Scheduling

The Schedule page is your shop calendar in Week, Day, and Month views. Day view lays out lanes by tech or by bay on a time grid, with the day's job count, drop-off capacity used versus offered, and how many jobs still need dispatch.

Bays are optional everywhere. Nothing requires assigning one. A mobile operation can group the day by tech and ignore bays entirely; assigning the job to a technician is all the dispatch you need.

Creating appointments

• Quick add. Click an empty slot, or drag out a span, and a small popover books it right there: type what it is, adjust Starts and Ends from their time pickers (a short list that scrolls and snaps in 15-minute steps; the day opens a month grid with the coming week on top, and you can type a date like 10/24), optionally pick a tech, add a note, done. From Month view the entry books as anytime that day unless you choose Set a time. The Link a car or customer field searches your existing customers and their vehicles: pick a car and the appointment books against it with its owner as the customer; pick a person and it books for them with no car yet (the popover says No car yet · add it when they arrive, and you are asked which car they brought when they arrive). Under the results sit the same two rows as the work sheet: New customer takes a name and phone right in the popover and books that customer-only appointment; New vehicle opens the work sheet in its car-first flow (catalog, VIN or plate, then the owner) with your span already filled in. Without either, Appointment puts a bare booking on the calendar (open it later to add the name and phone, or link the car then). Block time just holds the window. Full form opens the complete flow with your span already filled in.
• Schedule work opens the full flow, in the same order as the phone. First, who: one search box over your cars, plates and customers. The sheet opens quiet: under the box, approved work that still needs a booking is one line, 3 approved jobs waiting to be booked (only cars on the Vehicles page: never a deleted car or a job from a visit that is already closed), which opens the list in place (a typed term filters those jobs in as results), and New vehicle, New customer and Block time stay in view. Results come in two groups, Vehicles (year, make, model, plate, owner) and Customers (name, phone, how many cars they have). Pick a car and the owner comes with it; pick a customer and their cars list under the name, with Add a car for them at the end, or leave the car off entirely: a person with no car is a complete appointment (the sheet says No car yet · add it when they arrive and Add to schedule is live), and the car is asked for when they arrive; New customer is the name and phone and nothing else: it books a customer-only appointment (No car yet · add it when they arrive), and the car is added when they arrive; New vehicle goes the other way, the car first (year, make, model or a VIN), then its owner, found on file or typed; Block time is the last row when nothing is attached. Arrow keys walk the list from the search box and Enter picks. Then when: Timed or Drop-off, the date from a month grid (its title's month and year are menus, so a far date such as a birthday is year, month, day), Starts and Ends side by side (Ends follows Starts and keeps the length; moving Ends changes the hours), or tick No set time for an anytime job. Pick a car that already has jobs and the length fills itself from their labor, the hours on its open jobs added up and rounded up to the half hour, with the reason under it (2.1 h from 3 jobs' labor (Oil change 0.5, Brake pads 1.2, Alignment 0.4), rounded up to 2.5 h; change it and it reads Set by you with Use 2.5 h from labor to put it back; work longer than your open day books as a morning drop-off, and the schedule draws it as one appointment across the working days it takes: the drop-off day until close, then each following open day within your hours, closed days skipped, with its promise at the end of the last day), and the car page's Schedule and Change appointment and the phone fill it the same way. Booking a car that is not in the shop books it in: it shows in Scheduled on the Vehicles page right away, and clicking the appointment opens the car's page with the appointment in its header. Every booking also sets the visit's promise to 5:00 PM on the appointment day (your closing time if earlier, never before the appointment), and a car that is still in can be booked for its next appointment without touching the current visit. Then the tech and bay, a note, how the car will be here (Waiting, Drop-off, Towed; it follows the car onto its repair order when it arrives and the board says Waiting or Towed beside the customer), whether to text the customer, and one Add to schedule button. Switching Timed and Drop-off keeps everything you already picked.
• Appointments drag. Move one to a new time or day, drag it into another tech's column on Day view to reassign, or grab its bottom edge to change the hours. Drops snap to 30 minutes and land exactly where you point. A move asks whether to text the customer the new time, same as saving it from the edit dialog; blocks move silently. Every move or resize ends in a notice that names the new time with an Undo that puts it back. A cancelled appointment does not drag or resize; pulling on it says Cancelled. Restore it to move it. with Restore right there.
• Block time holds a window with no car, customer, or job attached: lunch, a hold for a walk-in, a bay out of service. It renders as a hatched grey span so it never reads as a booking. Click it to re-label, move, or remove it. Blocks never text anyone.
• Bookings also arrive on their own: from the booking page, from a customer picking a slot while approving a quote, and from outreach links. All of them pass the same capacity checks.

Customers can move a quote-linked appointment from their private link while it is still upcoming. The new time must be inside shop hours, beyond your booking lead time, clear of approved time off, and within current labor, bay, machine, and service capacity. Moving it preserves the appointment link and resets its reminder and confirmation state for the new time.

Anytime jobs. Next to the time field is an Anytime switch: pick a day, skip the slot. Made for mobile operations doing many short jobs: no time to invent, and hours are optional. Anytime jobs show in an "Anytime today" strip on Day view and as all-day entries on Week and Month. The form remembers your last choice, so a day-based shop sets it once. Two things to know: an Anytime job without hours doesn't count against the day's labor-budget capacity, and it never consumes public drop-off window seats.

Booking a car opens on the next open day by your shop hours and closures: today while the shop is still open, otherwise the first day you are open, never a closed weekday or a holiday. The day is decided before the form shows and does not move while it loads. On the phone, the three ways to book sit in one control at the top: Drop-off window, Any time or Exact time. Only the chosen one's pickers show under it, and the time starts at that day's first opening.

Mobile mechanics

Shops with mobile service turned on get a service address on every appointment: where the mechanic goes. Online bookings collect it from the customer (with your service radius enforced); when you book from the vehicle page or the mobile app, the same field is there, prefilled with the customer's last address. The schedule shows it on the slot as "Mobile · {address}".

Reading the grid

Each block is tinted by where the customer stands: blue is not confirmed yet, orange is reminded with no reply, green is confirmed (they replied to the reminder, or you marked it) or in the bay, red is a no-show. The first line is the time, then the vehicle; the customer and the work join once the block is an hour and a half tall, and a half-hour block is a single line. A wide enough block also prints the status word. Appointments that overlap share the column side by side in equal widths, so nothing hides behind anything; a no-show or cancelled one keeps to the right of the live ones. Cars that are in a bay right now show as one In bay now line at the top of today's column only; click it to open the car. The red line is now, and today's date is circled. Drop-offs, anytime jobs and time off sit in the row above the hours, one line each, up to three rows before +N more.

Month view keeps it to one line per appointment: a colored dot for the status, the start time, the vehicle. Time off and all-day entries show as a filled bar; a closed day is a shaded cell marked Closed. When a day holds more than fits, +N more opens the rest; click any line to open its popover, and drag a line onto another day to move it. Week, Day and Month, and the arrows between weeks or months, cross-fade into each other, and the hours open at the shop's opening time (or the current hour today).

The appointment popover

Click any appointment and a card opens beside it (on a phone it slides up from the bottom), and it always has the same shape. The top line is the vehicle, or the person when there is no car yet, with the day and time in words under it; up there sit only a pencil (opens the full appointment card: time, length, tech, car, work, note) and the ×. Then the facts as labeled rows, one line each, in the same order every time and skipped when empty: Customer (click the name for Open profile or Text, which lands in their normal text thread; the number sits after it as a call link), Car (No car yet until one is added), Work (No work scheduled when the visit is just a time), Tech (click the name, or Unassigned, to reassign on the spot), Note, Booked (Online when the customer booked it from your booking page; the block wears a quiet Online chip too), and Status in words with a small mark (Not confirmed yet, Reminded · no reply yet, No reply · check in, Confirmed · replied 9:12 AM, Arrived, No-show). Under the facts, one line, always the same two things. At the left, a split button: its left half is the one next step, Mark arrived while the visit is booked or confirmed (checks the car in and opens its RO; a person with no car is asked which car they brought first) and Open RO-0251 once the car is here; its chevron is the status menu, each row a state: Confirmed, No-show, Cancelled, and last, in red, Remove from schedule (asks Remove this from the schedule? first). No-show and Cancelled keep the appointment in its slot, crossed out and faded, so the day still tells the truth; only Remove takes it off. While an appointment is cancelled, the status menu offers Restore appointment instead: it asks whether to text the customer that they are booked (ticked by default when there is a number or email, untick it for a quiet restore), then puts the appointment back in its slot as a fresh booking, reading Not confirmed yet, with its reminders set to go again. Until it is restored, a cancelled appointment cannot be moved: the card's date and time are locked with the line Cancelled. Restore it to move it. and a Restore appointment link beside it, and the phone's time sheet says the same. At the right, a quiet RO-0251 chip that opens the repair order (Create RO when a car has none yet; nothing when there is no car, since Mark arrived creates it). A bare time block shows its label, the Tech row, and Reschedule with Remove behind the chevron. Escape or a click anywhere else closes it, and that click never books anything behind it.

The appointment card

Reschedule in the popover opens the full card. Mark arrived checks the customer in without leaving the schedule. Vehicle and Job jump to the work, and the phone and email icons are there when you'd rather call. Bare entries have a Link a car option that attaches the visit to the right vehicle after the fact.

What happens after an appointment

Booking does not check anything in. A car appointment holds a scheduled repair order from the moment it is booked (the slot and the RO stay together); an appointment booked for a person with no car has no RO at all. When the customer walks in, use Mark arrived (the popover, the appointment card, or the phone's appointment sheet): CarSignal checks the car and its RO in (opening the RO first when there is none yet), links the appointment to it, and takes you to the vehicle with a toast like Checked in · RO-0251. Marking the same appointment arrived twice lands on the same RO. Every visit has its own RO number: a returning car opens a new RO with the shop's next number, and the car page, the schedule and the printed sheets all name that one.

An appointment booked for a person with no car on it yet asks Which car did they bring? when they arrive: the customer's cars are rows (car and plate), and Add a car finds a new one the same way check-in does: type the year and model (2018 F-150) or a VIN, or the plate with its state, confirm the car it found, and Mark arrived. There are no year, make and model boxes to type. From the Vehicles board the same sheet also offers Open on the schedule; on the schedule it does not. Until then that appointment also shows on the Vehicles board's Scheduled lane as a row for the person (No car yet, next step Add the car on arrival), so a shop that books by name finds it where it looks.

Two heads-ups reach the bell and the phone's Inbox without any setting to turn on: at your opening time, one Today: 3 appointments notice listing each name, car and time (it opens the day on the schedule); and Arriving at 9:00 AM: Junaid Popalzai, 2018 BMW M3 fifteen minutes before each timed appointment, opening that appointment with Mark arrived one tap away. Anytime drop-offs are in the morning list but get no fifteen-minute notice.

Reminders and confirmations

When you book, Text the customer is checked: they get a confirmation right away and a reminder before the visit with a one-tap "Reply C to confirm." Untick it for a booking that should stay quiet (a courtesy hold, a customer who asked not to be texted) and that appointment sends nothing. The same checkbox is on the phone. The shop-wide switch, the words, the sender and the reminder's timing (about a day before, the morning of, or both) live on Outreach > Autopilot under Appointments; Follow up lists each reminder as Planned with the time it will send.

Where the customer stands is one state on every appointment, the same on the web and the phone: Not confirmed yet (nothing but the booking text so far), Reminded · no reply yet, No reply · check in, and Confirmed · replied 9:12 AM. The customer confirms by replying C, Yes, Confirm, Confirmed or a thumbs-up; it counts for their next upcoming appointment at your shop. When they do, the bell and the phone get a quiet Maria R. confirmed Thu 9:00 AM · 2018 Accord (no sound) that opens the appointment. If you reached them yourself, pick Confirmed from the popover's status menu (the phone's appointment sheet has the same menu): it reads Confirmed · marked by shop.

The nudge. If there is no reply 4 hours after the reminder, you get one Maria R. hasn't confirmed Thu 9:00 AM on the bell and the phone, with the appointment one tap away (call from the number, text from the name). It never comes later than 2 hours before the appointment, never outside your hours (it waits for opening), and never twice for the same appointment. There is nothing to turn on; the Appointment reminder row on Outreach > Autopilot states the rule and counts the unconfirmed ones.

No-shows

If an appointment is two hours past its start with no check-in, CarSignal flags it as a suggested no-show. It is a suggestion, not an automatic cancellation: confirm it with one tap, or dismiss it silently. Window drop-offs are excluded. A no-show closes only a visit that never arrived: mark a later appointment no-show on a car that is already checked in and that appointment is crossed out while the car, its RO and its jobs stay where they are (the toast says Marked no-show for the appointment; the car is still in the shop). Only this visit counts: a returning customer who misses their appointment is a plain no-show, even though the car was here last time.

Approved but never booked

When a customer approves work but is not in the shop and has no upcoming appointment, CarSignal starts nudging your team after a day, once per day, until someone books them. Approved revenue should never quietly evaporate. An online booking with a picked time is already a real appointment and needs none of this. Only a request without a time keeps a pending entry on the calendar ("Requested · still needs a time", or "Approved · still needs a time" once approved) through the quote being sent and approved; it leaves when a real appointment is booked or the job is closed.

Closing the shop for a day

Closed for Labor Day, a vacation week, or a training day? Admins tap Close shop on the Schedule page and pick the date or range, with an optional reason. Closed days offer no online booking slots, customers cannot reschedule onto them, auto-scheduling skips them, and your team gets a warning if they try to book one (they can still override for a one-off intake). On the calendar a closed day is a shaded column with Closed under its date (hover it for the reason); to reopen it, open that day in Day view and tap Closed.