Effective booking management is Auxo Workshop's forte; helping your workshop run smoothly, keep the bays full, and keep customers happy.
Whether you’re a seasoned mechanic or a workshop manager, this article will walk you through the essential steps for adding and editing bookings efficiently.
🗒️Note - Some features covered in this article are limited to users with the Workshop Administrator or Workshop Owner role.
No time to read? Watch the Video!
No time to read this whole thing? We've put together the key info in the video below!
Creating a New Booking
All jobs and invoices in Auxo Workshop start as a booking.
To create a booking click the New Booking button on the top right of the screen:
Then you'll be asked to select the customer & vehicle.
Start typing to see a list of existing customers:
🗒️ Note: If your user role is Basic User, you will only be able to select from existing customers, other user roles will be able to add new customers during this step
Once the customer and vehicle are selected, click Next to open the Job Maintenance Screen , covered further below, where you can add and edit details of the job.
✅ Best Practice: It is best to always link a vehicle to a job or invoice, even for items like lawnmowers, so you can track service history, set reminders, and use 'smart templates'.
If the item doesn't have a rego, use a serial number or make up your own unique ID for the rego field. For example "LM" (for lawnmower) + the customer's initials + the last 4 digits of their mobile number (e.g., "LMJR2522").
If there is genuinely no benefit in tracking the job against an item (e.g. a cash sale of a basic part over the counter) then either do not select a vehicle or click the 'No Vehicle' toggle if it is displayed.
Editing Existing Bookings
You can open existing jobs from multiple places within Auxo, such as the Job List, the Diary and the Workboard, by clicking on the job number, to open the Job Maintenance Screen
The Job Maintenance Screen
All areas of the Job Maintenance Screen are explained below...
Vehicle Section
In the vehicle section you can click the three dots to access any of the following features:
Edit Vehicle Details - Opens a pop-up window to view/edit full details of the current vehicle.
Change Vehicle - to select a different (existing) vehicle for the current job.
Go to Vehicle Page - Opens the full "Vehicle Details" page for the current vehicle in a new browser tab.
View Service History - Opens a pop-up window displaying recent service history, for the vehicle on this job, each listed job can be expanded to show more detail.
Outstanding Estimates - Opens a pop-up window displaying any estimates, for the vehicle on this job, that have not been converted to jobs. You can click an estimate to preview the details, and optionally click Add to Job to add this estimate into the current job:
Scheduling the Job
You can schedule in the booking, and modify the day and estimated duration of the job.
💡Tip: If you need to spread a booking across multiple days, you can do this using the Scheduler, read more in our Manage Multi-Day Jobs with the Scheduler article.
Internal Job Notes
These are notes for internal use only, and will not print on the customers invoice, these are useful to be printed on job cards.
Readings
To record the odometer and other associated readings from the vehicle.
Vehicle Reminders
Here you can add or edit reminders for the current vehicle (e.g. service reminders):
Services
In the Services section you can search from a list of predefined Service Templates or previously used service templates to add them to the job:
💡Tip: Auxo Workshop has a feature we call "Smart Templates", that will recommend service templates in the services list that have been used for similar vehicles in the past. Make sure to add meaningful names to any services you add manually to get better Smart Template recommendations in the future!
To make use of Smart Templates - just click the "Apply Filters" option at the top of the search list when searching for job templates to add to the job.
At present you cannot create your own Service Templates, however auto-generated Smart Templates should make it unnecessary to create your own as the system will learn and suggest Smart Templates based on previous services you've added to jobs.
Templates remembered by the system are based on their service name when a job is invoiced, so if you have Service Templates you want to reuse, you can add an asterisk * to the front of the template name to make them easy to find, and whenever you add/edit these templates on a job, remove the asterisk from the service name on the job, so your original Service Templates (with the asterisk) remain as they were.
Once a service has been added to the Job you can edit the details of the lines added, such as the type (labour, outwork or parts, part number, description, qty and price. Depending on your User Role you may have restricted access to edit certain fields.
If there are no suitable "Services" to select from the list you can choose "Add Service Manually" to then manually add the parts and labour you require from scratch.
Type: In the Type field you can choose between Labour, Part or Outwork.
Part No/Code: When adding a line to the service that is the type Labour or Part, you can start typing into the Part No/Code field to search the labour rate or parts list respectively, to choose the specific labour rate or part you wish to add.
Description: You can edit the text in the Description field, but bear in mind that for labour the description that displays on the customers invoice is based on the Default Labour Description in System Configuration.
Qty/Hours: The Quantity/Hrs field is where you enter the Qty you are charging are entered. This should be a decimal, for example 1hr 45mins would be 1.75.
Cost & Actual Hours: You need enable the Show Cost & Margin toggle at the bottom of the Job Maintenance screen to see and edit the cost field for Labour & Parts added to the job.
📝Note: Costs entered for Labour are in the HH:MM format (and the monetary cost is then calculated based on the technicians labour cost in Staff Setup). You can click on the cost value and use the dropdown options provided to select the hours and minutes (in 15 min increments):
If you are using time clocking or timesheets the actual hours will display in a grey box within the Cost & Actual Hours field.
Invoice Note
Immediately below the detail lines for each service is an Invoice Note field. Here you can type notes and comments that will be printed on the customer's invoice:
⚠️Important Note - If you are using the Xero integration, it is recommended to avoid adding line items to the job with a zero dollar price, as Xero does not allow $0.00 price line items through the integration.
Payment & Invoicing Options
Depending on your Role you may have access to the settings at the bottom of the screen to process the invoice and payment related to the job.
Applying Freight Charges
To apply a freight charge to the invoice:
Click the dropdown arrow beside the Amount Due
Click Add Freight (shown in blue text)
Enter the freight charge you wish to add to your customers invoice:
Lastly, click the Apply Freight button
Adding a Global Discount to the Entire Invoice
Click the dropdown arrow beside the Amount Due
Click Add Discount (shown in blue text)
You can click the down arrow beside the % icon to change between percentage or dollar value (for the discount you wish to apply)
Enter the discount you wish to apply and click Apply Discount
Read more on discounting options our Applying a Discount to a Job/Invoice article here.
Preview or Generate an Invoice
Hover the cursor over, or click the Invoice button and click the Preview/Generate button:
This will open a full screen Invoice preview.
On the Invoice preview you can click Generate to generate the invoice or click Cancel to go back to the job maintenance screen.
Show Cost & Margin (Margin Warnings)
The Show Cost & Margin setting is not available to users with the Basic User role. When this is enabled the Cost & Margin values and warnings will display for the job, additionally it will show the Cost column in the part search, and provide a Cost field when adding labour and parts to jobs.
Having this setting enabled will display a margin warning on the bottom of the job maintenance screen and provide a recommended total charge to achieve your margin targets (note - the recommended total charge excludes GST!).
💡Tip - The Cost and Margin feature is great for ensuring you maintain healthy profits. For the margins to work for labour, ensure you're allocating a technician to each job and that you've set up their cost price in Staff Setup.