Setting your shop up

A new shop opens on Welcome, which lists seven things in the order they matter. You can do them in any order and doing the thing is what ticks the box — there is no "mark as done". The line above them counts for you: 0 of 7 done.

The seven, in the order the screen lists them: Set your labor rate, Set up the schedule, Add your shop contact details, Set up tax, Invite your team, Add your first customer and Start your first repair order. Each carries its own button through to the screen that owns it.

The first two are the pair people conflate, and they are separate steps with separate ticks. Set your labor rate is satisfied by saving a rate in Shop settings; Set up the schedule is satisfied by saving your week in Schedule settings. A shop that priced its labor and never told the scheduler when it is open gets the first tick and not the second, which is the point of their being two.

Two of them are worth doing before you quote anything, because a repair order takes a copy of your labour rate and your tax rates at the moment it is created and keeps them. Fix a rate later and open orders keep what they were quoted at. That is correct behaviour — you should not silently reprice work a customer already approved — but it does mean a wrong rate on day one follows you around for a week.

Profile — who and where your shop is

One form, at Settings > Profile, and one Save profile button saves all of it: your Shop name, the Name on documents if your customers should read a different one, your Legal name and DBA, your Email and Phone, your logo, your address, your Time zone and your certifications. These used to be spread over three screens.

Type your address once. It prints at the top of your estimates and invoices, and it is what your phone agent tells a caller who asks where you are — the two used to be different fields and only one of them could be edited. Getting here is optional and is spoken rather than printed: what you would tell somebody on the phone who cannot find the entrance.

Two things on that page are values with a link rather than boxes, and deliberately. Your text-messaging number and your Forward calls to number are provisioned with a carrier rather than typed, so the profile shows what each one is and sends you to the screen that sets it. Your billing currency can be corrected here until the shop stores its first price or money figure; after that it stays visible and explains why changing the label would restate history rather than convert it.

Shop settings

The gear at the bottom of the rail opens Settings, which lists every settings screen in six groups with a line under each saying what it does. Shop settings is the first thing on that list, and labour pricing, tax, follow-up and invoice gates all share it — Settings > Shop settings — where one Save settings button, on a bar that stays at the foot of the screen while you scroll, saves all of it at once. Every other settings screen has its own row on the index rather than a button on this page.

Labor pricing

Labor rate prices every estimate. The label names your own currency per hour, so a Canadian shop reads CA$ there and on every total the rate feeds. This page owns the price of labour; the calendar's capacity is set separately. Named rates live under Settings > Labor rates. If another tab changes a named rate before you save, Torqix keeps the newer name and amount, shows their current values and asks you to review them instead of overwriting them.

Sales tax

One jurisdiction row is open, with a name, a rate and what it taxes. Press + Add jurisdiction for a second, a third and a fourth — four is the limit, and any you have already filled in are open when the page loads. There is also a Rounding choice. Tax rounds once per jurisdiction at the invoice level, which is what keeps a total from landing a penny out.

Customer follow-up

A Review link and a Service reminder interval. Both build worklists. Neither sends anything on its own.

Workflow gates

A QC checklist — one check per line — and Required before invoicing. Leave either empty and nothing changes.

Schedule settings

Open Schedule > Schedule settings for the shop timezone, bay capacity, slot length and each day's opening hours. Closed time is hatched on the calendar, and bookings outside those hours are refused. Bays mean concurrent appointments, not technicians. Name your bays in Settings > Bays and the count of active bays there becomes the capacity.

Tightening hours or capacity previews appointments that would conflict. Saving does not move or cancel those existing appointments; it marks the conflicts and applies the new rule to later bookings.

What you make compulsory before an invoice

Nothing is required by default. Under Required before invoicing you tick what your shop refuses to invoice without: Mileage in, A customer phone number, A customer email, The vehicle VIN (counter sales excepted).

An advisor who is missing one is told which, by name, before the invoice exists. An owner or manager can still push it through by typing why, and that reason goes on the record with their name on it. That is the shape most of the gates in Torqix take: a rule with a documented way past it beats a rule people work around.

What the customer's invoice says

That lives on its own page — Invoice template, linked from the top of shop settings and from the profile. The name, address, phone, email and logo at the top of the page come from your Profile; this screen is where the rest of the document is written. Under What the customer reads you set your Message to the customer, Payment terms and Warranty. Two switches control whether the invoice shows technician names and part numbers.

There is no switch for outside work, and that is deliberate. A sublet line reads Outside work on the customer's estimate, invoice and PDF, and never names the vendor you sent the job to — the same rule that keeps what the vendor charged you off the document. If you want to credit a specialist by name, write it into the line's own description or the note you leave on the job; both print word for word, and both are you choosing to say it.

Something to click around first

Welcome offers Load sample data — a shop's worth of realistic customers, cars and orders to learn on. It is marked as test data so it never reaches your real numbers, and Remove sample data takes it all back out.