What is wrong with paper work orders?
Nothing is wrong with paper — except that it is in one place. The person at the car cannot see what the front desk promised; the office does not know how far the mechanic got; the customer sees neither, so they call. Work order software connects those three people on one sheet that is always current.
Lost, oily, unreadable.
Paper gets greasy in the engine bay and mixed up in the drawer; six months later nobody knows what was done to the car. A spreadsheet only lives on the one PC where the file is.
The office cannot see the shop floor.
"Is the Golf ready yet?" means walking out, asking, walking back — while the phone rings with a customer asking the same thing.
The customer calls.
Because there is nowhere else to find out. Every call is five minutes at the desk, and an unanswered one makes the workshop look like it does not care.
How the Mechano work order works
Created next to the customer
Type a registration or a name — the system brings up the vehicle and its full history. For a new car the registration is enough; the VIN can be added later. The work order gets a sequential number per location.
Run by the mechanic — on a phone
Status with one tap: in progress, waiting for parts, ready. A photo of the fault, the odometer reading with a photo — and a warning if the mileage is lower than on the previous job. Parts come from inventory; the stock movement is automatic.
The customer follows a link
Every work order has a unique, unguessable link. The customer sees the status without logging in and gets an email on every status change. Fewer calls, a calmer front desk.
Close, invoice, follow up
A closing checklist, a PDF job card, an invoice from your own invoicing account in one click. After a configurable number of days the system sends a follow-up email — "is everything fine with the car?" — in your workshop's name, with your text.
What a digital work order includes
- Statuses the way a workshop thinks: pending, in progress, waiting for parts, paused, ready, closed — in a calendar, on a kanban board and in a list.
- Mechanic assignment in one click; the system will not schedule a colleague who is on leave.
- Labour and parts on one sheet: catalogue prices per vehicle category, parts used from inventory at their selling price.
- Odometer reading with a photo — and a check against the previous work order.
- Photos, videos and documents attached from the mechanic's phone.
- Deadlines and estimated hours, planned start in the calendar; the system warns about public holidays.
- History per vehicle: every earlier work order stays, even after the car changes owner.
- Closing checklist: parts recorded, work closed, customer feedback — so nothing is forgotten.
- PDF export and an invoice from the work order, using your own invoicing account.
- Permissions: a mechanic sees only their own jobs and never the purchase price or margin; the office and the owner see everything.
Who is it for?
A workshop where at least two people work on the same car — one at the desk, one on the floor — and the link between them today is paper, a phone call or shouting. A one-person shop benefits too, mostly from the history and the customer status page; from two people upwards a digital work order gives back hours every day. Tyre shops should look at it together with the tyre hotel module.
Multiple locations
Work orders are numbered per location, staff belong to a location, and the owner sees everything in one place. One location is included in every plan; more can be added — see the Pricing page.
Why not an installed program?
Because an installed program runs on the office PC, and the work order is born on the shop floor. Mechano is in the cloud: nothing to install, nothing to update, no backup anyone can forget — we run the daily backup and the encrypted off-site copy, and your data stays in the European Union. Every device shows the same thing your colleague sees.