How a repair workshop's day runs through job cards and authorisation

From the outside, a vehicle repair workshop looks like a diary: cars arrive in the morning, work happens, cars leave in the afternoon. From the inside it is a queue of job cards competing for ramps, technicians, parts and the customer's permission to spend money. The card is the unit of work. It is opened when the car is booked, it grows as faults are found, it waits while the customer decides, and it is closed when the invoice is paid and the keys go back. Software for a workshop is, in the end, a job-card system with a ramp plan attached, and understanding the day is the way to understand the scope.

Before the day: the booking and the open card

A booking arrives by telephone, through the website or from a regular customer who sends a message. The service adviser records the vehicle (registration, make and model, mileage if known), the customer and the reason for the visit as the customer describes it: a service, a warning light, a noise from the front, an inspection that is due. That description becomes the first line of the job card. The adviser books a drop-off slot and, if the fault is known, a provisional allocation of time on a ramp.

Two things are decided here that matter later. The first is whether the card carries a known job with a known labour time (a routine service) or an investigation (a noise, a light), which has a diagnostic time and nothing else until the technician has looked. The second is whether the customer is waiting, leaving the car for the day, or needs it back by a time. A card with a hard collection time is a different card from one without.

Drop-off: the walk-round and the authorisation to begin

When the car arrives, the adviser does a walk-round with the customer: existing damage noted, fuel level, mileage, personal items, the contact number for the day and the preferred way to be contacted. The customer signs or otherwise confirms the work described on the card and the diagnostic time if there is one. This is the first authorisation. It covers only what is on the card; anything found later needs another.

Workshops that skip this step pay for it in disputes. A scratch that was already there, a job the customer did not think they had agreed to, or a diagnostic charge the customer did not expect are all problems that a recorded walk-round and a recorded first authorisation prevent. In a software scope, this is the point at which the card gains photographs, a signature or a confirmed message, and a timestamp.

The ramp plan: who does what, where, and in which order

The workshop controller (often the foreman, sometimes the adviser in a small workshop) looks at the open cards for the day and allocates them to technicians and ramps. The allocation is a plan, not a schedule, because it will change. A routine service goes to a technician with a free ramp and a known labour time. An investigation goes to the technician best placed to diagnose it, with diagnostic time only. A job that needs the four-wheel alignment ramp or the inspection bay waits for that ramp regardless of who is free.

The constraint that software most often gets wrong is that ramps, technicians and specialist equipment are separate resources with separate availability. A technician can be free while every ramp is occupied; a ramp can be free while the only technician qualified for the work is on another job. The plan has to show all three, and it has to survive being redrawn several times before lunch.

The job card during the work

As the technician works, the card gains lines: labour time clocked against each operation, parts drawn from stock or ordered, and findings. For a routine service the findings may be nothing. For an investigation the finding is the diagnosis, and the diagnosis produces a quotation for the repair: parts, labour time, and any consumables. The card now has work that is done (the diagnosis, already authorised) and work that is proposed (the repair, not yet authorised).

The state of the card at this moment is the most important state in the workshop. The technician cannot proceed without permission, the ramp is occupied by a car that may or may not be repaired today, and the adviser needs to reach the customer. Every minute the card sits in "awaiting authorisation" is a minute of ramp time that cannot be sold. A system that makes it easy to send the customer a clear description of the finding, the proposed work and the cost, and to record the answer, pays for itself in exactly this gap.

The second authorisation

The adviser contacts the customer with the finding and the quotation. The customer may approve all of it, part of it (do the brakes, leave the tyres), or none of it and collect the car with only the diagnostic charge. The answer, who gave it, how and when, is recorded on the card. Partial authorisation splits the proposed lines into approved and declined; declined items are kept on the card as advisories so they appear on the invoice and in the vehicle's history for next time.

Workshops differ in how they take this authorisation. Some will accept a telephone yes recorded by the adviser; some send a message with the quotation and want a reply; some use a link where the customer ticks the lines they approve. The scope decision is which of these the workshop will use, and whether the system must stop the technician proceeding until the authorisation exists. The stricter the rule, the fewer the disputes and the more the workshop depends on customers answering promptly.

Parts: the quiet reason jobs slip

Most approved repairs need a part. If it is in stock, the card draws it and the job continues. If it is not, the part is ordered with a supplier and the card gains a dependency: it cannot finish until the part arrives. The ramp plan now has a decision to make. Leave the car on the ramp if the part is coming within the hour; take it off and put another car on if it is tomorrow. Either way the customer's expected collection time changes and the adviser has to say so.

In software terms, a parts line has its own small state machine (requested, ordered, received, fitted) and the card's expected completion depends on it. Workshops that run well treat the parts status as part of the plan; workshops that run badly discover at four o'clock that the part was never ordered.

Inspection jobs: the same card with a different ending

A workshop that also carries out statutory inspections runs those jobs on the same cards with one difference: the inspection result is a formal outcome, not a finding. A pass closes the inspection line. A fail produces a list of items, some of which the workshop can repair that day and re-test, and some of which the customer must decide about. The authorisation step is the same as for any repair, but the time pressure is sharper, because a re-test has its own slot and its own rules about what can be repaired before it.

The inspection bay is also a resource in its own right, often with a tester who is qualified for inspections but also works as a technician. That means the ramp plan has to reserve the bay and the tester for inspection slots and release them for repairs when the slots are empty. The vehicle inspection software service and the vehicle inspection package describe that scheduling and the result handling in more detail.

Completion, invoice and collection

When the approved work is done, the technician closes the labour lines, the parts are confirmed as fitted, and the card moves to quality check. Someone other than the technician, in most workshops, confirms the work and road-tests the car if the job calls for it. The card then produces the invoice: the authorised lines, the parts, consumables, and the declined advisories listed as recommendations. The adviser contacts the customer to say the car is ready and takes payment on collection or in advance, depending on the workshop's policy and the customer's account status.

At handover, the adviser walks the customer through the invoice, the work done and the advisories, returns the keys, and records the collection. The card closes. The vehicle's history now contains this visit, the advisories, and the mileage, which is what makes the next reminder and the next booking useful.

The states a job card moves through

Where software earns its place

Three places, in our experience of scoping this sector. First, the authorisation gap: making the finding, the quotation and the customer's answer a single recorded step that the technician can see. Second, the ramp plan: showing ramps, technicians and specialist bays as separate resources and making the redrawing of the plan a quick, visible act rather than a whiteboard rub-out. Third, the vehicle history: advisories, mileage and work done carried forward so the next booking starts from what is known. Everything else (invoicing, reminders, parts ordering, inspection results) hangs off the card, and the card is where the scope begins. The workshop software development service and the workshop management package are written around that card.

A labelled example

If this is how your workshop's day runs, or close to it, the differences are the scope. Describe your day and ask for a proposal; the questions we ask in discovery follow the card from booking to closed.