A Service Log for Your Workshop: Vehicles, Jobs and Spare Parts in One App

The simplest way to run a small workshop's service log is an app with four linked tables: Work Orders, Vehicles, Parts and Mechanics. In Ambisius you start from the Auto Repair Shop template or bring in the Excel sheet you already keep, and your mechanics update jobs from their phones. Each work order adds up its own parts, and each vehicle keeps its full service history.

Why the service spreadsheet stops working

Most workshops start with one sheet: date, plate number, customer, complaint, work done, parts used and price. For the first few months it works. Then the same customer is typed three different ways, a plate number has a space in one row and not the next, and finding a motorbike's last oil change means scrolling and guessing. Spare parts live on another tab, so the stock count rarely matches what actually went into the cars. And out on the floor, nobody wants to open a wide grid on a phone with greasy hands just to mark a job as done.

The problem isn't you. A flat sheet has no idea that one vehicle comes back many times, or that one job uses several parts. That is what proper auto repair shop software for a small workshop should know for you. Once the data knows those links, most of the retyping and double-checking goes away.

Flip the switch to see the same jobs as a spreadsheet and as linked tables in Ambisius.

What you'll set up

Vehicles holds each car or motorbike once: plate number, make and model, the owner's name and a phone number you can tap to call. Mechanics lists the people on your team. Parts is your spare parts list, with a selling price and the stock on the shelf. Work Orders is the heart of it: one record per job, linked to one vehicle and one mechanic, with a status, the complaint, the date and photos.

Work Orders and Parts are joined by a Line Items property. Instead of a "parts" text cell, each work order holds a short list of lines: which part, and how many. You pick the part from your Parts list rather than typing it, so there are no spelling variants and no parts that don't exist. Rename a part once and every work order shows the new name.

Set it up in five steps

1. Create the four tables, or start from the Auto Repair Shop template, which already has them. If your service log is in Excel, the agent can read the file and import the rows for you.
2. On Work Orders, link each job to one Vehicle and one Mechanic, and add a Single Select status such as Waiting, In progress, Waiting for parts, Done and Picked up.
3. Add a Line Items property called Parts used, linked to Parts, with a quantity on each line. Then add a Rollup that sums price times quantity into a Parts total, and a Formula for the bill written in plain words: "parts total plus labour".
4. On Vehicles, add a Formula such as "days since the last service", so each record tells you when a regular customer is due again. Every work order for that vehicle is linked to it, which gives you its service history in one place.
5. On Parts, add a Formula like "Stock status: Low if stock is under 5, otherwise OK", then save a view filtered to Low. That view is your reorder list.

Try it here: add the parts a mechanic used, change the quantities and see the bill update, labour included.

Your mechanics on their phones

On a phone, a spreadsheet is a tiny grid. The Ambisius mobile app shows each work order as a card and every change as a form. A mechanic opens the job, changes the status, adds the parts they used and attaches a photo of the worn part through an Image property, one-handed. They swipe to move between tables and views instead of hunting for sheet tabs, and a density toggle lets them see just the key fields or everything on the card.

Give each person the view they need. A Today view filters Work Orders by date, a Waiting for parts view filters by status, and grouping by status shows the whole floor at a glance. Mechanics join as Members, who carry no seat cost. If they should see the parts list but not change prices or stock, set the Parts table to Restricted and give them Viewer access. Only you and your Admins change the structure and save views, so the setup stays the way you built it.

Questions people ask

Ready to try it? Start from the Auto Repair Shop template and swap the sample data for your own vehicles, parts and mechanics.