Schedule the bays and hoists

A booking diary tells you how many cars are coming. It does not tell you whether you have anywhere to put them. Vehicles, then Bays, is the shop floor view.

What it costs

Workshop Bay Scheduler, 29 dollars a month from the App Marketplace. Without it, the page shows what the app does rather than your bays.

Register the bays

Add every place a car can sit: hoists, pits, wash bays, yard slots. For each one record:

• a name, the one your team already uses out loud, such as Bay 1 or Front hoist
• a type
• a capacity in kg where it matters, so nobody puts a dual cab on a two tonne hoist
• a default technician, if a bay is usually one person's
• a sort order, so the board reads left to right the way the shop is laid out
• notes, such as when the hoist is next due for service

Put work on them

Create an assignment with the bay, a short label, the vehicle rego, the technician, the date, a start and end time, a status of scheduled, in progress or done, and notes.

The label is what everyone reads on the board, so make it useful. "Smith, service plus brakes" beats a job number.

The three views

• Schedule is the day view: every bay down the side, the day across the top. This is where you plan tomorrow.
• Dispatch is built for a phone. It is the screen the service manager holds while walking the floor, and the one to open when someone asks what is in Bay 3.
• Heatmap is the weekly utilisation view. Its job is to show you the dead hours: the Tuesday afternoons and the Friday mornings where a bay sits empty every single week. That is where a capped-price offer or a fleet block booking goes. See set up the capped-price service menu.

Getting it adopted

The common failure is registering ten bays and then never assigning anything, so the board stays empty and everyone goes back to the whiteboard. Start with one bay and one day. If the board is right for one day, it will be right for a week.

If your subscription lapses

Bays and assignments you have already created stay readable, and existing assignments stay workable. Only creating a new bay or assignment refuses. See which workshop apps are paid.