Moving your garage off paper

Paper job cards work right up until you need to find one. Here is what changes when the same job lives on a screen, and exactly how the move goes.

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What moving to Pistonlog involves

Moving a garage off paper means putting job cards, vehicle records and customer details into one system instead of a job book and a filing cabinet. In Pistonlog you write down the same things you always did, but it is searchable, it is on a phone at the car, and it turns into an invoice. Existing customers and vehicles come across by CSV import, which the server previews before it writes anything and which can be rolled back for 24 hours. Old paper job cards do not come across and stay as paper.

Read the garage software migration checklist

What paper actually costs you

None of this is about being untidy. It is what happens to paper in a working garage.

Finding last year's job
The car is back in and you know you did something to it. Somewhere there is a card that says what. Ten minutes in the filing cabinet later you give up and have a guess.
The card that never came back
Written at the ramp, folded into an overall pocket, and now it has been through the wash. The work happened. Nothing is written down and nothing gets billed.
Billing off what people remember
Parts and hours get totted up at the end of the week from memory. Whatever nobody remembers, you pay for yourself.

How the move goes

You are not typing five years of history back in. You bring the customers and the cars, and start today's work on a screen.

  1. 1.Get your customer list into a spreadsheet

    An address book, a card index, the back of the diary, whatever you keep them in. Type the ones who still come in, not every name you have ever had. Most garages get the active list done in an afternoon.

  2. 2.Fill in the Pistonlog template

    Download the template and paste your list into it. Customer name, business name, phone, email and address, then the registration, make, model, year, fuel, MOT date and mileage for each vehicle. Anything you have not got, leave blank.

  3. 3.Read the preview before anything is written

    Upload it and the server works out what it would do, then shows you. New customer, matched to one already in Pistonlog, or unclear. Nothing is written yet. Anything unclear stops the import rather than guessing which record you meant.

  4. 4.Commit it, and undo it if you need to

    When the preview looks right, commit. It all goes in as one lot, so you never end up half imported. If it turns out wrong you have 24 hours to roll the whole thing back.

  5. 5.Start the next job on the screen

    The old cards stay in the cabinet. Everything from today goes on a jobcard instead. Give it a few months and you will not open that cabinet again, but nothing forces you to throw it out.

The filing cabinet was never the problem. Finding things in it was.

Everything you already write down, written down once, where you can get at it.

Ten Seconds
Any car, any job
Type the reg. Every job that car has had is there, with what you fitted and what you advised. No cabinet, no guessing, no ringing round to ask who did it.
Nothing Lost
Every hour gets billed
Parts and labour go on as the job happens, not from memory on Friday. The bill builds itself out of what is already written down.
In Your Hand
The job card is at the car
Fill it in on a phone stood at the ramp. No walking back to the office, no second copy, no card to lose on the way.
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Questions before you move

The things garage owners actually ask, answered straight.

Will I lose all my old job history?
It does not come across, but you do not lose it either. The import brings customers and vehicles. Old paper job cards stay exactly where they are. Most garages keep the filing cabinet for a year, refer to it a handful of times, and then stop.
Do I have to type everything in again?
No. Get your customers and their vehicles into a spreadsheet once, paste it into the Pistonlog template, and the import does the rest. Only the first list is manual work, and only for customers who still come in.
How long does the whole thing take?
Typing up an active customer list is usually an afternoon. The import itself takes minutes. Getting the habit of writing the job on a screen instead of a card takes a week or two, which is the part worth planning for.
What happens if the import goes wrong?
You see a full preview before anything is written, and any row Pistonlog is not sure about stops the import instead of guessing. After you commit, you have 24 hours to roll the entire import back.
Is my customer list safe while it is being imported?
Only the account owner can run an import, and they have to enter their password again to do it. Your rows are encrypted while they are staged, are never written into logs, and are deleted after the import finishes.

Have a look before you move anything

Set up an account, run a couple of real jobs through it, and only bring your customers across once you know it suits your garage.

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