The board and its three views

Board is the shop's open work. The tabs across it are Columns, List and Parts & Tires. Each tab shows an exact count. Columns and List count the same open tickets; Parts & Tires counts the part lines attached to those tickets.

The three views

Columns

The stage board: Estimate, Approved, In progress, QC, Ready and Invoiced. Drag a card or use its named move actions. Paid and closed work leaves the board.

List

The same open tickets as rows. Use it when comparing customers, vehicles, stages, promises and totals is easier down a table than across lanes.

Parts & Tires

Part lines already attached to open repair orders, grouped by their part status. Change a part on its order; this view is a worklist, not a second parts editor.

The board opens the way you left it

The advisor lens, your Card view and hidden stage lanes are saved on your membership as you change them. Card view is what a card SHOWS — Comfortable, Compact or Photo — and it is not the same control as the Density in your profile menu, which is how big everything is on every screen. Photo widens the lanes and puts a large picture of each car on its card: the photograph from that car's own record where there is one, and a tinted outline of the body shape where there is not. There is no separate Save button; the summary always reads the view you are on. When any lens is active the toolbar says Filters are in this URL. Your card view and hidden lanes are saved for you. These are view preferences, never permissions; Everyone and each hidden-lane chip put the full view back.

Everybody's work at once

Group by sits beside Card view and has two answers. Stages is the board you already know: six columns, every car in one of them. Technician keeps those same six columns and draws a row for each person who can hold a car, so you can compare four people's mornings without pressing anything. It is a layout, not a filter — no car is hidden by it, and every car is in exactly one row. Rows are in name order with unassigned cars at the top, and each row says how many cars it holds. The choice is saved on your membership, like Card view.

A row is whoever HOLDS the car — the same person the card's own footer names, and the same person the card's Assign list opens on. Cars nobody holds sit in the Unassigned row, which is the word those cards already print on themselves.

One Filters control, with a count

Every way of narrowing the board is behind one Filters control above the lanes: advisor, technician, customer tag, tag colour, order label, bay, waiting-or-drop-off and how long a car has been here. The control carries the number of lenses that are switched on, so a narrowed board always says it is narrowed, and it opens itself whenever any of them is set — press a chip and the whole set stays in front of you, with each option's live count, until you clear it. Each chip's number is the board that pressing it produces, and a facet a shop has nothing to filter by draws no row at all. The customer tags on offer are the ones the cars on the board are actually carrying, the same way the bay chips name only bays with a car in them: a tag none of today's work wears would only ever produce an empty board, so it waits until a car wearing it comes in.

A board showing one lane

On the dashboard, each lane name in the workflow card is a link, and following it opens the board narrowed to that lane. It is a lens for that visit only: the board shows a chip reading the lane's name with a cross after it, and clearing it puts the whole board back. Nothing about how your board opens next time is changed, which the card says as well — Each lane opens the board narrowed to it, for that visit only — your saved view does not change.

A link like that beats your own saved view, on purpose: asking to see the three cars in Ready and getting an empty board because you hid that lane last Tuesday would be Torqix arguing with you. When the lane you followed is one you hide, the board says exactly that — This link is showing a lane your saved view hides. Your saved view has not changed — clear the lane and it is hidden again. Otherwise it says the lane came from a link rather than from your saved view.

The lane rides along with everything else in the address, so changing density, choosing an advisor or hiding another lane while you are in it does not throw it away.

Read the lane header before the cards

Every stage header counts its visible cards. When the facts exist it also shows the oldest card's age, how many are late, waiting on parts, waiting on approval, waiting on the customer, or unpaid, and the lane's open value. Money appears only for a role allowed to read it; the board says when figures were withheld instead of showing a false zero.

The board header's Utilization gauge compares today's billed hours with closed job punches on the shop's own clock; until both facts exist it says the reading is unknown instead of showing zero.

The two finished stages carry one extra button. Work that is finished can no longer be late — there is nothing left to forecast — so Ready and Invoiced instead say how many of their repair orders were opened a while ago, at the oldest of the age thresholds that still has cars in it: 2 sitting 7+ days. Press it and the board filters to exactly those cars, which is the same age filter in the toolbar. Nothing shows when nothing has been sitting.

There is no Parts hold stage any more. Waiting on a part is why work is stuck, not where the work is, so the card stays in its real stage with a Waiting on parts flag. The lane header counts that flag where the car actually sits.

The two lines about work filed elsewhere

Between the view tabs and the filters are up to two quiet sentences, each about something going stale on another screen, each with the way there in the middle of it. One counts the cold estimates filed under Follow-ups, which come back to the board on any new activity. The other counts purchase orders still in draft after a week — 3 draft purchase orders older than 7 days are waiting in Purchasing. A draft is an order nobody has placed. Purchasing is the link, and it opens the purchase order list already narrowed to drafts.

Neither line is drawn when its number is zero. A standing notice about nothing is a notice people learn to skip, so an absent line means there is nothing to chase — and the figure is the same one the parts room counts, not a second one computed here.

Work from a card

Up to three small links open the customer message thread, invoicing and the inspection checklist when your role allows them. Open the card's action row for Open, Assign, Schedule, Message, a callable phone number, the allowed next stages, and the reason a live job is waiting. Controls that your role or the ticket's state cannot use are not offered.

Handing a car to somebody is one control: the panel names who has it, and under that a list of people with Assign beside it. The list opens on whoever has the car now, so it is also the answer to "whose is this"; choosing Nobody and pressing Assign takes it off them. It is offered on the three stages where dispatch is the question — Approved, In progress and QC — and only to a role that may drive the ticket.