---
Title: "What Is a Trouble Ticket? Definition and Example"
Url: "https://computer.io/glossary/trouble-ticket"
Topic: "Ticketing"
Description: "A trouble ticket is a record of a reported problem, such as an outage or malfunction, tracked from report to resolution. Fields, example and lifecycle."
---

# What is a trouble ticket?

A trouble ticket is a record created when someone reports a problem, such as an outage, error or malfunction, that captures the details of the issue and tracks its investigation and resolution. The term is common in IT, telecom and network operations, where it is often used interchangeably with incident ticket.

## Typical fields

| Field | Example |
| --- | --- |
| ID | TT-48211 |
| Reporter | Customer or monitoring system |
| Description | "VPN drops every 10 minutes" |
| Severity | High |
| Affected service | VPN |
| Owner | Network team |
| Status | In progress |
| Resolution notes | Firmware updated |

## Trouble ticket vs service request

A trouble ticket reports something broken. A service request asks for something new, like access or equipment.

## FAQ

### What is trouble ticket software?

A ticketing system used to log and track reported problems, often in IT and telecom.

### Who creates trouble tickets?

Customers, employees, support agents, or monitoring tools automatically.

### Is a trouble ticket the same as an incident?

Closely related; an incident is the event, and the trouble ticket is the record of it.

## Related terms

- [Support ticket](https://computer.io/glossary/support-ticket)
- [Incident management](https://computer.io/glossary/incident-management)
- [Ticketing system](https://computer.io/glossary/ticketing-system)

## How Computer helps

- [Service desk automation](https://devrev.ai/solutions/service-desk-automation)

## Further reading

- [Trouble ticketing systems](https://devrev.ai/blog/trouble-ticketing-systems)
- [Support ticket](https://devrev.ai/blog/support-ticket)