Vehicle Workshop & Service

For a general repair garage, an oil and lube bay, a wheel alignment and tyre shop, or a two-wheeler service centre. A vehicle rolls in, someone types the plate, and the shop either knows it or adds it. A job card follows the work from intake to delivery; a quick bay bills straight at the counter. The shop remembers each vehicle's service history and tells you when it is next due.

Set up before your first vehicle

Do these once, in this order. The owner (or a Manager login) does all of them.

1. Check what the shop runs Tools > Settings > Job Cards. Keep Vehicle Details on, then set Service Reminders, Job Cards and Alignment Readings. The trade you picked has already set sensible defaults: a lube bay has no job card, an alignment shop records readings.
2. Set how often each job comes round in Setup > Service Intervals: service type, kilometres and months, and the vehicle type it applies to. Every next-due date is worked out from these.
3. Fill the vehicle lists under Setup: Vehicle Makes, Vehicle Models, Vehicle Colours, Insurers and Job Complaints (the common complaints a card picks from).
4. Build your price list under Parts & Items on the Setup menu: parts, oil, tyres and labour charges.
5. Add your mechanics under Directory > Technicians & Staff, so work can be credited to them.
6. Create a login for each person by the job they do (see Who signs in).
7. Run one test vehicle end to end: type a plate, add the vehicle, open a job card, send the estimate, approve it, mark it ready, deliver and bill it.

How the work flows

A vehicle passes from the desk to the bay and back to the counter. Each step says who does it and what prints. Without job cards (a lube bay), the vehicle goes straight from the desk to New Bill.

The whole journey on one page:

flowchart TD
    A[Service Desk: type plate] --> B{Known vehicle?}
    B -->|no| C[Add Vehicle
reg no · type · make/model · owner · odometer · docs]
    C --> V[(The vehicle record)]
    B -->|yes| D[Vehicle card: owner · last service · next due]
    V --> D
    D --> E{Quick bay or job?}
    E -->|quick| F[New Bill: parts + labour
vehicle and odometer on the voucher]
    F --> S[(Sale voucher with the vehicle on it)]
    E -->|job| G[New Job Card
odometer in · complaint · fuel · promised time]
    G --> J[(The job card)]
    J --> J1[Received] --> J2[Estimated: amount] --> J3[Approved: who and how]
    J3 --> J4[In progress · technician
alignment readings if tyre shop]
    J4 --> J5[Ready]
    J5 --> J6[Delivered: odometer out · bill]
    J6 --> S
    S --> L[(Service history entry)]
    L --> M[Vehicle memory: next service by km or months]
    M --> N[Service Due list · reminders on WhatsApp]
    N -.-> A

Who signs in

Give every person their own login; never share the owner's. Adding a user in a workshop asks what the person does first. That choice decides the screen they open on, their phone's bottom bar and the switches they start with. Any switch can be changed afterwards.

1. Open the user form Tools > Settings > Users > Add User, or from the person's own row under Technicians & Staff.
2. Pick the seat in Does (Service Advisor, Technician...) and link their staff record in Contact.
3. Set the login: user name and password (or their email address on a cloud business).
4. Review the switches under May do, add or remove any, and save. The person gets the change at their next sign-in.

A seat whose screen is switched off for this shop opens on the Dashboard instead: a lube bay with no job cards has no On the Floor or Ready. Reset to seat defaults puts an existing person back on the standard set; it warns first, because it discards anything set by hand. Re-picking a seat on an existing login changes where it opens, never its switches. Manage Purchase and Payment Entry still govern the bills beside the cards. The full switch list is in What each person may do, and the rules shared by every trade are in Users, Roles & Permissions.

Where it is in the app

A workshop opens on its own home screen, laid out by the job the person signed in does. Each menu shows only what this seat is granted and this shop has switched on; a menu left empty does not appear.

On a computer: the menu bar

Across the top: the seat’s own screen, the Dashboard, then one menu per area. New Job Card sits in a New submenu at the top of the first menu. Parts & Items and the shared masters join the Setup menu, stock vouchers and payroll are on Voucher, and Settings is on Tools.

On a phone or tablet: the side menu and the bottom bar

The side menu starts with My Work — the seat’s own screen, then the Dashboard — followed by Front Desk, Job Cards, Service Due, Office (Complaints, Reports, Directory, Accounting) and Setup. The bottom bar carries the screens each seat works all day; a screen on the bar is not repeated in the side menu.

A seat whose screen is switched off for this shop opens on the Dashboard instead.

Screens

Dashboard

What is in the shop, what is ready to hand back, who to call, what today is worth.

Service Desk

One box: the plate. A recognised plate shows the owner, last visit and next due, and the actions from there. An unknown plate leads straight into adding the vehicle, which is what stops vehicles being created only as a side effect of billing.

Job Cards

Boards for On the Floor (received, estimated, approved, in progress), Ready, Delivered, and All with a date filter as the intake register. A card can be marked as re-work of an earlier job on the same vehicle. See Job Cards. Without the job-card feature the shared Job Cards list stands in.

Service Due and Vehicles

Vehicles hold registration, make, model, fuel, engine and chassis numbers, tyre size, preferred oil grade, current odometer and the document expiries (PUC, insurance, fitness). Service Due lists what is due by kilometres or months and what documents are expiring. See Service Memory & Reminders.

Service Intervals

The schedule master: service type, interval in km and months, which vehicle type it applies to. A vehicle inherits a schedule and its next-due follows from the last service.

Parts, purchases, staff

Parts & Items is the product master (parts, oil, tyres, labour items); Parts Purchase buys them in. Technicians are ordinary staff contacts; staff groups are on so labour can earn commission, and the Technicians report shows who got through what.

The customer’s return visit

flowchart TD
    A[First visit: vehicle billed] --> B[Service logged: date · odometer · work done]
    B --> C[Next due calculated
by kilometres or months]
    C --> D[Time passes]
    D --> E[Service Due list picks the vehicle up]
    E --> F[Call or WhatsApp the owner]
    F --> G{Comes back?}
    G -->|yes| H[Next job card] --> B
    G -->|no| I[Stays on the overdue list]
    I --> F
    B --> J[Document expiry: PUC · insurance · fitness]
    J --> F

Settings

All on Tools > Settings > Job Cards. The Service Memory card appears once Vehicle Details is on, because everything in it hangs off the vehicle on the voucher.

What each person may do

A workshop seat gets its own Workshop permission card, not the contractor one. Nine switches, because a busy shop and a one-man shop split the same work very differently. View Service Revenue is the one read switch, so it survives a view-only login.

The four job-card switches appear only with Job Cards on, and Service Intervals and Send Reminders only with Service Reminders on.

Reports & charts

Ten workshop reports, one menu entry each, plus Business (Day Book, Expenses, Income, Profit & Loss, sales and purchase registers).

Four of these (Service Revenue, Estimate vs Billed, Parts vs Labour, Vehicle Value) need View Service Revenue, so an advisor can read the rework rate without being shown the takings.

The dashboard also draws three charts from the same figures: vehicles taken in against vehicles handed back day by day (the gap is your queue growing), the parts/labour donut, and the due pipeline. Job Cards > All with a date range is still the intake register; Service Due is the follow-up list.