01
The customer is in the dark
Today a customer gets three snapshot links — inspection, estimate, invoice. Statuses like “waiting on parts” or “on hold” exist only inside the shop's board. Nobody outside can see them.
Brief §3.6
Prototype byUmbrella IT
Working prototype · mock data
One repair order,
seven people who need it.
We read the brief and built the part of it that is hardest to describe in words. This follows a single job through your shop — a 1969 Bronco in for an engine overhaul — from the phone call that starts it to the month end that closes it, seen from the seat of every person who touches it.
Step 1 of 17 — The phone rings. Nothing exists in the system yet.
Read this first. This is a prototype, not a product. It was assembled in a day, it runs entirely on invented data, and it makes no calls to any live system — no Tekmetric, no parts supplier, no AI service. Every “AI” response here is a fixed piece of text. Its job is to make a proposal concrete enough to argue with, and nothing beyond that.
Why this shape
Your work already runs in a circle. It is broken in four places.
A car arrives, gets inspected, quoted, approved, repaired, released, invoiced and paid — and the customer comes back. Each of the four breaks below is a place where that circle drops something: information, money, or trust.
02
The recipe lives in someone's head
Writing an estimate means remembering every associated part. Forget the thermostat and the vehicle comes back. The labor guide covers 1984 and newer — for the work this shop is known for it returns nothing at all.
Brief §3.5
03
Nothing gates the release
There are nine required-field checks before a repair order can close, and not one of them asks whether the vehicle was actually road tested.
Brief §3.6
04
The money leaks quietly
The monthly supplier statement is printed and ticked off by hand. A part billed to no ticket is money spent and never invoiced — and nobody finds it until someone goes looking.
Brief §3.1
The walkthrough
Follow one repair order, in the order it actually happens
Every screen below carries the thing that had to happen before it. Nothing appears out of nowhere: no estimate before an inspection, no approval before an estimate, no invoice before the road test was signed off.
Act 1
Something breaks
A truck that has been in one family since 1998 starts knocking under load. Nothing exists in the system yet — not a customer record for this visit, not a repair order, nothing.
- 1The phone ringsService Writer§3.3The call is summarised, classified as a repair request, and a person confirms it before a repair order exists at all.
- 2The write-upService WriterWhat the customer said carries over word for word. The VIN is eleven characters and decodes to nothing, which for this shop is a Tuesday.
- 3The inspectionTechnician§3.⅘Grades, measurements and photographs, entered here and nowhere else. Two inspections: the one done at check-in three weeks ago, and the one happening now with the block on the bench.
Act 2
What is wrong, and what it costs
The vehicle is on the lift. Everything the shop finds has to reach the owner in language he can act on, and be priced before anyone touches a bolt.
- 4Send the reportService Writer§3.⅘Four words from the shop floor became four sentences for the owner. Send refuses to work while any of them is unread — the guarantee is a locked button, not a promise.
- 5What the customer receivesCustomer§3.6The inspection as the owner reads it. Send it in step 4 and the explanation appears here with the reviewer's name; before that he gets the technician's raw note.
- 6The estimateService Writer§3.5Built from that recipe rather than from memory. The labour guide everyone licenses starts at 1984, so the hours come from this shop's own rebuilds instead.
- 7The customer decidesCustomer§3.6Job by job, not all or nothing. Decline one and the total, the technician's queue and the committed stock all change with it. Nothing is done that was not agreed.
Act 3
Three weeks in the bay
An engine overhaul with machining is not a morning's work. This is the stretch where a customer goes quiet and starts wondering, and where the shop's own numbers drift.
- 8Parts ordered and receivedParts§3.8Receiving captures an invoice number and a date. Remember that — in step 14 it turns out to be the key the whole accounting module runs on.
- 9Where everything standsService WriterThe same three columns and the same words as today. This is the screen nobody should have to relearn — and it prints.
- 10The workTechnicianThe job clock, unchanged. What is new is at the bottom of the card: the hours this shop actually logs against the hours it quotes.
- 11What the customer sees meanwhileCustomer§3.6A live timeline instead of three snapshot links. Note what is absent: there is no greyed-out finish line, because that step has not been earned.
- 12The gateTechnician§3.6The incident from the brief, answered structurally: the notification is not hidden, it cannot be sent until this is signed.
Act 4
Money, and the circle closes
The vehicle goes home, the money is accounted for, and the same phone line that started the story is what catches it if the work comes back.
- 13Invoice and pickupService Writer§3.9Taxability per line, payment, and the follow-up composed here rather than remembered later. Posting is what puts the money into the reports.
- 14Month end: the statementAccounting§3.1The supplier's monthly statement against what was actually received and billed. One line was bought for a ticket that does not exist.
- 15Reports and sales taxAccounting§3.2Totals, dates and averages on the page, printed directly. Utah taxes repair labour, which most systems get wrong.
- 16How the business feelsOwner§3.2Car count, ARO, close ratio, gross profit per hour — the numbers Dave already manages against, under the names he already uses.
- 17Thirty-one days later, the phone rings againOwner · Service Writer§3.3½The same call intake from step 1 catches it, and the cause is classified — because a part failure, poor workmanship and a misdiagnosis have three different owners.
Or pick a seat
Same repair order, seven points of view
Switching role does not load a different example. It re-draws the same job for somebody else — which is the whole reason a shop needs one system instead of four.
Customer
Ray Whitaker — no login, opens a link
- Repair status§3.6
- Approve estimate§3.6
- Inspection report§3.6
Service Writer
Sam Wright — answers the phone, sells the work
- First contact§3.3
- Job Board
- Write-up
- Send the report§3.⅘
- Estimate§3.5
- Invoice & pickup§3.9
Technician
Marco Ruiz — ASE Master, engine builder
- Teardown findings§3.⅘
- My jobs
- QC & road test§3.6
Accounting
Joanne Pike — reconciles the statements
- Reconciliation§3.1
- Reports & sales tax§3.2
Owner
Dave Bell — ASE Master, AERA member
- Dashboard§3.2
- Warranty & comeback§3.3½
Parts
Curtis Hale — orders, receives, counts
- Parts & inventory§3.8
Platform admin
Umbrella IT — multi-tenant operations
- Tenants & features§§4
Platform
Umbrella IT — coverage of your brief, and what comes after today
- What this prototype covers, section by section
- Your staging against ours
- Architecture, breakdown, estimate
- Roadmap & critical path