Car repair businesses: bookings, quotes and invoices in one place

Most garages run from three or four places at once. Bookings sit in one app, quotes live on a notepad by the till or in a spreadsheet, invoices go out from a separate tool, and the bank feed gets checked on a Friday evening if there is time.

The problem

You know the work. The difficulty is the paperwork around it. A customer rings to book a service, you write it in the diary, and then you realise you do not have their mobile number on file. The reminder for their next service never goes out because it lives in someone's head. A quote is agreed on the phone, the parts price moves, and when the invoice is sent nobody can say which version the customer approved.

Then there is the money. Payments arrive by card, bank transfer and cash. Matching each one to the right job means scrolling through the bank statement and guessing. At month end you hand your accountant a pile of half-matched figures and pay for the time it takes them to sort it out.

The real cost is switching between tools. Each one has its own login, its own customer list and its own monthly charge. Take on a second mechanic or an apprentice and the per-user fees start to add up, so people keep working around the system instead of through it.

How it works

BizHub365 keeps the customer record, the booking diary, quotes, invoices and payments in one system. A customer's history sits on one record: the vehicle details you have noted, previous jobs, notes and the invoices that went with them. Tags let you group customers, so you can pull up the people who are due a service this month.

The booking diary syncs with Google and Microsoft calendars through iCal, so your team can see their day on the calendar they already use. You set your opening hours and holiday closures, so customers only see slots you actually have. Customers can also book themselves in through self-booking, which means fewer calls while you have a car on the ramp.

Quotes and invoices use the same customer and job details, so you are not retyping a parts list from one document into another. If a job changes after an invoice has gone out, you issue a credit note rather than editing a figure the customer has already seen. Expenses such as parts purchases can be recorded in the same system, which gives you a clearer picture of what each job actually earned.

For getting paid, you import your bank feed and BizHub365 uses smart matching to suggest which incoming payments belong to which open invoices. You check the suggestions and confirm them. Anything that does not match stays visible on the list, so it does not quietly disappear into a pile you forget about.

Your accountant or bookkeeper can work from the same figures. Rather than sending you a spreadsheet of exports each month and asking for missing receipts, they can look at the live records. You still decide what gets sent and when, but the questions at year end should be fewer.

One BizHub365 One subscription covers the whole business, with unlimited team members and no per-user fees. Add the apprentice or the weekend cover and the cost stays the same.

Getting started

Start with the customers you see most often. Import the list you already have, or add people as they come through the door, and tag the regulars who are due a service. Set your opening hours and holiday closures before you open online booking to customers, so the diary is right from the first day.

Next, connect the diary sync to the calendar your team already uses. Compare one week of bookings in BizHub365 with what is on paper or in your old app. Fix the gaps now, while the old system is still there as a backup.

Then run one real job from start to finish: the booking, the quote, the customer's acceptance, the invoice, the payment and the bank match. It takes an afternoon, and it shows you where your routine differs from how the software expects things to work. Those are the places to adjust, either in your process or in the settings.

BizHub365 has a 14-day free trial. You add a card to start, and if you cancel before the trial ends you are not charged. After the trial, BizHub365 One is £29 a month. If you want to see how bookings, quotes and payments fit together in your own workshop, start your free 14-day trial and run one real job through it before you decide.

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