The board and its three views

Workflow is the board of the shop's open work, and it runs edge to edge beside the main rail. One row across the top holds the tabs, the order search, Filters, New estimate and the sliders button. The tabs are Columns, List and Parts & Tires. Each tab shows an exact count. Columns and List count the same open tickets; Parts & Tires counts the part lines attached to those tickets. The tab prints Parts; a screen reader still hears its whole name.

The three views

Columns

The stage board: Estimates, Approved, In Progress, Quality Check, Complete and Invoiced. Drag a card or use its named move actions, forward or back. Paid and closed work leaves the board unless you switch Archived on. Those are the lanes every shop starts with; your shop can rename them, add its own and reorder them in Settings › Workflow, and each lane still belongs to one of those six stages.

List

The same open tickets as rows, 25 to a page. Its columns are Order #, Order Name, Customer, Vehicle, Total, Due (the promised time), Last Updated, Payment term, Payment due and Paid, with Status, Labels, Advisor, Technician and Age one Customize away. Order # is the order number and Order Name is the first service and ‘and N more’, each in its own column and each sortable; Customer includes the phone number and Vehicle includes the plate. Press a column heading to sort by it, and a row's … to open, message or print it. On a phone, where the headings are hidden, choose the column and direction under Sort by above the rows and press Sort. Payment term and Payment due come from the newest invoice. Labels is hidden when no order has one, and Total, Payment term, Payment due and Paid appear only for roles allowed to read money. On a phone, each row becomes one stacked summary instead of a wide table. Above the table, All and each stage show their counts; choose one to show only that stage without losing the rest of your filters.

Parts & Tires

Part lines already attached to open repair orders, grouped by their part status. Change a part on its order; this view is a worklist, not a second parts editor.

Moving a card back

A card moves back as well as forward, the way it does on Shopmonkey's board: Complete back to Quality Check or In Progress, Quality Check back to In Progress, In Progress back to Approved, and Approved back to Estimates. Drag it, or use the card's Move to, where the moves forward come first and the moves back after them. A move back is recorded in the order's activity like any other, with the word back in it. An order moved back to Estimates is priced again at the work on offer, the way an estimate is.

Archived orders on the board

Inside Filters, the Archived switch reads Hidden or Shown. Switched on, the board also draws the orders that have left it — closed ones, and paid ones older than the shop's paid window — in the Invoiced lane, each marked Closed or Archived. They count in the lane they are drawn in and in no lane's limit, age or waiting figures, and they are never open money. The switch is saved for you like Card view, and a line above the lanes says it is on, with Hide archived to switch it off. The board draws the 60 most recently updated; every older one is in Orders. An order archived from its own screen without closing it is drawn in its own lane, not Invoiced, marked Archived; it keeps its state, and Restore on the order puts it back on the board.

The board opens the way you left it

The advisor lens, your Card view and hidden stage lanes are saved on your membership as you change them. Card view is what a card SHOWS — Comfortable, Compact or Photo — and it is not the same control as the Density in your profile menu, which is how big everything is on every screen. Photo widens the lanes and puts a large picture of each car on its card: the photograph from that car's own record where there is one, and a tinted outline of the body shape where there is not. There is no separate Save button; the summary always reads the view you are on. When any lens is active, the toolbar's Shareable link ? says Filters are in this URL. Your card view and hidden lanes are saved for you. Each group in Filters carries its own icon, and the chip that clears a group reads All (Everyone for people). On a phone, every group after Advisor and Technician folds under one More, which stays open while any of them is set. These are view preferences, never permissions; Everyone and each hidden-lane chip put the full view back. Open a card and come back with your browser's Back button, and the board is where you left it: scrolled to the same lanes, with each lane scrolled to the same cards.

A car's photo on its card

In Comfortable, the card for a car that has a photo leads with it: a picture across the top of the card, with the order number and the work underneath. A car with no photo gets no picture, so its card is shorter. A car gets its photo in one of two ways. On the car's record, Add photo on the Vehicle info tab takes a new one. Or, on the car's repair order, press Use as vehicle photo under a picture that is already there: a file on the Files tab, an image on a service line, or a photo on the inspection. The picture is copied to the car, so removing it from the order later does not take it off the card, and removing the car's photo does not take it off the order. Cards show the car's newest photo; to pick a different one, press Use this photo in the car's photo gallery. Compact shows no photos, and Photo shows every car at a larger size, with an outline of the body shape where there is no photo.

Everybody's work at once

Group by sits beside Card view, both behind the sliders button next to New estimate, and has two answers. Stages is the board you already know: one column per lane, every car in one of them. Technician keeps those same columns and draws a row for each person who can hold a car, so you can compare four people's mornings without pressing anything. It is a layout, not a filter — no car is hidden by it, and every car is in exactly one row. Rows are in name order with unassigned cars at the top, and each row says how many cars it holds. The choice is saved on your membership, like Card view.

The same panel holds a Workflow panel switch. The board opens without the side panel that other workflow screens show, because Board and Quotes are already on the main rail and the lanes need the width. Press the switch and the panel comes back beside the board for you, on this browser; press it again to put it away. Nobody else's board changes.

A row is whoever HOLDS the car — the same person whose initials the card carries, and the same person the card's Assign list opens on. Cars nobody holds sit in the Unassigned row, which is the word those cards already print on themselves.

Search, and one Filters control with a count

Search orders… beside the view tabs finds a card by what it says — its order or invoice number, customer, vehicle, VIN, plate (with or without its dash or space) or a service on it — and keeps every other filter while it does. When your role can see customers' phone numbers it finds the customer's phone too, typed with or without its dashes and brackets. Clear the search puts the rest of the board back. Every way of narrowing the board is behind one Filters control above the lanes: advisor, technician, customer tag, tag colour, order label, bay, waiting-or-drop-off, how long a car has been here, paid state (Paid or Unpaid, for people who may see money) authorization state (Authorized or Awaiting authorization), order type (Estimate, Repair order or Invoice), inspection (No inspections, Not yet completed or Completed) and when the order was created (Today, This week, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, or a Custom range of dates in your shop's calendar). The control carries the number of lenses that are switched on, so a narrowed board always says it is narrowed, and it opens itself whenever any of them is set — press a chip and the whole set stays in front of you, with each option's live count, until you clear it. Pressing a card or anywhere else on the board leaves it open; press Filters again, or Escape, to put it away. Each chip's number is the board that pressing it produces, and a facet a shop has nothing to filter by draws no row at all. The customer tags on offer are the ones the cars on the board are actually carrying, the same way the bay chips name only bays with a car in them: a tag none of today's work wears would only ever produce an empty board, so it waits until a car wearing it comes in.

Saved filters

Once any filter is on, type a name beside Save filters at the top of the Filters panel and press it: the set is saved for you, and its name appears under Saved filters as a chip that puts the same filters back in one press, even with scripting off. Saving under a name you already use replaces that set. You can keep up to 12; the × beside a name deletes it. Saved filters are yours alone — nobody else's board changes.

Customize cards

Behind the sliders button, open Customize cards to choose what your cards show: services, labels, vehicle, license plate, VIN, customer, phone, technicians, labor hours, promised time, service writer, age, messages, appointment, inspection checklist, parts on order, waiting reason, authorization status, paid or unpaid, and amount. A sample card above the boxes changes as you tick them. Press Save to keep your choice, or Reset to default to go back to the card every shop starts with, which shows everything except technicians. It changes your cards only, and it never shows you anything your role cannot already see — a hidden amount or phone number is still hidden for a role without access.

A board showing one lane

On the dashboard, each lane name in the workflow card is a link, and following it opens the board narrowed to that lane. It is a lens for that visit only: the board shows a chip reading the lane's name with a cross after it, and clearing it puts the whole board back. Nothing about how your board opens next time is changed, which the card says as well — Each lane opens the board narrowed to it, for that visit only — your saved view does not change.

A link like that beats your own saved view, on purpose: asking to see the three cars in Complete and getting an empty board because you hid that lane last Tuesday would be Torqix arguing with you. When the lane you followed is one you hide, the board says exactly that — This link is showing a lane your saved view hides. Your saved view has not changed — clear the lane and it is hidden again. Otherwise it says the lane came from a link rather than from your saved view.

The lane rides along with everything else in the address, so changing Card view, choosing an advisor or hiding another lane while you are in it does not throw it away.

Read the lane header before the cards

Every stage header is one row: the stage's name, the count of its visible cards in a small pill, and the lane's ⋯ menu. The In Progress lane carries a wrench and the Invoiced lane a dollar sign. When the shop has set a limit for the lane, the pill reads the count against it, such as 5 / 4, and turns red once the lane is over it. Open the ⋯ menu to read the rest under This lane: the oldest card's age, how many are late, waiting on parts, waiting on approval, waiting on the customer, or unpaid, and the lane's open value. A line appears only when it has something to say. Money appears only for a role allowed to read it; the board says when figures were withheld instead of showing a false zero.

At the foot of the sliders panel, one quiet line reads the board as it stands under your current filters: cars in work (Approved, In Progress and Quality Check), cars complete — so the two add up to the cars in the building, and a Complete car is never counted twice — and, for a role allowed to read money, the open value. The shop-wide counts are on the dashboard's Workflow status card. Under that line, the Efficiency gauge is today's billed labor hours divided by closed job-punch hours on the shop's own clock; until both facts exist it says the reading is unknown instead of showing zero.

The two finished stages carry one extra button: a small clock beside the count. Work that is finished can no longer be late — there is nothing left to forecast — so Complete and Invoiced instead say how many of their repair orders were opened a while ago, at the oldest of the age thresholds that still has cars in it. Point at the clock, or listen to its name, to read it — 2 sitting 7+ days, and it turns red at fourteen days. Press it and the board filters to exactly those cars, which is the same age filter in the toolbar. Nothing shows when nothing has been sitting.

There is no Parts hold stage any more. Waiting on a part is why work is stuck, not where the work is, so the card stays in its real stage with a Waiting on parts flag — a small hourglass in the card's footer, named with those words. The lane's ⋯ menu counts that flag where the car actually sits.

A long lane fills as you scroll

A lane shows its first 30 cards. Scroll to the end of it and the next 30 appear, or press the Show more row at the foot of the lane, which also says how many cards are not shown yet. The count in the lane's header, the facts in its ⋯ menu and the search always cover the whole lane, not just the cards drawn so far. A lane you open on its own — from the dashboard, or from Show more when the page has not finished loading — shows every card in it. Come back from an order with your browser's Back button, or with the order's Close, and the board is where you left it: the same filters and search, scrolled and opened as far as you had them, with the keyboard back on the card you opened.

On a phone the header is one row: the search box, Filters (a funnel, with the count of lenses that are on), New estimate and the sliders button. The three view tabs are at the top of the sliders panel there, above Card view, so the lanes start near the top of the screen.

The two lines about work filed elsewhere

Between the view tabs and the filters are up to two quiet sentences, each about something going stale on another screen, each with the way there in the middle of it. One counts the cold estimates filed under Follow-ups, which come back to the board on any new activity. The other counts purchase orders still in draft after a week — 3 draft purchase orders older than 7 days are waiting in Purchasing. A draft is an order nobody has placed. Purchasing is the link, and it opens the purchase order list already narrowed to drafts.

Neither line is drawn when its number is zero. A standing notice about nothing is a notice people learn to skip, so an absent line means there is nothing to chase — and the figure is the same one the parts room counts, not a second one computed here.

Work from a card

Press anywhere on a card to open the order — the picture, the number, the title, the car, the customer or the money. A card reads top to bottom: the car's picture when it has one, the order number — with a small age chip such as 5d once the car has been in three days or more — the first service and how many more, then the vehicle (with a dot of its paint colour when the colour is on file), VIN, customer, phone, hours sold, and a thin bar for how much of the work is done; point at the bar for the hours done of the hours sold. A promised time gets its own line only when the customer has been promised one, with Late or At risk beside it when the promise is in trouble. A booked car whose appointment names a bay, or whose customer is waiting in the lobby, gets a line saying so — Customer waiting, then the bay — the same facts the Bay and Customer filters narrow by. Along the bottom, small icons Message the customer, Schedule the car and open the inspection checklist; each is darker, with a count, when there is something behind it. The message icon opens the conversation beside the board, about that order, so the message you send is tagged with it and closing the conversation leaves you where you were. On the right a tick means every service the customer has not turned down is approved, Fully Paid means settled, and an amount still owed shows beside the word Unpaid. Press the card's ⋯ for Open, Print, Labels, a callable phone number, a Move to section, waiting flags, Assign and, once the order's invoice is paid in full, Archive & close. Controls that your role or the ticket's state cannot use are not offered. The menu closes when you choose something in it, press outside it or press Escape. If you press ⋯ before the page has finished loading, the menu shows Open and More actions, which opens the same board with that card's whole menu open.

Labels opens a list of every label the shop has defined, with a box beside each one. The quiet + Add under a card's title opens the same list right there, under the + Add, and it stays open while you tick, so one car can take two labels in two presses; press outside it or Escape to close it. Tick a box to put that label on the order and untick it to take it off; the card's label chips change as soon as the board comes back, and you stay on the board. A label the shop has retired still shows, ticked, on an order that carries it, so it can come off, but it cannot be put back on. New labels are defined in Shop settings, or from the order itself. Print opens the order's print page, the same one its own Print button opens. Archive & close is the order's own Archive & Close: it takes a paid order off the board by closing it, and it refuses — leaving the card where it was — if any approved work has not been billed or any money is still owed.

Each lane has its own ⋯ menu. From there you can hide that column, choose its sort order and read the lane limit set for the whole shop. Hiding and sorting affect only your view; the shop-wide limit is changed in Shop settings.

Handing a car to somebody is one control: the panel names who has it, and under that a list of people with Assign beside it. The list opens on whoever has the car now, so it is also the answer to "whose is this"; choosing Nobody and pressing Assign takes it off them. It is offered on the three stages where dispatch is the question — Approved, In Progress and Quality Check — and only to a role that may drive the ticket.