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Workshop diary

The workshop diary that schedules bays, ramps and people

Drag a job to a different ramp and the diary works out whether it fits. Garage scheduling software that knows your opening hours, who is in, and which bay is free before you promise anything.

  • Drag and drop by technician, bay or service type
  • Double-bookings flagged with a fix you can apply
  • Bay and technician utilisation against your real hours
An illustration of the workshop diary: three bays down the top, hours down the side, and coloured job blocks placed across them.

Where this fits in the job

  1. Booking
  2. Job card
  3. VHC
  4. Parts
  5. Invoice
  6. Payment

Connected to the tools the trade already uses

  • DVLA
  • HaynesPro
  • Xero
  • QuickBooks
  • GSF Car Parts
Explore all integrations →

Garage scheduling software for a workshop, not an office

A calendar app schedules meetings. This schedules a ramp, a technician and a vehicle that has to leave by five.

Plan the day on one screen

Split the day into columns by technician, by bay or by type of work. Drag a job into a column and it is booked to that person or that ramp at that time. Where you drop it is where it goes.

It stops you double-booking

If a technician or a bay is already busy, the diary tells you and offers up to five ways round it. Move it, give it to somebody else, or leave it as it is. Nothing gets booked on top of something else without you being told.

Capacity you can see before you promise

Utilisation is measured against the hours you actually trade, not a nine to five assumption. You can see whether Thursday has room before you tell someone Thursday is fine.

How a job gets into the day

Whether it came from your website or the phone, it lands in the same diary.

1

The work arrives

Online bookings drop straight in. Anything taken over the counter is one click on the slot you want it in.

2

Give it a bay and a name

Drag it into a technician lane or a bay lane. Times snap to the quarter hour so it lines up with everything else.

3

The diary checks it

Opening hours, closed dates, approved leave and existing commitments are all tested before the move is accepted.

4

Start the job

Confirm, start and complete from the diary, or turn the booking into a job card without re-entering any of it.

Four views, and the one you actually need

A timeline for planning the day in detail, a day view for the front desk, and week and month views for looking further out. The timeline is where the dragging happens, because an hour-long job needs an hour-sized target.

  • Timeline, day, week and month, each remembered per user
  • Group the timeline by technician, by bay or by service type
  • Zoom from 50% to 200% when the day is packed
  • Colour by status, so a no-show reads differently from a job in progress
An illustration of the workshop diary view controls: tabs for timeline, day, week and month, a control for grouping the timeline by technician, bay or service type, and lanes of jobs beneath grouped by technician.

It already knows when you are open

The day is drawn between the hours you actually open, and every move is checked against the same rules the online booking page uses. If the booking form would turn a slot down, so will the diary.

  • Approved staff leave shown on the day, including half days
  • Upcoming closed dates listed before you plan into them
  • Find next slot by service, duration, technician or bay
  • Technicians see the diary read-only unless you grant more
An illustration of the workshop diary catching a clash: a warning that a bay is double-booked, followed by three suggested ways to resolve it, each with an apply button.

Where the day actually went

Planned against actual, bay by bay. Switch work orders between the window you scheduled and the time they really ran, and the gap between the two stops being a feeling and starts being a number.

  • Bay and technician utilisation for today and the day on screen
  • Planned time against actual start and finish
  • Day, week and month sheets as PDF, or CSV for a spreadsheet
  • Every move announced with a working undo
An illustration of workshop utilisation: horizontal bars showing how much of the day each bay and technician is booked for, measured against the garage's real opening hours.
An illustration of the GarageSphere dashboard as it appears in a browser.

GarageSphere is packed full of features

  • Online Booking
  • Workshop Diary
  • Job Board
  • Technical Data
  • Vehicle Health Check
  • Invoicing & Estimates
  • Technician Companion App
  • Dashboard
View all features

Frequently Asked Questions

They are two halves of the same thing. Online booking is how a customer gets work into your diary without ringing you. This is where you decide which ramp it goes on and who does it. Bookings taken on the website appear here automatically, so there is no second calendar to reconcile.

Either, and you can switch between them. The timeline groups into lanes by technician, by bay or by service type, and dragging a job into a lane makes that assignment. Most workshops plan by bay in the morning and check the technician view before committing to anything else.

The diary spots it and rings the conflicting jobs on the grid, then offers up to five specific fixes: reschedule to a free window, or reassign to a technician or bay that is available. The suggestions are worked out on the server against live data, so they are still valid by the time you click one.

No. Every booking is scheduled individually. If a fleet customer wants the same slot each month you would create those bookings yourself, or send them to the online booking page. Recurring scheduling is not something we do today, and we would rather say so than let you find out after you have moved your data across.

Not by default. The diary is read-only for technicians unless you grant the permission, which is usually what a workshop wants: the people planning the day are the ones who can change it. Roles and permissions are yours to edit, so you can open it up if your workshop runs differently.

It works well on a tablet at the counter, which is how most workshops use it. On a phone the week and month grids scroll sideways rather than reflowing, so it is usable but it is not the screen we would point you at. Technicians on the shop floor are better served by the companion app, which is built for a phone.

Yes. Day, week and month sheets download as a PDF, and there is a CSV export with time, reference, customer, vehicle, service, technician, bay and status if you want it in a spreadsheet. These are generated documents rather than a browser print, so they come out laid out properly.

See a full week planned in a few minutes

Bring your own bays, technicians and opening hours, and we will plan a real week in the diary with you.

  • No credit card
  • Free onboarding
  • Unlimited users