Car repair: a plain-English guide for independent garages

Most of your week goes on the car in front of you. The paperwork gets done in the gaps: a quote written on a job card, a booking in a diary on the wall, an invoice raised later from a spreadsheet, and a bank statement matched by eye at the end of the month.

The problem

A car repair job moves through the same steps almost every time. The customer rings or books online. You look at the fault, write a quote, and wait for approval. You do the work, invoice it, and then wait for payment. Each step usually lives in a different place. The booking app knows when the car is coming in. The invoicing tool knows what you charged last time. Your bank feed knows what has arrived, but not which job it belongs to.

That split causes small, expensive problems. You ring a customer about a bill they think they have already paid. You chase a payment that landed a week ago. You cannot quickly see how much a regular customer has spent with you over the year without opening three different windows and comparing them by hand.

The trouble is rarely the work itself. It is the time spent tidying up after it, and the way costs build up when each tool charges by the seat. Add a second mechanic or an apprentice and the monthly bill climbs, even though the amount of paperwork has only moved around.

How it works

BizHub365 keeps the whole car repair workflow in one system. Here is what that looks like on an ordinary day.

Start with the customer record. Each customer sits in the CRM with their contact details, vehicle notes and history of jobs. You can add notes and tags, so a customer who always wants a phone call before any extra work is started can be marked that way. The next time they ring, you see it before you pick up.

Next is the booking diary. Bookings for bays, lifts or appointments sit in one diary, and you can sync it with Google or Microsoft calendars through iCal, so the team sees the day on the devices they already carry. Set your opening hours and holiday closures once, and the diary respects them. Customers can also book themselves in, which means fewer calls on a busy Monday morning when the phone is ringing and the bay is full.

Then comes the money. Quotes and invoices are linked to the same customer, so when a quote is accepted you are not retyping the same details into a second tool. Payments and credit notes are recorded alongside them, and expenses for parts and supplies can be logged in the same place. When someone asks what was agreed, the answer is on one screen.

Bank import is where the month-end job gets lighter. You import your bank transactions and BizHub365 uses smart matching to suggest which payment belongs to which invoice. You still check each suggestion, but you are confirming matches rather than searching through a statement line by line.

If you employ staff, PAYE payroll sits in the same system and uses the same employee records. RTI submissions for FPS and EPS are prepared from those records, so the person who books the apprentice in is not keying their details in twice.

One BizHub365 One subscription covers the whole business. Team members are unlimited, and there are no per-user fees. The part-time receptionist, the second mechanic and your accountant can all have access without the bill rising with each person you add.

Your accountant or bookkeeper can also work from the same invoices, payments and expense records you have entered. That means less back-and-forth by email, and fewer end-of-year searches for receipts. The software records and organises your figures. Decisions about what to claim, and what you owe, remain with you and your accountant.

Getting started

The easiest way to see whether this suits your garage is to use it on real work. There is a free 14-day trial. You add a card to start it, and after the trial the price is 29 pounds a month for BizHub365 One. If you decide it is not for you, cancel before the trial ends and you will not be charged.

A practical order for the first week:

1. Add your regular customers first. Do not try to import every enquiry from the last five years on day one. Start with the people who come back.
2. Set your opening hours and any holiday closures, then connect your calendar so bookings show where your team looks.
3. Create a quote for a common job, such as a standard service. Send it, record the response, and raise the invoice from the same customer record.
4. Import a month of bank transactions and work through the suggested matches. Note how long it takes compared with your current method.
5. Invite one team member or your accountant to look at the same records, so you can see what they need from you.

After a fortnight, look at what took the longest. That is usually where the next change should go, whether that is booking, quoting, or chasing payment. If you want a clearer picture of the cost, compare the monthly fee with what you currently pay across your booking app, your invoicing tool and any per-user charges.

When you are ready to try it on your own jobs, Start your free 14-day trial.

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