Workshop management software for Malaysian garages

A vehicle and a customer. A job card with the complaint, the arrival, and a status. An estimate of labour and parts with a total and an acceptance flag. Lines added later, marked as extras. Parts and labour that ended up on the invoice. A printable or on-screen card the advisor can show at collection. History of past cards for that vehicle at this workshop.

Bay or technician assignment can be a name on the card, not a visual planner of the whole building. Promised time is a field you may leave unused. If you use it, missed promises show on the advisor’s list. If you will not update them, we leave the field out so the screen does not lie.

Invoicing in version one is the total of accepted lines, a tax amount your accountant has defined if you charge it, and a tender. The invoice number is yours. Sending that invoice through MyInvois is a later link to the e-invoice workflow, using this total rather than a retyped one. Company customers are the usual reason. Walk-in cash jobs may not need it on day one.

The advisor builds the estimate from labour times and parts the workshop is willing to price. A short catalogue of common jobs—service, brakes, tyres—speeds that up. Unusual work is a described line with a price the advisor typed. The customer accepts the total. The card moves to arrived or in progress. Lines that were not accepted stay visible as declined so the next person does not “helpfully” do them.

On the ramp, a technician adds a recommended line: worn pads, a leak, a bulb. That line is pending. The advisor calls or messages the customer and sets the line to accepted or declined, with a time. Only accepted lines flow to the invoice. This single rule removes the most common collection-counter argument.

Labour can be a fixed job price or hours times a rate you entered. The rate table is yours. We do not publish a national labour rate and we do not tell you what a job should cost. If two advisors use two private rates, the table will not fix the politics until you pick one rate list.

Statuses stay few: waiting, in progress, waiting parts, ready, invoiced. The technician’s action is one tap plus, when waiting on parts, the part name. The advisor sees the board by status. A job that sits in waiting parts is a purchasing problem with a name, not a vague delay.

Ready means the vehicle can be collected, not that the invoice is paid. Invoiced means the bill exists. Collected can be the moment keys are returned, if you want that timestamp. Mixing “ready” and “paid” is how cars leave without a bill. The screen should not use one word for both.

Shared technician logins are a compromise. You will not know which technician tapped ready. Many workshops accept that for status and still require the advisor’s named login for the estimate and the invoice. Write that down so the trail matches reality. Pretending every tap is a personal signature when the tablet is shared will not survive the first week.

Each part on an accepted line has a name, a quantity, and a cost or sell price the advisor used. A short list of stock items can decrement quantity on hand. Going negative is allowed and visible, because workshops fit the part and count later. Hiding a negative pretends the shelf is fine.

A purchase for a waiting job links the part to the card. When it is marked received, the card can leave waiting-parts. The person at the counter owns that update. If receiving is a large store with barcodes and locations, stop and read the inventory pages. The workshop card should consume a part. The store system should receive the carton. Connecting them is a phase.

A counter sale with no vehicle uses the same item and does not open a job card. Forcing a dummy vehicle called CASH SALE pollutes history. Keep counter sales as sales. Keep jobs as jobs.

History is searchable by registration number and by customer phone. Opening a returning car shows previous cards: dates, work, mileage if captured. The advisor can start a new card without retyping the customer. Duplicate vehicles—the same car entered twice with a space in the number—should be mergeable by a manager, or the history splits.

A fleet customer has many vehicles and a contact who approves estimates above a limit. The estimate can sit in pending-approval until that acceptance is recorded. The fleet report is a list of open cards and invoices for that customer, not a telematics product. We do not track the vehicle on the road.

Photos of damage or of completed work can attach to the card. They are useful when a customer disputes a scratch. They are personal data if faces or documents are in frame. Keep them on the job, not in a public folder. Retention of old photos is your decision with counsel, then a habit.

Garage packages and generic tills that already produce your invoice and your card should stay. Custom workshop software is for fleet approval, a parts-wait status the board must show, or history across branches the package isolates. Sorable does not resell those packages and does not clone a payment device.

The Friday test is one car with an extra, one part taken from the shelf, and a collection. If the package finishes it, keep the package. If the extra lives in a chat and the part is missing from the bill, the card is the project.

A manufacturer system, where the franchise requires it, remains the system for those jobs. We should not create a second invoice. The audit will ask whether you are allowed to work outside it. If the answer is no, the project stops.

We will not issue JPJ, Puspakom, or insurance documents. We will not value an accident claim or talk to an adjuster as part of the product. We will not store card numbers. We will not promise a labour time that beats the technician. Times on the card are the times you entered.

We will not scrape owner data from the road or from other workshops. The customer is someone who brought you a vehicle or a fleet that engaged you. Phone numbers are for the job and the next booking, limited to advisor roles if you separate them from technicians.

We will not run the ramp. A status the technician will not tap is a failed design, and we would rather cut the status than add a report that depends on it.

Bring recent cards, one disputed invoice, and the way a part leaves the shelf. We map acceptance, status, and history. The workflow audit can end with “keep the package” or “paper is enough for one bay.”

The quote names one workshop. Job cards, estimates, parts on the job, and history often fall between RM12,000 and RM40,000 setup, plus monthly care. A second branch, barcode stock, and e-invoice submission are additional. Time is often 6–12 weeks after approval.

Read the workshops page if the category is still open. Inventory pages apply when the shelf is the business and the bay is secondary. E-invoice pages apply when company invoices must leave from a total this card already trusts.