Workshop management with Garage Hive

Workshop Management with Garage Hive

Review

After using another system for quite some time and becoming progressively more frustrated at the lack of support and speed of change, we decided to move to Garage Hive. The speed of development, the support and the reporting are second to none. The system is fantastic to use, it has a proper working schedule and is flexible enough to do exactly what you need to do with it. Couldn't recommend it more if I tried.

Neil Fitch

Home Screen

Garage Hive’s features and functions are all designed to be as simple as possible to use whilst offering the right amount of information and functionality on each screen. The home screen displays all the required KPIs to keep a workshop moving.

Clean

Garage Hive has a simple clean design, each screen is tailored to provide maximum information to the user without feeling cluttered.

Intuitive

Access all the important areas of the system directly from the home screen as you would expect. Jobsheets, estimates, vehicle inspections and the schedule are all just one click away.

Process Driven

Garage Hive uses tiles to prompt the user to complete important tasks such as jobsheets waiting for processing or health checks waiting to be sold to the customer.

Schedule and bookings

In Garage Hive the schedule is at the heart of running the workshops, all the information required to make decisions on bookings and workloads is available from the schedule screen. Staff holidays and sickness can also be seen directly on the schedule.

To see how the schedule works, watch this – video

Interactive

The schedule is drag and drop and touch screen enabled. Jobsheets can be accessed directly from the schedule screen. Jobs can be moved, extended or removed – moving a job on the schedule will update the relevant technicians’ applications. Bookings can be made directly from the schedule page.

Data Rich

When a technician makes an update to a jobsheet or finishes the job, the colour of the allocation on the schedule will change. When a technician starts a break or lunch, a new allocation will be created on the schedule – this allows the workshop controller to see which staff are available.

Live

The schedule is used to control the work and bookings in your workshop. The data displayed in the schedule is live and will update instantly, even if other people are interacting with the schedule. Creating a new allocation will instantly appear on the relevant technicians application.

Mobile Application

Any Device

Garage Hive can be logged into on any PC, laptop or tablet either Windows, Android or Apple. The application is fully responsive on any device.

Field Operations

The application only requires an internet or network connection to work. This makes Garage Hive perfectly suitable for field operations, such as mobile tyre fitting.

Instant

Garage Hive’s application will update with a new job for the technician the minute they are assigned via the schedule. Technicians can also leave comments, check stock and prices all from the app.

TCard System

Drag and Drop

The TCard system is designed to give a very quick overview of your workshops’ current status. Its “drag and drop” functionality allows for quick and easy updating. The TCard system also supports touch screens.

Automated

As your day progresses the TCard system will automatically keep up to date. For example, when a technician starts a job the job will move from the pending jobs TCard to the relevant technician’s TCard.

Flexible

TCards can be customised to suit your workshops’ needs. You can create as many TCards as you require and both colours and names can be changed for each TCard.

Jobsheets

Jobsheets are very easy to create in Garage Hive, it’s a simple process designed to be quick when under pressure taking bookings face to face or on the phone. When adding more details to the job or processing the jobsheet ready to invoice there are lots of features you can take advantage of.

To see how to create a job sheet watch this – video

VRM lookup
Customer recall
Post lookup
Technical Repair times (Autodata)
Service Schedules (Autodata)
Oil & Lubricants (Autodata)
Labour catalogues
Parts and Item catalogues
Technician time registration
Name and time-stamped comments
Split documents/jobsheets
Service Advisor document assignment
Attach images and PDFs to jobsheets

Technician labour allocation
Key tag functionality
Create purchase orders directly from the jobsheet
Vehicle work history
Access MOT history
MOT expiry notifications
Email and SMS functionality
Click-to-call functionality
GDPR data capture forms
Record payments and deposit
TCard Status allocation
Marketing Channel records

Estimates

Creating estimates is simple, a vehicle registration and customer name are all that’s required.

You have access to many of the same features available in a jobsheet making building and issuing a quote a simple task.

VRM look up
Customer recall
Post look up
Technical Repair times (Autodata)
Service Schedules (Autodata)
Oil & Lubricants (Autodata)
Labour catalogues
Service Advisor document assignment

Parts and Item catalogues
Create purchase orders directly from the quote
Recall previous quotes
Email and SMS functionality
Convert or add to existing jobsheet
Vehicle work history
Access MOT history
MOT expiry notifications

Checklists and VHC

Checklists and vehicle health checks are easy to create in Garage Hive. Attach a checklist to any jobsheet to allow the technician to carry out a vehicle health check on their device.

Once completed the service advisor or workshop controller will get a notification that a checklist is awaiting approval. This notification will be visible from the home screen displayed on the tiles. The main features of checklists are:

Ability to create custom checklists
Attach directly to jobsheets
Add images and comments
Email checklists over to customers
Convert Vehicle Inspections to Vehicle Inspection Estimates ready for upselling

Vehicle Inspection Estimates

Vehicle Inspection in Garage Hive allow for a perfect sales process. Once a checklist has been confirmed and converted to a Vehicle Inspection Estimate (VI Estimate), your parts department can be notified that a VI Estimate is awaiting parts information. Once parts are entered, the VI Estimate can be passed to the correct department for further processing. Once the customer has been contacted and has approved the identified work it can be copied directly to the jobsheet.

VI Estimates have many great features including:

Online customer authorisation
Reminders can be set for non-authorised work
Ability to pass VI Estimates between departments
All previous VI Estimates can be easily accessed
The price calculator easily allows you to calculate certain parts or labour of a customers entire bill
Ability to copy all authorised lines directly to the jobsheet
Add finance plans

Items, Inventory and Catalogues

Items

Create your own items, descriptions and categories. Import your suppliers part numbers using the nonstock items functionality. Create minimum and maximum stock levels and much more..

Multi-location stock management
Stock Transfers
Stock pricing rules such as FIFO and LIFO
Search items directly from jobsheets and quotes
Aged stock reports by branch, supplier and category

Catalogues

Garage Hive allows you to enter your default labour lines, labour categories and external services catalogues. Service packages can be created to automatically populate jobsheets with labour lines, items and external services for products such as fixed priced servicing.

Some features of catalogues are:

Create custom labour lines and prices
Group labour lines into categories for reporting
External services
Custom service packages

Second Generation Online booking

Frontend simplicity and backend intelligence is the philosophy behind 2nd generation Online Booking from Garage Hive

Works with any website
Responsive and mobile-friendly
Completely integrated
Automated SMS and Email confirmations
Detailed Power BI reports
Automated Scheduling
Automated Jobsheet creation
Automated Customer matching

Learn more about Online Booking

Purchase Orders & Return Orders

Ordering and returning parts has been
made simple with Garage Hive

Create purchase orders without the part number
Create purchase orders directly from a jobsheet
Easily view outstanding purchase orders
Updating purchase orders with the part numbers will automatically update the relevant jobsheets
Processed purchase orders are posted directly to the purchase ledger
Monitor outstanding credit notes
Easily maintain correct stock levels

Multi-location

Garage Hive has been built from the ground up
with multi-location workshops in mind.

The powerful features are as follows:

Location and department based schedules and bookings
Ability to create bookings for branches from head office
Location based reporting and cost allocation
Central customer and vendor database
Ability to switch between locations immediately
Support for relief staff available at multiple locations
Multiple stock locations and inter-company stock tranfers
Centralised accountancy system
Centralised vehicle and service history
Powerful multi-location reporting tools including technician reporting
Easy to add additional locations
Reduces cost for expansions

Find out more

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