Documentation

Getting started

Your first login, the setup wizard, and adding your first booking.

Garage Pro is a web app — there's nothing to install. Open garagepro.me/app in any browser, on any device, and you're in.

Signing in

There are two login levels:

• Workshop account — the owner's email + password (or Google sign-in). This is the "master key" used once to set up the workshop and manage settings.
• Worker PIN — day-to-day staff sign in with a short PIN tied to their name and role, from the same shared login screen. No email or password to remember on the floor.

First run

1. Sign in for the first time and Garage Pro drops you straight into the Setup Wizard — see the next section.
2. Once setup is done, you land on the Dashboard: today's bookings, bay status, and any pending notifications.
3. Add your first Appointment (or a walk-in), check the vehicle in, and open a Job Card — that's the core loop the rest of the app builds on.

Roles & permissions

Owner, Manager, Service Advisor, Floor Manager, Parts, Mechanic — and how to build your own custom role.

Every worker has exactly one role, and each role has its own default set of tabs and actions. This is what keeps a mechanic from accidentally editing an invoice, or a receptionist from touching inventory.

Built-in roles

• Owner / Manager — full access to everything, including Settings and role permissions. Owners can't be demoted or removed by anyone else, so a workshop can never accidentally lock itself out.
• Service Advisor — owns customer-facing work: estimates, sending them for approval, invoicing, and all WhatsApp/email sends.
• Floor Manager — owns the shop floor: assigning technicians, bay moves, quality control sign-off.
• Parts — owns inventory and parts requests: pricing, ordering, receiving stock. Gets Job Cards access by default too, so they can see VIN/parts context without extra setup.
• Mechanic (worker) — sees only the jobs assigned to them, plus the inspection checklist. No estimate or pricing access.
• Receptionist — front-desk basics: bookings and check-in.

Custom roles

From Settings → Role Permissions, an Owner/Manager can add a custom role name and tick exactly which tabs it can see — useful for a titled position (e.g. "Senior Technician") that needs slightly different access than the defaults.

Setup wizard

Workshop info, bays, departments, and your first team members.

Shown once, automatically, the first time a new workshop account signs in. It walks through everything Garage Pro needs before the floor can start using it:

1. Workshop info — name, address, state, GST number and logo. This feeds every invoice and email footer.
2. Bays — how many service bays you have and their types (e.g. general, alignment, wash) — this is what powers the live bay-status board.
3. Departments — Mechanical, Electrical, Body Shop, etc. Each has its own list of service types, editable later from Settings.
4. Team members — add your first workers, assign a role to each, and a PIN is generated for them to sign in with.

Every field here can be changed later from Settings — the wizard just gets you to a usable starting point fast.

Bookings & appointments

Scheduling, walk-ins, check-in, and the calendar view.

Every vehicle's visit starts life as an appointment — whether it was booked ahead of time or just walked in off the street.

Creating one

• Scheduled — pick a customer (or add a new one), the vehicle, a service type, and a date/time range. Garage Pro warns you if it conflicts with something already booked.
• Walk-in — either type the details straight in, or scan the vehicle's QR code (if it's been to the workshop before, or any workshop on the network) to auto-fill the customer and car.
• Quick booking — a shorter form for when you just need a plate, name and time fast.

Check-in

When the car physically arrives, checking in the appointment marks it "Arrived" and is the trigger a Service Advisor uses to Create Job Card — which also runs a quick vehicle-intake checklist (spare wheel, tools, fuel level, existing damage) while the customer is still standing there.

Calendar view

The Appointments tab has a calendar view alongside the list, so you can see a day or week's bookings at a glance instead of scrolling a table.

Job cards

The accordion sections, status flow, and who does what at each stage.

The job card is the single record that follows a car from drop-off to hand-back. It's organised into collapsible sections — Vehicle intake, Estimate, Parts, Charges, Inspection, Photos, Insurance — with a jump-bar at the top so you can get to any of them without endless scrolling.

Vehicle intake & the damage diagram

Right after a job card is created, the Service Advisor runs a short intake check with the customer still standing there: what's in the car (spare wheel, tool kit, documents, floor mats…), the fuel level, and any pre-existing damage.

• Damage is marked by tapping a car diagram rather than typed as free text — each tap drops a numbered pin you label as a scratch, dent, crack, rust or missing part, with an optional note. Tap a pin again to edit or remove it.
• The pins and the checklist are shown back read-only in the job card's Vehicle intake section, so nothing captured at drop-off gets buried.
• The same diagram is shown to the customer on the estimate-approval page and the Track page — so damage is agreed before work starts, rather than argued about at handover.

The status flow

Each transition notifies whoever needs to act next — the Floor Manager when a job needs a technician, the assigned mechanic the moment they're handed a car, Parts once it's inspected, the Service Advisor once QC passes. You very rarely need to go looking for what to do next; the notification finds you.

Moving several cars at once

When the same thing happens to a batch of cars — everything on the ramp passing QC, five jobs going out for wash — tick the checkbox on each row in the Job Cards list and set the new status once for all of them. Selection only ever covers rows you can currently see, so a filter or search can't sweep in a car you didn't mean to touch. Bulk moves skip the per-job staff notifications (twelve at once would just bury the team) but still push each car's new status to the customer's tracking page. Available to Service Advisors, Floor Managers and Owner/Manager.

Printing a paper job card

The Print job card button produces an A4 sheet built for the shop floor rather than a screenshot of the app: plate, customer and vehicle details, the numbered customer complaints, the intake checklist and damage diagram, then ruled blank space for the technician's own findings and three signature lines (technician, quality check, customer). Useful for workshops that still want paper on the windscreen, and for handing something physical to a customer.

Sending a WhatsApp update anytime

A Service Advisor can open the WhatsApp update button on any job card and send a pickup-time reminder, a "ready for pickup" message, the invoice, or a fully custom message — independent of the automatic status-based sends (see Email & WhatsApp updates).

Digital vehicle inspection

Running the checklist, flagging conditions, and attaching photos.

The Inspection section of a job card is a structured checklist — tyres, brakes, fluids, lights, and whatever else your workshop wants covered — that the assigned worker or Floor Manager fills in.

• Each item gets a condition: good, fair, or needs replacing.
• Anything flagged fair or replace shows up as an inspection-flag count right on the job card summary, so nothing quietly gets missed before the estimate goes out.
• A photo can be attached to any item — handy evidence for both the customer conversation and an insurance claim.
• A flagged item can be pushed straight into the Estimate section as a suggested part or service, instead of re-typing it.

Estimates & approvals

Pricing a job, sending the link, and what the customer sees.

The Estimate section is quote-only — nothing here touches your actual stock until the customer approves and the repair is billed for real.

Building the estimate

• Add parts from inventory (already-priced stock items), from a priced parts request (something Parts had to source specially), or as a plain manual line.
• Add labour/service lines the same way.
• When it's ready, press Done — this is the one moment a notification fires (to the Service Advisor and the assigned worker), rather than pinging someone every time a single line is added.

Concerns — separate estimates within one job

Instead of one estimate covering the whole job, you can break it into concerns — e.g. "AC not cooling" and "brake pads worn" on the same car — each with its own line items, its own assigned mechanic(s), and its own approval link. Different concerns can go to different mechanics, and the same mechanic can be assigned to more than one. Tick several concerns and send them combined into a single link instead, if you'd rather the customer see everything at once.

Sending it to the customer

The Service Advisor sends a link the customer opens on their own phone — no login — by email, or shares it directly. They see each line item and can approve or reject it individually, then submit their decision. That comes straight back to the workshop: a full approval moves the job to Estimate Approved, a partial approval flags exactly which lines were rejected, and a full rejection routes the car back to the Floor Manager to reassemble and release without repair. An estimate can still be sent even after the job has moved to In Progress — useful when a mechanic finds something extra mid-repair.

Every line shows its price excluding GST, the GST amount, and the final inclusive price — so the customer can see exactly what tax they're paying on each part and each labour line, not just one lump figure at the bottom. The total at the bottom is the GST-inclusive sum of every part on the estimate, combined. They can also download the whole quote as a printable PDF, and if damage was pinned at intake, the diagram appears on the same page.

Changing a decision later

A rejected item isn't a dead end — it stays visible on the same link (not hidden), clearly marked as declined, with Approve still available. The customer can reopen their link at any time and flip a rejection into an approval; the workshop is notified again the moment they resubmit. The link only stops being editable once every item on it is either approved or dropped.

Parts & inventory

Requesting, pricing, ordering, and stock deduction.

Parts requests

When a worker needs a part that isn't already staged on the job, they submit a parts request. The Parts department sees every open request, prices it, and either fulfils it from stock or marks it Ordered/Received — with the requesting worker notified as it moves.

Inventory

• Every item carries a cost price and MRP/sell price, plus an optional shelf location and barcode.
• Billing a part on a job's actual charges automatically deducts it from stock — no separate "update inventory" step to remember.
• Scan a part's barcode with your phone camera to look it up or add it to a job in one tap.
• Low-stock alerts email the workshop when an item runs low, so restocking doesn't happen after you've already run out.

Reserved stock

A part promised on an open estimate isn't sold yet, but it isn't really free either. Inventory shows both numbers — 3 reserved · 7 free — counting every part sitting on a live estimate that hasn't been billed or rejected. When you're building an estimate from inventory, the picker warns you the same way (2 free of 3 — 1 reserved elsewhere), so you don't quote a part that's already spoken for on another car.

Invoicing & payments

Generating GST invoices, partial payments, and checkout.

Once a job's actual parts and charges are in, generating the invoice produces a proper GST-ready PDF — GST/HSN-SAC codes, a discount breakdown, and the amount in words — numbered sequentially (e.g. INV-000123) so nothing duplicates or skips.

Checkout

• Record the payment as cash, card, UPI, bank transfer or cheque — or split it as a partial payment with a balance still outstanding.
• If Pickup OTP is switched on (Settings → Workflow extras), checkout won't release the car until the customer reads out the 4-digit code that was emailed to them. Owner/Manager can override with a blank field for walk-in edge cases.
• Checking out fires the "thank you" message to the customer, containing a link to view and download the invoice plus a feedback link.

Chasing an unpaid invoice

Any invoice that isn't fully paid gets a Chase button. It asks for the outstanding balance only — a customer who has already part-paid is never asked for the full amount again — and sends the reminder by WhatsApp or email, with the invoice link included. Whichever channel has no contact details on file is greyed out rather than silently failing.

Email & WhatsApp updates

What sends automatically, what's manual, and how to customise the templates.

Email

Turned on in Settings → Customer Email Notifications, with a template style to pick from and a per-event on/off toggle. Automatic triggers: booking confirmed, estimate ready, customer approved, work started, work complete, ready for pickup, thank-you, and invoice ready.

WhatsApp — deliberately limited to 4 moments

Unlike email, WhatsApp only prompts automatically at points a customer genuinely expects to hear from you — anything more starts to feel spammy:

• Booking confirmed — the moment an appointment is created or rescheduled.
• Booking reminder — a manual "Reminder" button on upcoming appointments; there's no automatic scheduler for this yet.
• Pickup time allotted — when the Service Advisor confirms a pickup date/time with the customer.
• Thank-you + invoice — one combined message at checkout, with the invoice link and a feedback link.

Beyond those four, a Service Advisor can always send a WhatsApp update whenever they want from a job card's "WhatsApp update" button — pickup time, ready-for-pickup, the invoice, a payment reminder, or a fully custom message.

Daily summaries to the workshop's own inbox

The morning briefing and the end-of-day summary already appear as in-app notifications. Tick Email me the daily summaries (Settings → Workflow extras, or the last step of the setup wizard) and the same two digests are also emailed to the workshop address — so an owner who isn't on the floor gets the day's bookings, pending jobs and closing numbers without opening the app. The in-app versions carry on regardless.

Internal chat

New messages in the team chat pop up as a banner in the corner the same way notifications do, so a message doesn't sit unread just because nobody happened to be looking at the Messages tab. Tapping the banner opens the conversation; your own messages never banner back at you.

Track Repair page

The public status page your customers use to check progress.

A public page (garagepro.me/track.html) where a customer picks their workshop, enters either their plate number or booking number, and sees the car's live status plus a short history of every status change with a relative "X minutes/hours ago" timestamp.

• Every email and WhatsApp update that includes a track/status link auto-fills the plate or booking number, so the customer lands straight on their car's status — no typing required.
• If damage was marked on the car at drop-off, the page shows that diagram read-only, so the customer can see exactly what was already noted when they handed the vehicle over.
• The pickup OTP is never shown here. It's emailed straight to the customer — the tracking link on its own can't reveal it.

Cuts the "is it done yet?" phone calls to close to zero.

Customer feedback

Where feedback links go out, and where responses land — split between the Service Advisor and the workshop.

Every "thank-you + invoice" message at checkout — email and WhatsApp — includes a one-time feedback link. The customer opens it (no login) and rates two things separately: their Service Advisor — one star rating per criterion (Helpfulness, Communication, Professionalism, Timeliness by default, editable in Settings → Feedback criteria) plus an optional written review — and the workshop overall, a single star rating and comment. The Service Advisor section only appears if the job actually had one assigned (i.e. an estimate was sent).

Who sees what

• Owner / Manager see everything: the full workshop rating and every review, plus every Service Advisor's feedback grouped and sorted by average rating.
• Each Service Advisor sees only their own reviews and per-criterion averages — not the workshop's overall rating, and not any other advisor's feedback.

Insurance claims

Tracking a claim end to end and generating the report.

Mark a job as an insurance case from its Insurance section, and it carries its own set of fields alongside the normal repair workflow:

• Insurer name, claim number, and policy number
• Surveyor name and approval status (Pending / Approved / Partial / Rejected)
• Approved amount, plus free-text notes

When it's time to submit to the insurer, generate a one-click PDF report that pulls in the job's photos and inspection findings — built for exactly this purpose, alongside the normal customer invoice.

Multi-branch chains

Linking branches and reading the roll-up dashboard.

On the Chain plan, each branch keeps its own independent login and day-to-day data — its own bays, jobs, and workers — but is linked to a parent account.

• A branch's subscription inherits from its chain parent, so you manage billing once at the top instead of per-location.
• The parent account gets a roll-up dashboard: bays, revenue, and jobs across every branch in one view, so you can compare locations at a glance without logging into each one separately.
• Unlinking a branch is non-destructive — it keeps working independently, only the roll-up relationship is removed.
• A Chain account supports up to 5 branches. If you need more than that, email support@garagepro.me and we'll sort out an arrangement.

HQ mode

The moment a parent account has at least one branch registered to it, signing in to the app puts it in HQ mode: just two tabs, Reports and Feedback, both filterable by branch or shown as a combined total.

This is deliberate. Head office shouldn't be assigning technicians or checking cars out at a location it isn't standing in — that's the branch manager's job, and two people editing the same job card from different cities is how data gets mangled. HQ gets oversight; branches keep operations.

Reports & analytics

Reading the numbers — revenue, jobs, inventory, and per-worker performance.

The Reports tab turns the data you're already entering into a picture of how the workshop is actually running:

• Revenue trends over a date range you pick
• Jobs completed and average turnaround
• Inventory usage — what's moving, what's sitting
• Per-mechanic performance

A morning briefing and an end-of-day closing summary — today's bookings, pending jobs, and the day's numbers — appear as in-app notifications, and can also be emailed to the workshop address by ticking Email me the daily summaries in Settings (see Email & WhatsApp updates).

Troubleshooting & FAQ

Common questions and what to do when something looks wrong.

A worker can't see a tab they need

Check Settings → Role Permissions for their role — tabs are opt-in per role. An Owner/Manager can tick the missing tab on, or build a custom role if the default roles don't quite fit.

Emails aren't sending

Confirm Settings → Customer Email Notifications is switched on and the specific event's toggle is ticked. If it's on and still not arriving, check the spam folder first — that's the most common cause.

A WhatsApp prompt didn't appear

WhatsApp only auto-prompts for Service Advisors (and Owner/Manager) at exactly the 4 moments described in Email & WhatsApp updates — other roles won't see it, and that's by design, not a bug. Use the job card's "WhatsApp update" button to send one manually at any time.

A worker forgot their PIN

An Owner/Manager can look up or reset any worker's PIN from the Workers section of Settings.

The customer says they never got the pickup OTP

The code is emailed to them the moment the car is marked Ready for Pickup — it is deliberately never shown on the Track page, so the tracking link alone can't leak it. Check the customer has an email address on file (no email means no code is generated at all), that Settings → Customer Email Notifications is on, and ask them to check spam. You can re-send it with the Resend code button in the checkout window.

I deleted something by mistake

An Undo button appears in the corner for two minutes after deleting an appointment, customer, inventory item, invoice or parts request. After that window it's gone for good. Deleting a job card is not undoable, and it removes attached photos — the booking itself stays, only the job card goes. A checkbox in the delete confirmation lets you also return that job's parts to inventory, unticked by default, so deleting a card to clean up the page never silently adjusts stock unless you ask it to.

Still stuck?

Reach out from the FAQ section on the main site.