How to Set Up a Job Card System in Your Garage
A practical guide to designing and implementing job cards for a Kenyan auto repair workshop, from vehicle intake to release.
Every garage in Kenya has a story about a job that went wrong because of paperwork. A part that was ordered twice. A customer who was told one price and charged another. A vehicle that sat idle for three days because nobody remembered whose bay it was in.
A job card fixes all of that, if you set it up right.
What a job card actually does
A job card is not a receipt. It is a contract between your garage and a specific vehicle for a specific piece of work. It should record:
- Vehicle identification: plate, VIN, make, model, mileage at intake
- Customer details: name, phone, who authorised the work
- Problem description: what the customer reported
- Diagnosis: what your technician found
- Work authorised: parts and labour, with prices
- Technician assignment: who is responsible for what
- Status: pending, in progress, awaiting parts, QC, ready for release
- Parts used: pulled from inventory and logged
- Photos: before and after
- Sign-offs: customer, QC technician, and release authorisation
The four-stage flow that works for most Kenyan garages
- Intake. Vehicle arrives, front desk opens the job card, captures photos, logs mileage.
- Diagnosis and quotation. Technician inspects, lists work, front desk prices it and gets approval.
- Repair. Parts are pulled, labour logged, status updated as work progresses.
- QC and release. Final inspection, signed satisfaction note, release letter, invoice.
Most problems in Kenyan garages happen between stage 2 and stage 3, where the verbal approval the customer gave isn’t quite what the technician understood.
The signed approval letter
The single most valuable process change is to have every job authorised in writing before any technician starts work. A printed or digital authorisation letter, signed by the customer or the insurer, uploaded against the job card, closes 80 percent of disputes before they start.
With Gariclaim, authorisation letters are uploaded and protected behind OTP verification so the price the customer agreed to is the price on the final invoice.
Why paper job cards fail
Paper job cards work for garages doing three to five jobs a week. Past 10 jobs a week, four things break:
- Cards get lost between the front desk and the workshop floor
- Parts get pulled without being logged against the job
- Nobody can see the current status of every vehicle at a glance
- Invoicing lags days behind completion
Digital job cards fix all four at once. The moment a part is pulled, it hits the job card and the inventory count updates.
Getting started
If you are moving from paper, do not try to digitise everything at once. Start with intake and vehicle records, then job card creation and status, then parts pulled against job cards, then invoicing from completed job cards.
Once those four are running, extend the same flow to insurance repairs, add QC and release sign-offs, then roll out payroll for your staff.
Start a free Gariclaim trial and set up your first digital job card in under an hour.
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