For MOT and service workshops
Garage management software with online booking built in.
Photograph a supplier’s invoice and Claude, Anthropic’s AI, reads it into your purchase form for you to check and save. Around it, the rest of the garage management software: the ramps, the bookings, the job cards and the invoices, with a website that takes bookings straight into the diary.
Supplier invoices read from a photograph
Photograph a supplier’s invoice, or a handwritten receipt, on a phone or tablet in the workshop, up to four pages, and Claude, Anthropic’s AI, reads it into the purchase form: who it is from, and every line with its VAT. The lines are added up and checked against the invoice’s own total.
Nothing is saved until you have looked it over and pressed Save. Once it is, it counts in your VAT figures and goes to your accountant with everything else, in the pack and in the bills file for Xero. A supplier it has read once is recognised after that, by name or by VAT number.
Reminders that write themselves
Every month the back office works out which of your customers are due an MOT or a service, from the work you have invoiced, and lists them for you to ring or book in.
The MOT reminder letters are written for you from the MOTs you did eleven months before, one letter for each customer, ready to print and post. A car tested here again since, already in the diary or already written to is left off.
The engine code comes up with the car
200 vehicle lookups a month are included. A vehicle new to you comes up with its make, model, trim and engine code, and once it is booked in the engine code is printed on its job card and its invoice. A car that comes back costs nothing, because the first lookup is kept.
Past the month’s lookups, the registration still fills in from the DVSA and the DVLA, which are free but give no engine code, and the screen says so.
One diary, and everybody books into it
The MOT ramp and the service ramp are separate queues, because a free service bay says nothing about whether the tester is free. The counter, your own website and a forecourt you work with all book into the same diary, so a time taken anywhere is taken everywhere.
The website only offers times the diary says are free, and checks again at the moment somebody presses book. If the counter took the slot while they were typing, they are told and asked to pick another, rather than being booked on top of somebody.
The booking becomes the invoice
The booking is the job card and the job card is the invoice, priced off your own rates. An MOT booked by a forecourt you are paired with is charged at your trade price; a member of the public pays your normal one.
Nothing is typed a second time. The details were right when the customer gave them, and a retyped registration is where an invoice goes wrong.
VAT, both ways
An MOT at or under the statutory maximum fee is outside the scope of VAT, not zero rated. They are different things and only one of them is right on an invoice, and the system knows which lines are which.
Parts and supplies go in as purchase invoices with a VAT code on every line, standard rated or zero rated, and the figures for your VAT return are added up from what you sold and what you bought.
Beside a forecourt
If you do the work on a dealer’s cars, the two of you pair with a six-digit code read over the phone, and only what you have both agreed to share is shared. The forecourt books its MOTs and preparation into your diary from its own screen.
When the job is invoiced, the cost lands on that car’s line in the forecourt’s stock book, so the margin they see is the margin after the work.
What it costs
£99 a month added to any tier, and its own website, with the booking diary built into it, is built free. If the forecourt is somebody else’s, it works on its own for £169 a month and £250 to set up, with its own website and the booking diary built into it. The invoice reading and the vehicle lookups are in that price. The workshop demonstration opens without signing up; the bookings and invoices in it are invented.
Questions
Do I need a forecourt to use it?
No. The workshop runs on its own. Pairing with a forecourt is something both businesses choose, and each keeps its own login, its own customers and its own figures.
Can customers book online out of hours?
Yes. The garage’s website shows the next free time and takes the booking into the diary there and then. Nothing is paid online; the customer pays on the day.
Is a scanned invoice saved without anybody checking it?
No. The scan fills in the purchase form and nothing more. It is saved when somebody has looked it over and pressed Save, and if the lines do not add up to the invoice’s total the form says so first.
From the blog
- Photograph, check, save, handling supplier invoices without the paperwork pilePhotograph a supplier invoice, check the draft against the paper, then save it: a four-step routine for a garage, and what to check on every line.→
- Plan the ramp week before it plans youRead the workshop diary as a capacity plan: where jobs overrun, how to protect space on each ramp, and a 15-minute Monday review for an independent garage.→
- Your booking website answers while you're under the carWhat a workshop booking website should do while you work: show real availability, take the right details, and put each booking straight into the diary.→
- Garage management software vs a paper diary, which is better for your workshop?When a paper diary is enough for a small garage, where it starts to cost time, and how a two-ramp workshop might run its week on garage management software.→
Read next
- A dealer management system that does the remembering.Stock, invoicing, the VAT margin scheme stock book, handover packs, a test drive diary and history checks: one back office for independent used car dealers.→
- £179, £279 or £449 a month.No build fee. £179, £279 or £449 a month by forecourt size, website and vehicle lookups included. Checks and valuations pay as you go. No VAT charged.→
- Car dealer websites, with the back office built in.A used car dealer website designed for your dealership, not picked from a template, with the stock, invoicing and paperwork behind it. One dealer to an area.→
See the workshop side first.
Sign up with nothing to pay today, and we will come back to you. Nothing is charged, and you can open the back office first without giving us a single detail.