free sheet if you are staying with one.
Where Itefy fits
In Itefy the log is not a document you maintain — it is what the item accumulates.
Every service, repair, reported fault and condition change is recorded against the item itself, with the cost, the date and who did it, so one item's whole history is one screen rather than a filter. Recurring maintenance carries a next-due date with a reminder before it lapses, which is the column a spreadsheet can hold but cannot act on.
The check-in rule is handled by making it possible: anyone can scan the item's QR label from a phone at the shelf and log a fault or a note with a photo, which is the difference between an entry written at check-in and one reconstructed on Friday.
If you would rather stay on a sheet, take the table above — it is the same six columns. If you want the reminders, there is a 14-day free trial with no card.
Frequently Asked Questions
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One log, with an item column. A log per item means twelve files and no way to see what is due this month. The per-item view you get by filtering; the due-this-month view you cannot reconstruct from separate files.
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Different tab, same file. The inventory has one row per item; the log has many rows per item. Forcing both into one sheet is the most common reason maintenance logs get abandoned.
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For the life of the item, plus however long your insurer or regulator needs. Entries are one line of text; there is no reason to delete them, and the value of the log is precisely that it goes back further than anybody's memory.