Website for a garage, with booking against your ramps and MOT slots
A car is an appointment with a date attached to it, and the date is the MOT. Everything else in your week has to fit around that: two ramps, a four hour job that turned into six, and the caller who wants a price for a service on a 2016 Focus before committing to anything at all.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.
Three weeks in the life of the diary
None of this is a workshop problem. It is what happens when the booking lives on paper and the paper lives on the counter.
The MOT that runs out three weeks on Tuesday
You know the date, because you did the test last year and it is written in the book. The customer half knows it, and will remember it roughly four days after it has passed, by which point the car should not have been on the road at all.
Between those two facts there is nothing but somebody finding an hour to ring forty people, and nobody has ever found that hour in a workshop with cars in it.
Two ramps, one MOT bay and a pencil
The diary is a page a day with names down the side, which works right up until a cambelt job is written into a Thursday where the second ramp already has a gearbox on it. Nothing in the book knows that.
You find out at half eight on the Thursday morning, with two cars in the yard and one place to put them, and one of those two owners is about to be told something they will not enjoy.
What does a service cost on a Focus
It is the first question and it is always the first question. The answer depends on the engine, on which interval the car is due, and on whether it is the one with the expensive filter, and none of that fits into a sentence shouted across a workshop while you are under something else.
So the caller gets a rough number or a promise to ring back, and the person who wanted a price and a Thursday goes and finds both elsewhere.
Four things that change the week
The rest of the system is there too. These four are what a workshop notices in the first fortnight.
The job first, then a time that genuinely exists
The customer picks what the car is coming in for before picking a day: an MOT, an interim service, brakes, a diagnostic. Each one carries the time it really takes in your workshop, so a half hour test and a day on a clutch are never offered the same gap.
And nothing can be booked into a slot you would not have been able to work.
Ramps and mechanics are the real capacity
Two ramps and three mechanics means two cars in the air, whatever the paper says. Put the ramps in as resources, put the MOT bay in as its own, and tie each service to whatever it needs to happen.
After that, a job needing a ramp can only be booked when a ramp is open, and the tester's week off takes the test slots off the site without anybody remembering to do it.
Confirmation now, reminder the night before
The confirmation goes out as the booking is made, with the date, the time, what the car is booked in for and what to bring along. The reminder follows the evening before, while there is still time to sort a lift to work or to say the car cannot come.
By e-mail that is included. Where your customers only ever look at texts, SMS is a prepaid add-on.
Moving the appointment without the phone
Each booking carries a link of its own. A customer whose Thursday has fallen apart moves it to the following Tuesday themselves, and Thursday morning goes back onto the site as available while there is still a week for somebody else to take it.
A slot handed back seven days early is worth a great deal more than one handed back at eight on the morning.
What the workshop's list can look like
You write the names and set the prices. What the shape gives you is a pricing type that fits each job instead of one that fits none of them.
The list can be grouped into MOT and servicing, repairs, and diagnostics, with prices set per category.
What garages ask before they commit
No. The tester and the MOT bay both go in as resources, and a test is only offered when the two of them are available, so a week off takes those slots off the site by itself.
Yes. Ramps, bays and mechanics are all resources, and every service is tied to what it needs. Two ramps means two jobs in the air at once, however many names somebody has written down for that morning.
Give each one the pricing type it deserves. A service can be a fixed price by engine size, brakes a from-price because of parts, a gearbox quoted, so nothing on the page is a figure you cannot stand behind.
A reminder the evening before, and a link in every booking that lets the customer move it themselves. A slot given back on the Monday can be sold again. One given back on the morning cannot.
No, it gets imported, so the text and the work you list carry over. The builder writes whatever is not there yet from a short description of the garage, and changes after that are made by clicking a pencil.
From €49 up to €199 each month plus VAT. Whichever one you are on, the site sits on your own domain with SSL, hosting, nightly backups and support behind it. SMS reminders are a prepaid add-on.
More trades
- Tyre fittersFifteen minute slots and tyre storage as a plan.
- Car valeting and detailingPackages per car size, paid at booking.
- Driving schoolsBooking per instructor and car, packages up front.
- Hair salonsBooking per chair and treatment length.
- BarbersA booking that takes ten seconds on a phone.
- Nail salonsThe three week refill books itself.
- All trades
Get the garage booking online
A few sentences about the workshop, the ramps and what you take in, or a link to whatever site you have now, and the builder puts up a first version with your jobs, your prices and a working diary. You edit it straight on the page.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.