Bringing order to the everyday workshop rush

The phone is ringing, the door buzzes as another customer walks in with a cylinder head to be quoted on, and a third customer is at the counter to collect a job but has forgotten the job number. Meanwhile somebody still has to issue job cards, send quotes, take payments and keep every job moving through the workshop.

Autolly is engineering workshop management software built for that front desk. It puts the jobs, the quotes, the job numbers, the payments and the invoices in one place, so the busy hour is a matter of looking things up rather than hunting for them.

Here is what it does and what your business gets from it.

Find any job in seconds

The customer who arrives without his paperwork is a small interruption that costs two people their morning, because somebody has to work backwards from a surname and a vague description of a part.

In Autolly you find the job from whatever the customer can give you. His name, the company he works for, the registration, the component, or the job number if he has it. The record comes up with the history attached: what was quoted, what was approved, what was done, what it cost, whether it has been paid and whether it is ready to go out.

Nobody walks to the back. Nobody pages through a job card book with three cards missing because they are out on the floor.

Quote at the counter while the phone is ringing

You open a job from your own template, the one you built for cylinder heads with the fields your shop actually fills in, rather than a generic form with boxes that mean something else. The job number is issued automatically from your own sequence, so it is right the first time and no two jobs share one.

The quote goes out from that same record. The customer leaves with a job number and a price instead of a promise that someone will phone him back, which is the difference between a job you have won and a job that is still shopping around.

When an assessment changes the price, the revised quote goes to the customer for approval as a link he can sign on his phone, and the answer is stored on the job. Three weeks later nobody is relying on their memory of a phone call.

The workshop sees what the front desk booked

Order at the counter is worth nothing if the workshop does not know what has landed. Work can be assigned to the person who is going to do it, and it appears on a shop-floor screen with the tasks listed out. Each one is ticked off as it is finished, and the job records who completed it and when.

So the receptionist answers the customer on the phone while he is still on the line, instead of putting him on hold and walking through to ask. The dashboard shows what is open, what is in progress and what is ready for collection.

Nothing gets captured twice

The invoice is generated from the job. Every piece of work and every part is already priced on the record, so nobody sits down at five o'clock and types the day into a separate system a second time. Invoice numbers come off your own sequence, payments are captured against the job so the balance is visible on the record, and one tap opens WhatsApp with the invoice ready to send.

You get back the better part of an hour a day at the front desk, and you close the gap where work done at the bench quietly fails to reach the invoice.

The jobs that are not a car

Plenty of workshop jobs do not fit the arrive, service, leave shape that generic automotive software assumes.

A component can be booked in on its own, against a customer, with no registration attached. You build your own job types for the work you actually take in, with your own fields on them. And for the other workshops who send you work on account, Autolly keeps their payment terms and payment history and produces statements with the balance aged, so the trade side gets billed and chased properly instead of drifting.

Common questions

Is Autolly only for engineering workshops? No. It suits engineering workshops, machine shops, mechanical workshops and general automotive businesses, because you build your own job types rather than working around a fixed form.

Can I book in a component with no vehicle? Yes. A head, a block or a crank can be booked in against a customer on its own, with no registration.

Can more than one person work in it at the same time? Yes. The front desk, the office and the workshop screen all work off the same live record, with roles controlling who can see and do what.

Can I keep my own job card layout? Yes. You build your own job types and put your own fields on them, rather than being handed a fixed form.

Have a look

Autolly: your workshop organised, your jobs under control, your front desk running like a dream.

If that is the front counter you want, request early access and we will show you how it handles the jobs that come through your door. There is more on the South African side of it, including how it works through load-shedding, in workshop management software for South African workshops.