One lift, one mechanic: booking jobs by their real length

If you work alone on one lift, you can book each job as a block of time at its real length: a service is one block, brake pads another, a timing belt a half-day. Create one service per job type, open slots one after the other through your day with no overlap, and leave a buffer for the surprises every car brings. Customers pick the job, then a free block, and your day is planned by the work itself, not by a queue of cars in the yard.

Larger garages can book the drop-off and plan the work later. With one lift and one pair of hands, you can't run two cars at once, so the drop-off approach can just move the queue to your yard. Booking the job itself tells the customer when to come, and tells you exactly what's on the lift and when. It works best for jobs whose length you can predict; diagnostics and unknown noises need a different approach, below.

Lengths and prices are examples: use your own times for the cars you usually see. On Book, a service has a name, an optional description and a price. The length comes from the slots you open: a slot belongs to one service and has its own start and end, so "Full service" slots are two hours long and "Pads" slots one hour. A slot sits within one day, so a job that needs the car overnight is booked on its first day, with a note in the description.

Book doesn't stop slots of different services from overlapping, so the plan is yours. A simple pattern for a one-lift day:

The catch: if you open both a half-day slot and two one-hour slots on the same morning, a customer could book each, and you'd have three jobs for one lift. Choose one layout per day. One way is to dedicate days: long jobs on Mondays and Tuesdays, short jobs the rest of the week, each pattern repeated on those weekdays until an end date.

A warning light or a strange noise can take ten minutes or a day. Book those as a short "Diagnosis" slot, then book the repair itself as a separate job once you know what it is. When you've found the fault, create the booking from your calendar with the customer's name, and enter their email so they get a confirmation with a calendar file.

Look back at the last few weeks: which jobs ran over, and by how much? If a one-hour pad job regularly takes seventy minutes on older cars, make the slot seventy-five minutes, or leave fifteen minutes between slots. It's better to finish early and tidy the workshop than to make every afternoon customer wait.

The booking form asks for first name, last name, email and phone, plus an optional note. Ask for the registration, model and engine, mileage, and for repairs, what's wrong. With the model, you can order parts before the car arrives; you receive an email for each new booking with the note.

A seized bolt or a wrong part can push your day. The end-of-day buffer absorbs small overruns. For bigger ones, reschedule the next job from your bookings list and call the customer: Book doesn't email customers when a booking changes, and customers can't move bookings online. If a customer calls, walks in or books by phone, create the booking yourself so the slot is no longer offered.

Book costs €5/month, everything included: unlimited bookings and services, no commission, no contract. Quotes, parts and payment stay in your usual tools.