Garage job card template

The card does four jobs at once

On the day it is an instruction. A technician needs to know the vehicle, the fault as the customer described it, what has been authorised and what has not and anything the front desk was told that matters, such as a locking wheel nut in the boot or a customer waiting.

Afterwards it is evidence. When a car comes back with the same noise three weeks later, what settles the conversation is the mileage recorded on the day, the technician name, the parts fitted with their numbers and a photograph of what was replaced.

It is also the basis for a warranty claim. A supplier or manufacturer rejecting a claim will usually do it on missing information: no part number, no fitted date, no mileage at fitment, no fault description. None of that can be reconstructed later.

Finally it underpins the invoice, which for a VAT registered garage is a record HMRC expects you to be able to produce. Keep the card for as long as you keep the invoice it supports, and check the current retention period on GOV.UK rather than relying on a rule of thumb.

Authority is the field that saves you money

The single most expensive gap on a job card is an authorised spend limit that was agreed verbally and never written down. A customer who says do what it needs on Monday morning remembers something different on Tuesday afternoon when the bill arrives.

Record the limit as a figure and record who gave it. Then record every extension separately: the amount, the time, the method and whether it came from the same person. An approval recorded as customer agreed on the phone is worth very little without a time next to it.

Written approval is better than verbal, and an approval the customer gave by tapping a button on a quote is better than both, because it timestamps itself and it names exactly which lines were accepted. A customer who declined two of four items has a record of doing so, which matters as much to them as it does to you.

Put your terms where the authority is given, not only on the invoice. Diagnostic charges, storage of a vehicle left after completion, disposal charges and what happens to old parts all belong somewhere the customer saw them before the work started.

Mileage, times and technician

Mileage in and mileage out sounds like paperwork and is not. It is the number that proves how far the vehicle has travelled since a repair, it is required by most component warranties, it drives the next service interval and it protects you against a claim that the car was driven around all week.

Times on and off give you the clocked hours against the hours you sold, which over a few months tells you whether your book times are right for the work you actually do. They also tell you, on the day, how long a car has sat waiting rather than being worked on.

Name the technician. Not to apportion blame, but because a comeback is a learning opportunity that is wasted if nobody knows who fitted it, and because a manufacturer warranty claim may ask who carried out the work and what they are qualified to do.

Parts, part numbers and what was actually fitted

Record the part number, the supplier, the quantity and the price. The part number is the field most often skipped and the one most often needed, because a warranty claim against a failed component with no number on the card is a claim against nothing.

Record the brand and grade as well where it matters. A customer who was quoted for one grade of pad and finds a different brand on the invoice has a reasonable question, and a card that shows which was fitted answers it in a sentence.

Note what happened to the old part. Customers are entitled to ask for it back, some insurance and warranty schemes require it to be retained, and items such as tyres, oil and batteries carry a waste duty of care. A line saying old parts returned or old parts disposed of is ten seconds that avoids an argument.

Paper, spreadsheet or system

Paper works and has one real advantage, which is that it survives the workshop. Its weaknesses are the ones every garage knows: one copy, no backup, no way to find last year card for a given registration and handwriting that becomes a problem exactly when the card matters.

A spreadsheet or a template document solves the legibility and gives you a search, and it stops there. Nothing links the card to the invoice, so the work gets retyped, and nothing links it to the vehicle, so history is only as good as whoever remembered to file it under the right registration.

A system earns its place when the card fills itself in. The registration brings the vehicle, the MOT expiry and the service history. The health check attaches to the card. The approved quote writes the authority and the limit. The parts arrive with their numbers from the catalogue. The invoice comes off the card without anybody typing it twice.

Youzse holds job cards against the vehicle rather than the visit, so the history follows the registration when a car changes hands, with registration lookups, MOT due dates, health checks and parts on the same card. Garage plans start at £59 a month.