Repair workflow: statuses, estimate, work log

Intake is the beginning, handover is the end, and everything that makes a service money or loses it happens in between. ServiceCenterSoft carries the job across that whole path: who is responsible, by when, what has been done and what it costs, what the customer agreed to, what they paid and who changed what.

Where repairs get stuck

A device rarely sits because it is hard to fix. It sits because it belongs to nobody.

• One person took it in, another is working on it, a third will hand it over — and "whose is this?" has no answer.
• The due date was said out loud to the customer, is not in the software, and passed yesterday.
• The price was agreed on the phone, and at pickup the customer remembers a different figure.
• At month end the money does not add up: the prepayment was noted on a scrap of paper, the balance was taken, and nothing was recorded in the software.

None of this is cured by discipline. It is cured by every job having an owner, a date, an estimate and a trail.

Technician and manager are different people

A job has two responsibility fields, deliberately. The technician is the one who repairs. The manager is the one who handles the customer: took it in, called, agreed the price, handed it back. In a one-person workshop they are the same; in a service with five staff they are not, and they must not be confused.

The split is about money. The technician earns on what they did: the base repair and the estimate lines where they are the one who did the work (for a part, only the markup counts, not its price); the manager earns on the paid jobs they handled. In the report for a period each appears separately, with their own rate and a breakdown (reports).

Due dates and overdue work

The promised date is set at intake by itself — today plus your usual repair time from the settings — and the front desk changes it if they agreed otherwise. From then on it lives on the job, not in anyone's memory. The job shows three dates: when it came in, the date promised and how many days the device has been in repair.

An overdue date glows red both on the job and in the list. Above the list sits an "overdue" tile with a count: one click shows every device whose date has passed while the repair is not finished. Urgent repairs have their own flag and their own tile.

Honestly: the software does not work out the due date by repair type and does not remind an employee that something is due tomorrow. It shows you the state when you look at it. A morning glance at the "overdue" tile is all the discipline required.

The estimate: what the amount is made of

The price of a repair is not a single number somebody once typed in — it is an estimate. The first line is the base set at intake: the repair price from the device price list, diagnostics only, a custom price, or the brand's warranty price list. The base is fixed: if you change your prices, jobs already booked in are not repriced.

Then the technician adds lines: what was done, quantity, price, amount and who did it. A line can be picked from the list of labour items — the name and price fill in — or from stock, in which case the part is written off the stock level by itself (spare parts). Each line's amount is calculated as you type, the total sits under the table. There are no discounts or VAT in the estimate: it is the price for the customer, as you quote it.

The estimate goes into the completion certificate as a table, and in the portal the customer sees the same lines.

Getting the estimate approved

When diagnostics show the repair will cost more than quoted at intake, the estimate goes to the customer with a button on the job — by email or Telegram, as a link. The customer opens a page with the lines and the total and presses "I agree" or "I decline", with a comment if they like. The answer, date and amount appear on the job and in its history.

What gets approved is exactly the estimate you sent. If something changed after sending, the job warns you that the customer saw a different amount. The job status does not change by itself on the answer — a person sets "in repair" (what the customer sees).

A status change with a comment

The status is changed right on the job, from your list of statuses. Next to it is a "Comment" field: "waiting for the board from China, promised by Friday" goes into the history on the same line as the status change. A week later nobody has to ask why the device sat for two days in "waiting for parts".

The work log and comments

Alongside the estimate the technician keeps a work log: a line per action, with author and time. The estimate answers "what is the customer paying for", the log answers "what was done and what was found". Both go into the certificate.

Separately there are comments only staff can see: what you need to know about the repair but do not need to show the customer.

History: who changed what, and when

Thirteen fields of the job are watched: status, technician, manager, repair type, base price and price, promised date, repair finished date, handover date, payment date and type, urgency and branch. On top of those come every estimate line, every payment, the customer's approval and the comment on a status change.

It all lands in one timeline with an icon for each kind of change: what it was, what it became, who and when. The human form of the value is recorded — "Ready", not "6" — so an owner can read the history, not only a programmer.

It is the sort of thing nobody notices until it is needed. And it is needed on exactly the day somebody says "I didn't do that".

Payment: prepayment, balance, what is left

A repair can have several payments. A prepayment for a part is recorded on the day of intake, the balance at pickup; each payment has an amount, date, method (cash, card, bank transfer, your own options in a list) and a note. Next to the estimate you see what is due, what has been received and what is left: "balance due", "overpaid" or "paid in full".

The "unpaid" tile above the list shows how many devices have been handed over or are ready without full payment, and for what total. It is the simplest way not to lose money on small things: the device was collected, the technician was busy, the front desk got distracted, and the balance simply never reached the till.

When the customer declines the repair

Half of all diagnoses end with "no, a new one is cheaper". That is a normal outcome of the work, and it deserves to be recorded rather than just forgotten.

If you charge for diagnosis, the job's base is switched to "diagnostics only" — the price comes from the device's price list, next to the repair price. The "repair declined" status is marked as closing: the device leaves the working filters, the handover date is filled in, and the job keeps everything — what was taken apart, what was found, how the customer answered the estimate.

This matters six months later, when the same customer brings the same device: a search by serial number shows it has been looked at before, and with what conclusion.

Handover and storage

One of your statuses is marked "ready", others "closed": handed over, declined, returned. When a job becomes ready, the software records the repair finished date by itself; when it is closed, the handover date. Put back into work, both dates are cleared. Nobody has to type them: they are set on the same day anyway, and it is a step that gets forgotten.

A device that is ready but not collected shows how many days it has been waiting. The free storage period is set in the settings: once it runs out, the counter turns red and a "past free storage" tile appears above the list — who to ring today.

Closed jobs disappear from the working filters but do not go anywhere: the device history by serial number shows them all.

What you get

• Every repair has an owner — separately the person fixing it and the person handling the customer.
• A due date you can see, and overdue work you cannot miss.
• An estimate line by line instead of one number from thin air — and the customer's approval recorded on the job.
• Prepayment, balance and what is left for every repair, and above the list the total still unpaid.
• A history of every change — with author, time, comment and human-readable values.
• Finished and handover dates that set themselves, and a storage counter for ready devices.

What it costs

Everything listed is part of the subscription: no charge per employee and no charge for a second location.

You can see how it looks in the demo. Related pages: the repair intake form and reports and statistics.

Frequently asked questions