Paper log book and receipt pad: when to move to software

Plenty of workshops still run on paper: a carbon receipt pad, a log book on the counter, the job number written on the device with a marker. And it works — otherwise workshops would have dropped it long ago. This page is not about paper being old-fashioned. It is about keeping it properly, where it starts to cost you money and how to move to software when the time comes.

What paper does well

• It always works. No internet, no power, no updates needed.
• The customer signs on the spot, and the copy stays with you.
• It costs nothing but the pads.
• Nobody needs training. A new counter clerk fills in a receipt correctly on day one.

For a one-person workshop with a few repairs a week, that is enough. Switching just because “everything is on computers now” is not a good reason.

Where paper lets you down

• The copy is unreadable. Through carbon paper, names and phone numbers are hard to make out — and after six months, impossible. Exactly when the customer comes back under warranty.
• Searching means leafing. The customer rings asking about their phone, and their number is somewhere on page thirty. If they don’t remember the job number either, that is ten minutes gone.
• Overdue jobs are invisible. To see which deadlines have passed you have to reread the whole log. In practice you find out from the customer.
• One book for everyone. While one person books a device in, nobody else can check a repair. With two locations there are two logs, and nobody sees both.
• Lose it and it’s gone. Coffee spilt, taken home, burnt — there is no copy.
• Money by calculator. What each technician earned this month is worked out in the evening, matching the log against the till.

If you stay on paper: how to keep the log properly

• A pad with printed numbers. A job number never repeats and is never handwritten. Don’t tear out a spoilt form — cross it out, or the numbers will have gaps.
• A form with your terms. Diagnostics, free storage period, warranty — printed on the form, not said out loud. A ready-made form can be downloaded on the intake receipt page.
• The log separate from the pad. One line per repair: number, date, customer, phone, device, promised date, technician, date collected. The pad is for the customer, the log is for you.
• A tag on the device with the same number. A device without a number is the first candidate for a dispute.
• A weekly review of the log: what is overdue, what is ready but not collected, what is waiting for a part.
• A photo of the log every month on your phone or in the cloud. That is your backup.

If you keep the log in a spreadsheet rather than a notebook, spreadsheets have their own rules: tracking repairs in Excel.

What changes with software

• the receipt prints on a plain A4 sheet — with your logo, branch details and terms — and the customer signs it just like a paper one;
• the number is assigned automatically and never repeats; handwriting no longer matters;
• a repair is found by any digits of the customer’s phone, and all their repairs are on one card;
• status shows as a colour and overdue deadlines in red, without rereading anything;
• every job keeps a history: who changed what and when — status, price, technician, dates;
• the customer can check the stage of their repair in their own portal;
• the monthly report per technician is calculated from the jobs themselves;
• the database is backed up every day, so the log cannot be lost.

What paper has and the software doesn’t: it runs in a browser and will not open without internet. You can’t attach a photo of the device to a job, and the customer signs the printed sheet, not a screen.

How to move off paper

A handwritten log can’t be imported automatically, and that is fine. The simplest way: from Monday, book new devices in the software and finish the old ones from the pad. Repairs still in progress can be entered by hand in an evening — then everything open is in one place and the pad becomes an archive.

You can try the software without registering in the demo: book in a device the way you do at your shop. Prices are on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions