Garage management software, built around your workshop

What I’d build first, and what waits

A first release follows a car from booking to paid invoice: the customer and vehicle record, the slot in the diary, the estimate that becomes a job card and then an invoice, and the reminder that brings the car back next year. Those four are ticked already because everything else hangs off them.

If your technicians already carry tablets, digital job cards, parts and health checks can join the first release without stretching it past four weeks. A busy multi-bay workshop or one servicing fleets usually wants them there. Online approval and booking, courtesy cars, billing for fleets and insurers, technician efficiency and a second site follow as phase two, priced on its own once the first release is running.

What AI can do here

Three places it takes typing off the service desk while people still make the calls:

• Turn a technician’s notes into an estimate. A tech says “nearside front pads at 3mm, discs lipped” into a phone. The system writes the health-check line and prices the work from your rates, and the advisor checks it before the customer sees it.
• Check parts invoices. Each line on a factor’s invoice is matched to the job it was ordered for, and any price above the one you quoted is flagged.
• Answer “is it ready yet?” When a customer texts, a reply with the job’s current status is drafted for the advisor to send.

What fails, what’s advisory and what goes on an MOT stay with the technician. I’d add any of these after the garage has run on the new system for a while; each gets its own fixed quote somewhere in the £1.5k–£5k range.

Switching from your current system

What comes across. Customers and their contact details, vehicles with registrations and VINs, MOT and service due dates, past invoices and job cards, labour rates, service menus, parts and stock levels, and each account customer’s balance.

History and photos. Moving all of it is part of what I quote for the migration. When your old system gives job history as rows of data, each past job becomes a live record on the vehicle, so an advisor can see what was done last time and what was advised. Where the only export is PDFs or health-check photos, I attach each file to the vehicle it belongs to.

How. The data lands in a trial copy of the new system before the real one. Look up a handful of regulars, the fleet van that’s in every month and the classic that comes in once a year, and tell me what’s wrong with their history. I fix it, then we switch. Hold on to the old login for the first few weeks in case an advisor needs to look something up.

When off-the-shelf is enough

For one site doing servicing, repairs and MOTs for retail customers, off-the-shelf software costs less than a build and does the job. Buy one rather than build when:

• the workshop is new and your prices and routines are still settling;
• you want repair times and wiring diagrams inside the job card from day one without holding your own Autodata or HaynesPro licence;
• your advisors and technicians are happy, and nobody fixes invoices by hand.

A build pays its way with fleet accounts that want their own rates and PO numbers, bodywork split between insurer and customer, two or more sites, or a spreadsheet someone fills in every week because the software can’t hold what you do.