Scheduling
Your calendar only exists in one room
Whoever is at the counter cannot see it, so "when can you take me?" gets a guess. Two people write on it in the same hour and the same bay is promised twice. MecanoPro puts one live schedule in front of the counter, the bays and the technicians.
Bay 2 is already taken at 10:30. Saving is refused until the overlap is gone.
What it is costing you
An empty bay is the most expensive thing in your shop
A technician is paid whether or not there is a vehicle in the bay. Every no-show, and every double-booked slot that turns into a wait at the counter, is paid time you cannot bill. Do the sum with your own numbers.
There is no statistic here. It is your count and your rate.
A Tuesday, with one schedule
Six moments where your calendar lets you down, and what the schedule does at each.
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7:02 a.m.
A customer cancels by text
Today The customer forgot, or cancelled by text at 7 a.m. and nobody knows whether that still counts. The hour is gone either way.
With MecanoPro Every confirmed appointment gets reminded, by text, email or both, at the lead times you choose, from 15 minutes to a week ahead. The customer confirms or cancels from the link in the reminder. No login, no phone tag.
- You set once what their cancel button really does: tell the shop and leave the appointment standing, cancel by itself when there is time before a cutoff you choose, or cancel straight away.
- A green tick appears on the appointment when they confirm. A cancellation you have not answered shows as Cancellation Requested, and that status is the list to work through each morning.
- Nothing happens until they press the button on the page. A mail program previewing the link changes nothing.
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8:15 a.m.
Two people write on the same slot
Today Two people write on the same calendar and one bay is promised to two customers. You find out when both trucks are in the lot.
With MecanoPro The booking window checks the schedule the moment you change the time, the bay or the technician. If that bay or that person already has something overlapping, a red warning appears before you press Save, and saving is refused while the overlap stands.
- Drag an appointment to another time or bay and the same check applies. A bay holds one appointment at a time, and a technician can't be in two places at once.
- Give it an honest duration. The whole day is built on it, and an hour booked for a two-hour job makes every view wrong until evening.
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10:40 a.m.
The counter takes a call: when can you take me?
Today Whoever answers cannot see the calendar, so the answer is a guess, and the guess is written on a sticky note.
With MecanoPro The counter reads the same schedule the shop floor works from. Click an empty stretch of time and the appointment opens with that time and bay already filled in.
- Search before you create. The same person booking twice should be one client with two appointments, and the vehicle list only offers that client's active vehicles.
- Choose a vehicle and a Mileage box appears. What you enter goes into the vehicle's mileage history.
- With Billing, attach the client's quote to the appointment, or start an appointment from the quote. It follows the quote to the invoice it becomes.
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1:30 p.m.
A booking request came in overnight Growth and up
Today Requests arrive as voicemails and emails, get typed in twice, or get forgotten by Thursday. The customer who wanted a slot booked with someone else.
With MecanoPro Your website takes the request, with a date, a time inside your opening hours and the vehicle, and it lands on the schedule as pending. A badge on the schedule counts what is waiting, so nobody has to remember to look.
- Read what the customer wrote before you decide. It is where "it makes a noise when I brake" turns up.
- Approve it as an appointment and change anything first: the vehicle, the bay, the technician, the date and the times. The customer is sent a confirmation, and the technician you chose is told.
- Choose who is told when a request arrives, and when a customer answers a reminder.
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4:50 p.m.
Which vehicles are in the shop right now?
Today Nobody can say which vehicles are in the shop, or what stage each is at, without walking out to look.
With MecanoPro Mark a vehicle arrived and it joins the Kanban board: one card per vehicle in the shop, one column per stage, with the stages named the way your shop talks. With Work Orders, Check In does the same and opens the work order in one step.
- Drag a card to the next column to move a vehicle from waiting for a bay, to in the bay, to waiting for the customer, without opening anything.
- Close the appointment as completed or cancelled. Leaving it neither is what fills a calendar with ghosts.
- A confirmed appointment that nobody arrived at becomes Missed, and a client who keeps landing there is flagged the next time someone goes to book them.
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Friday
Where are you really busy?
Today You feel Mondays are chaos and Fridays are quiet, but you have never seen it. Staffing is a gut call.
With MecanoPro Analytics, for administrators, shows how the schedule is actually used, built from the appointments you already book.
- Appointments booked, completed, cancelled and missed, month by month over the last twelve.
- Appointments by day of the week and by hour of the day, the workload of each technician and the load on each bay.
- Average duration, how far ahead customers book, your top clients and your top vehicles, and how much was quoted and invoiced against appointments.
One live schedule, in four views
None of them is the real one. They are four windows onto the same appointments, so the counter and the shop floor can never disagree.
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Daily Calendar
What is happening today, hour by hour, bay by bay?
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Technician View
Who is busy and who is free?
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Kanban View
Which vehicles are in the shop, and what stage is each at?
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Table View
Give me a list I can filter and search.
Where it stops and you start
A schedule you can trust never promises anything on your behalf. Here is what it leaves to you.
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A request is not a booking
Website requests wait as pending until someone approves them, because only you know whether the bay is free, whether the part is in and whether you take the job. Answer within a day: it is the one queue with a customer waiting at the other end.
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Moving, denying and cancelling are quiet
Drag an appointment to another time, deny a request or cancel one, and the customer is sent nothing. If it matters to them, ring them. When you move one, their "I'll be there" is cleared and the reminders start again for the new time. Approving a request is the exception: the customer is told it is confirmed.
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Cancel, do not delete
A cancelled appointment tells you what was booked and did not happen. A deleted one vanishes from every count, so a week of no-shows reads as a quiet week and you never learn what changed.
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Missed is not the same as cancelled
A confirmed appointment that nobody arrived at is Missed. A client's page warns whoever is about to book them again, with how many they missed in the last year, so you can ask for a confirmation call before you hold a bay.
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You see what is yours to see
A technician whose access is limited to their own work sees only the appointments assigned to them. A colleague's job is not missing: it is theirs. The calendars show one day at a time, with arrows and a date box to move around.
Every week with a calendar only one room can see is another week of guessing at the counter
Book thirty minutes and we will put a few of your real appointments on a live schedule, so you can watch a double-booking get refused.
See it running on your own work orders
Thirty minutes, at a time that suits the shop. We load a few of your real jobs in and you tell us where it would break.