Automotive Workshop Service Application

A workshop's real records are scattered between a counter and a bay. The customer's phone number is in Zoho CRM, the invoice is in Zoho Books, the parts are in Zoho Inventory — but the job itself is a carbon-copy job card in a spiral book, the estimate is a photo sent from the service advisor's phone, and the answer to "what did we do to this vehicle last time?" is whoever happens to remember.

What that costs is not abstract. Parts get issued to a bay and never make it onto the invoice, so stock and revenue quietly diverge. Technician hours are guessed, so nobody knows whether a job was priced correctly or whether a bay is being used. A warranty claim is rejected because the failed part number and the odometer reading at failure were never recorded together. And a customer due for service six weeks ago has not been called, because nothing was watching the date.

Zoho does not ship a workshop module. There is no job card object, no vehicle-by-chassis service history, no labour time capture, and no warranty claim record. This application is that layer, built inside your Zoho org rather than beside it.

What ECOSIRE builds

The job card in Zoho Creator

The job card is the spine of the application: vehicle, customer, service advisor, complaint list in the customer's words, job type (paid, warranty, insurance, internal, re-work), promised delivery time, and a pipeline of Received, Estimated, Approved, In Progress, Quality Check, Ready, Delivered, Invoiced. Deluge gates each transition — a job cannot move to In Progress without an approved estimate, cannot reach Ready with an open operation, and cannot be delivered with an unreturned part or an unpaid balance beyond the limit you set. Check-in captures photos, fuel level, odometer and items left in the vehicle, which is what stops disputes at delivery.

Vehicle master and true service history

Vehicles are keyed on chassis or VIN and registration, and carry make, model, variant, year, engine and transmission, fuel type, colour and every recorded odometer reading. The owner links to a Zoho CRM Contact or Account, so a vehicle can change hands without losing its history. Open any vehicle and you see every past job card, every part fitted with its part number and date, every labour operation performed, and the running odometer trace — which is exactly what a technician needs before quoting a repeat fault and what a claims assessor asks for.

Estimates, revisions and approval

Estimates are built from parts lines and labour operation lines with your own margins and discount rules. Revisions are versioned rather than overwritten, so the sequence of "we quoted this, then found that" survives. Customer approval is captured against the job card — approval link, one-time code or on-screen signature, depending on how you work — and stamped with who approved, when and against which revision. Work that was never approved cannot be invoiced by accident.

Parts issue against real stock

Parts requested on a job card reserve against Zoho Inventory items, and issuing moves real stock with real valuation. Returns from the bay go back the same way. Because issue is tied to the job card line, the part reaches the invoice automatically instead of depending on someone remembering at the counter. Where a part is not held, the job card raises a purchase requirement so the advisor can tell the customer honestly how long the wait is.

Labour, technicians and bay capacity

A labour operation catalogue holds standard hours and rates for the jobs you do repeatedly. Technicians are assigned per operation, with start and stop capture on the shop-floor view, so hours sold and hours actually worked are two separate, comparable numbers. A bay and hoist schedule shows capacity for the day, which turns appointment booking into something better than a guess.

Warranty, insurance and internal jobs

Warranty and insurance job types open the fields a claim actually needs: failed part number, odometer at failure, complaint, cause and correction, defect date, claim reference and claim status. Costs on these jobs are segregated from paid work so your reporting does not flatter itself, and a claim's progress is tracked to settlement rather than lost in an inbox.

Invoicing and reminders

On delivery, the job card creates an invoice in Zoho Books through the Books REST API — parts and labour as separate lines, correct tax treatment, advances and part-payments applied, insurance excess split from the insurer's share where relevant. Scheduled Deluge functions then watch service intervals by date and odometer and raise the follow-up list, with reminders sent over SMS or email through Zoho Flow.

Integration map

• Zoho CRM — customer and vehicle owner records; live job status written back so advisors and any call-centre team see the same thing.
• Zoho Books — invoices, advances, credit notes, and vendor bills for sublet work.
• Zoho Inventory — parts issue, return, reservation and reorder.
• Zoho People — technician records, attendance and shifts where you run it.
• Zoho Flow — reminders, notifications to Zoho Cliq, and any external hand-off you need.
• Zoho Analytics — a dataset for throughput, technician efficiency, parts-to-labour ratio and job profitability.

Who it is for

Independent multi-brand garages; specialist workshops in transmission, electrical, body and paint, or tyres and alignment; two-wheeler and commercial-vehicle service centres; in-house workshops inside a fleet; agricultural and construction equipment service businesses; and dealer service departments that need their own operating layer above a manufacturer system they cannot change.

How delivery works

1. Scoping call. We go through your current job card, your labour rate structure, how you price parts, how warranty and insurance work is handled, and which Zoho apps you already run. We look at your Zoho Books organization and tax setup so invoices are correct from the first job. 2. Fixed quote. A written scope with the exact form and field list, the pipeline and its gates, the integration points and the reports — at a fixed price, with no hourly billing. 3. Build. Creator application, Deluge validation and scheduled functions, Inventory and Books integrations, shop-floor and advisor views, print templates and reports. 4. Install in a test environment. Deployed to your sandbox or a test Creator environment against a Books test organization, loaded with your own vehicles, parts and labour rates, so you can run real job cards before anything touches live records. 5. Production go-live. Promoted to your live org with master data imported, users and roles set, and advisors, technicians and counter staff trained on their own screens. 6. Support window. A defined post-go-live support period for fixes and adjustments, with all Deluge source and configuration handed over.

Honest scope

This is built to order. There is no download, no trial and no ready-made copy waiting, because the application is shaped around your job card, your labour catalogue and your approval rules. Typical lead time is two to four weeks from signed quote to a working test environment. Manufacturer warranty portals are integrated only where the manufacturer exposes an API you are entitled to use; otherwise the claim record is maintained here and submitted through your existing channel. You keep the code.