Promises & Risk
The promise time is when you told the customer they could have their vehicle back. It is set when the vehicle is checked in, and it is the number BayWise cares about most.
Everything else in a workshop is internal. The promise is the only thing the customer experiences.
Two different clocks
The commonest confusion on the board is between two numbers that both count down. They measure different things and they can disagree.
The countdown on a bay card is about the stage running right now: how long is left of the work in this bay. It counts from when work actually started, not from when it was planned to start, and a reported delay moves it.
The promise is about the vehicle: when it has to be back with the customer, whatever is happening in the bay.
A stage can be running over while the promise is perfectly safe, because there was slack in the day. A stage can be running exactly to plan while the promise is already lost, because the vehicle started three hours late. The board shows both, separately, on purpose.
If you only look at one, look at the promise. A stage running over is a workshop problem. A promise at risk is a customer problem, and it is the one that costs you.
The three promise states
Every vehicle sits in one of three states against its promise:
On track. The vehicle is expected to be finished before its promise time. No flag; nothing to do.
At risk. The vehicle is now expected to finish after its promise, but the promise has not passed yet. This is the state that matters, because it is the only one where you can still do something: reassign, expedite, or call the customer and move the time while the conversation is still an easy one.
Breached. The promise time has passed and the vehicle is not ready. The card shows how long ago, and the vehicle sits at the top of the action centre.
The promise chip on a bay card carries the state and the time. A vehicle promised for tomorrow or later shows the day rather than a time, so a three-day collision job does not look like a shop full of emergencies.
What happens when a promise goes at risk
Nothing automatic, and that is deliberate.
The vehicle appears in the action centre under Needs action, ranked by how soon the promise falls due, with a plain reason — “promise in 40 minutes”, “promise passed 12 minutes ago”. From there you can open the vehicle, move it to a different bay or technician, or work out what to tell the customer.
BayWise will not call the customer, will not silently move the promise, and will not quietly reorder the day so that this vehicle wins and three others lose. Which promise to protect when they compete is a commercial decision about your customers, and it stays with you.
Changing a promise
A promise can be moved. When a customer agrees to a later collection, updating the promise is what stops the vehicle appearing as a problem for the rest of the day — and, just as importantly, records that the change was agreed rather than forgotten.
Changing a promise is itself a change the day re-plans around: pulling a promise earlier can make a comfortable vehicle urgent, and pushing it later can release pressure on the rest of the afternoon.
The detail pane keeps the history of a vehicle’s promise changes, so at the end of a difficult job it is clear what was agreed and when.
Behind plan
Separate from both the countdown and the promise, a card can show that a vehicle is running behind plan — it will finish later in this bay than first planned.
This is often not the fault of the work in front of you. A job that starts late because the vehicle before it overran is behind plan while being worked perfectly well. The board says so in those words rather than implying that the technician is slow, which matters when the board is on a wall that the technicians can see.
Carried over
A vehicle that continued from yesterday by agreement at day close shows as carried over with the time that was agreed.
A carried-over vehicle is not late. It escalates only if it runs past what was agreed at close. This distinction is what keeps a body shop’s board readable — a five-day repair is not five days of alarm.
Setting promises well
The plan is built to meet the promises you set. Set them badly and you get a shop that is permanently at risk, which quickly trains everyone to ignore the colour.
Practical guidance:
- Promise the customer, not the workshop. The promise is when they can collect, not when the last stage is expected to finish. If you need thirty minutes to wash and invoice, that is inside the promise.
- Do not pad every promise by two hours. A shop that promises 5pm for everything has told BayWise that nothing is urgent, and lost the ability to tell the difference between a waiting customer and a car being collected on Friday.
- Say when a customer is waiting. A vehicle whose customer is sitting in reception is a different kind of job from one being collected tomorrow, and it should be promised accordingly.
- Move the promise when it moves. A promise renegotiated on the phone and not updated in BayWise is a vehicle that stays red all afternoon and teaches your team to stop looking.
Promises across a multi-zone shop
The longer a vehicle’s path through the shop, the earlier a promise gets into trouble, and the less obvious it is where the trouble started.
At Santos Body Works in São Paulo, a collision repair passes through body, prep, paint, cure, refit and quality check. A three-hour delay in prep on Tuesday does not show up as a problem in prep — it shows up as a paint booth that is now occupied on Thursday when another vehicle needed it, and two promises at risk on Friday.
Because every stage of every vehicle is planned together, that Friday consequence appears on Tuesday afternoon, in the action centre, while there is still a week to absorb it.