Overview

A Downtime Report is how you document any period during which your wash location is not fully operational. Logging downtime accurately gives you a clean record of incidents, root cause categories, and total time lost, and it triggers real-time alerts so the right people know the moment something goes down — and the moment it comes back up.

This guide walks you through creating a new Downtime Report in the WashStacks web application, monitoring it while it is open, and resolving it once the issue has been corrected.

⚠️ Important things to know before you start: While a Downtime is open, a red banner reading "Location down. Mark Resolved." follows you on every page of the site until the downtime is resolved. In addition, every Role you have configured to receive Downtime notifications will get an immediate push notification AND an email at the moment a downtime is created — and again at the moment it is resolved. This lets your team monitor the situation in real time even if they are not on site.

Part 1 – Creating a Downtime Report

Step 1: Navigate to the Downtime page

From the WashStacks dashboard, look at the navigation menu on the left side of the screen.

Click Operations to expand its sub-menu, then click Downtime.

Step 2: Open a new Downtime Report

The Downtime page lists every downtime that has been logged at your locations, with filters for Location, Date range, and Downtime Type. To create a new report, click the blue + ADD button in the top right corner of the page.

Step 3: Fill out the Downtime form

Complete each of the following fields:

Location — Select the location that is experiencing the downtime.
Summary — A short description of what happened (e.g., "Wash down – power went out").
Downtime Type — Choose the category that best describes the cause: Equipment, Customer Fault, Employee Fault, Point of Sale, Tunnel Controller, Utility, Facility, Weather, or Other.
Start — The date and time the downtime began. This defaults to today/now — adjust if needed.

Leave the "This downtime has been resolved" toggle OFF for now. We are documenting an issue that is still ongoing — we will mark it resolved later. Click Save.

Step 4: Confirm the downtime was created

Two things happen the instant you save:

A green "Downtime successfully recorded" confirmation appears, and the new entry shows at the top of the list with a red OPEN status.
A red banner reading "Location down. Mark Resolved." appears across the top of the WashStacks header.

⚠️ The red banner follows you everywhere. The red "Location down. Mark Resolved." banner does not just live on the Downtime page. It persists on every page of the WashStacks site — the Dashboard, Reports, Talent, Claims, every screen — until the downtime is resolved. This is a deliberate, hard-to-ignore reminder that the location is not operational. The » arrow at the end of the banner is a shortcut: clicking it takes you directly to the open Downtime so you can mark it resolved.

💡 Notifications are sent automatically. At the moment you save the new Downtime, WashStacks immediately sends a push notification AND an email to every Role you have configured to receive downtime-related notifications. This includes owners, managers, maintenance leads — anyone whose Role is set up for downtime alerts.

Part 2 – Resolving the Downtime

Once the underlying issue has been fixed and the location is operational again, the downtime needs to be resolved so the red banner clears and your reporting accurately reflects the total time lost.

Step 5: Open the resolution form

You can get to the resolution form two ways:

Click the » arrow at the end of the red "Location down. Mark Resolved." banner.
From the Downtime list, click the OPEN entry and then click the blue CLOSE button at the top right of the detail screen.

Either path opens the resolution form, which now includes an End date/time and two narrative fields: What happened? and How was it resolved?

Step 6: Fill in the resolution details

End date / time — Enter the date and time the location came back up. The system will calculate the total downtime automatically.
What happened? — Describe the incident in plain language (e.g., "Power went out at the site").
How was it resolved? — Document what was done to fix it (e.g., "Power company was contacted and they arrived and fixed the issue. Power is back on. Wash is operational.").

Click Save to close out the Downtime Report.

Step 7: Confirm the downtime was resolved

After saving, you will be returned to the Downtime list. Three things confirm the downtime is fully resolved:

The red OPEN status is replaced with the total downtime duration (for example, 0.2hrs).
The red "Location down" banner is gone from every page of the site.
A second round of push notifications and emails has been sent to every Role configured to receive downtime alerts — letting them know the location is back up.

Quick Reference

Step	What happens
Create Downtime	Operations → Downtime → + ADD. Fill out Location, Summary, Type, Start. Save.
On Save	Red site-wide banner appears. Push + email sent to every Role set to receive downtime notifications.
While Open	Red "Location down. Mark Resolved." banner persists on every page until the downtime is closed.
Resolve Downtime	Click the » in the red banner (or CLOSE on the entry). Enter End time, What happened?, How was it resolved? Save.
On Resolve	Banner clears. OPEN status is replaced by total duration. Push + email sent again to notify everyone the location is back up.