System User Guide

📋 Overview

This system manages service workshops and vehicle dealerships end to end. It was designed by people who have run dealership workshops for more than 20 years — so it is built on a real understanding of daily operations, not on software considerations alone.

It covers the full cycle: receiving the vehicle and opening a work order, proposing and issuing parts and operations, managing multiple warehouses, quality control and cost-centre allocation, invoicing and collection, through to handover. On top of that it adds vehicle sales, annual stock rollover, and a management performance board.

Each workshop runs on a completely separate database — physical isolation, not logical, so a coding mistake cannot leak data between workshops. Permissions are fine-grained and customisable for each of the 11 roles, with a fully bilingual interface that runs in any browser with nothing to install.

🗂️ Sections and functions

🔄 Work order flow

Two gates that cannot be bypassed:

• No move to "Cost allocation" while any operation has no assigned technician.
• No move to "Ready for handover" while any line has no cost centre — who pays must be settled before invoicing.

Sending an order back to "In progress" from a later stage is limited to the maintenance manager, the deputy, and quality control — it undoes their work and the warranty reviewer's. Reception and technicians cannot do it.

"On hold" is a side state, not a stage in the sequence. Use it while waiting for a part or the customer's approval.

⚙ Parts: proposing, issuing, returning

A proposed part is not an issued part. Proposing deducts nothing from stock, enters no total, and is never charged to the customer — it is an intention, not a commitment. Actual issuing happens through an issue voucher raised by the storekeeper.

• Issue voucher: built on the work order; it converts proposed lines into issued ones and deducts them from stock.
• Returns: an issued part that was not fitted is returned on its own voucher. The issue line is never deleted — the returned quantity is recorded and the full audit trail survives.
• A part damaged during fitting is not returned — its cost centre changes and a replacement is issued.
• Issuing and returning are limited to the "In progress" stage.

Reorder point: each part has its own threshold per warehouse — the workshop store is replenished from the main one so a low threshold suffices, while the main store is bought in from outside and needs a higher one. A part's status comes from its worst warehouse, not the total: a part with 26 in the main store and zero in the workshop store still raises an alert, because the technician drawing from the workshop store will be stopped.

Lost demand: when stock is short, a button appears to log the request. Real demand = issued + lost — a part issued zero times and lost seven has a demand of seven. The figures are reviewed periodically and the system suggests a policy (stock it / don't stock / watch), but the storekeeper decides.

🏬 Warehouses and annual rollover

A warehouse has three states:

• Active — only one at a time; it is the default source for issuing.
• Side — can be transferred to and from, and appears in selection lists.
• Archived — read-only: no issuing, receiving, or transfers, and hidden from lists.

The annual rollover moves the count into the new year's warehouse in ordered steps:

1. Create the new warehouse.
2. Raise a rollover voucher and enter the counted stock — the old location and quantity are pulled in automatically for each part, and the location can be edited.
3. Review the differences report: shortages, surpluses, parts not counted, and new ones.
4. Approve the voucher — the new warehouse becomes active and the old one is archived permanently.

No warehouse is rolled over on its own — otherwise two years' balances mix in one system. The system flags any active warehouse that has not been rolled over.

💵 Cost centres

The cost centre decides who pays — the most important field on a line after quantity and price. It has two dimensions:

• Is it collected from the customer? — this drives what appears at the cashier. Warranty work is never billed to the customer.
• Where does the revenue come from? — customer · maker (warranty) · internal (absorbed by the workshop).

That is why the performance board keeps the three apart and never lumps warranty in with what the workshop absorbs.

📊 Management performance board

A board for the maintenance manager, printable for the owner or the board of directors. It separates revenue into four sources:

• Parts revenue — with cost, profit, and margin.
• Labour revenue — with hours and average hourly rate.
• Direct sales — with cost and profit.
• Warranty — in USD, broken down by maker under its own agreement.

Three rules govern every figure: proposed lines are excluded · quantities are net of returns · the revenue source decides where a line is counted.

Targets: daily and monthly for four metrics — vehicles in, vehicles delivered, delivery rate, and revenue. A daily target is multiplied by the number of days in the period; a monthly one is used as is.

Charts: revenue by source — daily for periods up to a month, monthly beyond that. A doughnut shows each source's share.

🚗 Vehicle sales

The price of a vehicle belongs to the sales department, not to after-sales. The system neither records nor collects a sale price — the deal is handled outside it. Only one event matters here: the transfer of ownership, because it starts the warranty.

• Showroom stock: company-owned vehicles whose ownership has not been transferred. Entered manually or imported from Excel.
• Import: only the VIN is mandatory; everything else is optional. Makes and models that do not exist are created automatically — check the spelling before importing, since a single differing character creates a second, separate make.
• Ownership transfer: starts the warranty from that date, removes the vehicle from the showroom, and is recorded in the vehicle's ownership history.

Two warnings on transfer: the pre-delivery inspection (PDI) is incomplete, or the vehicle has an open recall campaign. The first requires an explicit acknowledgement; the second is a notice only — the campaign follows the vehicle regardless.

💰 Cashier and collection

Collection happens only at the cashier screen, which has two modes: "Due for payment" and "Receipts".

• It lists outstanding work-order balances and unpaid direct-sale invoices.
• It bills the customer only for what is collectible from them — warranty, workshop, and technician lines are excluded.
• It accepts partial payments, and each collection produces a numbered receipt that can be reprinted.
• Direct sales: parts are not issued when the invoice is created — collection is what issues them.

The preliminary invoice is a price estimate shown to the customer before work begins: it brings parts and operations together, has no effect on stock, and lists operations by description and total without breaking out duration and hourly rate.

Refunding a customer

An issued receipt is never deleted or edited. It was issued with a number, handed to the customer, and may already sit in the day's accounts — deleting it removes a number from the sequence with no explanation, and editing it changes the value of a document the customer holds a copy of.

A refund is a counter-document, not an erasure: a refund receipt is issued under its own sequence (REF-), the original stays exactly as it was, and the balance is correct.

• Cash or transfer — a deferred refund is a contradiction, and a cheque needs a banking step the system does not record.
• A reason is required — money leaving the till with no written reason is a control gap.
• It cannot exceed what is available — partial refunds are summed so their total never passes the original.
• Amounts due are net of refunds — so an order never shows as settled when half of it was refunded.
• A receipt prints in red — telling it apart from the blue collection receipt at a glance, since the two look alike and mean the opposite.

👥 Roles and permissions

The system provides 11 roles, and each workshop can set every role's permissions on every screen at three levels: view · edit · delete.

Parts & Aftersales Manager Deputy Manager System Manager Workshop Foreman Reception Technician Store Clerk Store Manager Quality Control Warranty Reviewer Cashier

Quality control ≠ warranty reviewer: the first is a technical judgement on the quality of the work; the second is a financial judgement on who pays.

Action permissions

The three levels describe the screen, and some actions inside it are too consequential to leave to a screen permission — discounts, refunds, approving the annual rollover. Those get their own permission.

• By role — the general rule: "every deputy manager may discount".
• And by user — the exception: "Ahmed may, his colleague may not", though they hold the same job.

The exception works both ways: it grants to someone whose role does not allow it, and denies someone whose role does. It always takes precedence over the role.

Work order discounts

• Only on what the customer pays — warranty lines are never discounted, or the maker's claim would be cut for no reason.
• A reason is required — as with refund receipts.
• There is a cap in company settings to prevent a typo (meaning 5% and typing 50%).
• Zero clears it, with no reason needed.

Permissions can also be exported and imported between workshops, so they are set once and carried over.

📱 Customer vehicle tracking

A public page the customer opens without logging in, reached by scanning the QR code printed on the work order, or by entering the workshop name, plate number, and work order number.

It shows: the vehicle's current status, the requested work, the intake and expected handover dates, and the workshop's logo and name.

Message to customer: a field where staff write a message shown to the customer on the tracking page — for when reaching them by phone fails. For example: "Please call the workshop — extra work needs your approval".

🌐 Bilingual interface

The interface fully supports Arabic and English, switched from the AR / EN buttons at the bottom of the sidebar. The layout flips with the language automatically.

What is translated and what is not:

• Translated: part descriptions and operation descriptions — shared references seen by everyone, so each reads them in their own language.
• Not translated: make and model names — proper nouns for a single entity, kept in English for matching.
• Not translated: the customer's name, notes, and complaint — written once, in the language of whoever wrote them.

🔐 Security and sessions

Sessions last one day. After that you sign in again. This is deliberate: workshop machines are shared, so a long session means whoever sits down next works under the previous person's account.

An account locks after 5 failed attempts. It is unlocked immediately by the maintenance manager or the system manager from the users screen — no waiting period, so nobody sits idle.

Anyone granted the users-screen permission sees only their own record and changes only their own password — except the maintenance manager and the system manager, who see everyone.

Passwords are at least 8 characters. A locked account will not open with the right password — it must be unlocked first.

Edit buttons appear disabled for anyone with view-only permission — so they don't fill in a form that will never save.

💾 Backups

Your workshop's data is protected by regular automatic backups — the technical details are handled by system administration.

A workshop can also export its full data from the settings screen — before the subscription ends.