Frequently Asked Questions
About the plan
Nobody schedules? Really?
Really. You describe your bays, technicians, hours and services once; BayWise produces the day and keeps producing it as things change. Your controller spends their time on the exceptions instead — the vehicles that need a human decision.
How do I know the plan is any good?
Two ways. First, watch what it does for a week against what you would have done — most controllers find the disagreements are informative rather than wrong. Second, watch your numbers: bay utilisation, promise adherence and estimation accuracy tell you whether the shop is genuinely running better.
If you disagree with a placement, it is almost always because a bay or a technician is described differently from how you actually use them.
A car landed in a bay I would never have used.
Check that bay’s capabilities and its description. If it says it can do the work, it will receive the work. Adding an explicit exclusion — “not for bodywork, paint, or alignment” — is usually the fix, and it fixes every future car, not just this one.
Why did a car move to a different bay on its own?
Something changed — an absence, an overrun, a bay going out of service — and the day re-planned around it. The change feed in the toolbar lists what moved.
Can I override the plan?
Always. Move a vehicle to a different bay, swap the technician, pause the work. Your decision stands and will not be quietly undone.
If you find yourself making the same override daily, change the configuration instead — an override fixes one car, a description fixes every car after it.
Why does it say a car could not be scheduled instead of just fitting it in?
Because squeezing it in would be a lie. Every vehicle already placed would have a finish time that could not happen, and you would discover it at 5pm rather than at 9am. An honest “no room today, here is why” at breakfast is worth more than a plausible plan that fails.
→ When a car could not be scheduled
About the day
Why does an unclosed day stop scheduling?
Because a plan built on an unclosed day is built on a guess — BayWise does not know whether the vehicle in bay six left last night or is still there. Closing takes two minutes and the alternative is a day of confident fiction.
Checking a vehicle in and clocking on are never blocked by the freeze.
→ Understand the scheduling freeze
Nobody who can close the day is here at closing time.
Then the day stays open and tomorrow’s scheduling is stopped until somebody closes it. If this happens regularly, give the closing permission to whoever is genuinely last out.
A carried-over car shows as carried over rather than late. Is that right?
Yes. Work carried over by agreement at day close is not late — it escalates only if it runs past what was agreed. This is what keeps a body shop’s board readable; a five-day repair is not five days of alarm.
About promises and time
The countdown and the promise disagree.
They measure different things. The countdown is about the stage running in that bay; the promise is about the vehicle and the customer. A stage can run over while the promise stays safe, and a stage can be on plan while the promise is already lost.
If you only look at one, look at the promise.
Everything is at risk every day.
Usually one of three things, in order of likelihood: catalogue durations are optimistic, promises are all set to closing time, or check-in timings are too tight. Start with per-service estimation accuracy in analytics — a service consistently taking a third longer than its estimate is manufacturing risk on every job.
A card says “Running behind plan” but the technician just started.
That means the vehicle will finish later in this bay than first planned — usually because the job before it overran. It is not a comment on the current technician’s pace.
About the floor
Will my technicians actually use this?
They use five controls: clock in, start, verify, pause, complete. Most of a technician’s day involves pressing two of them.
Whether it works depends less on the software than on what happens after a technician reports a delay. If they report ninety minutes and watch the next car get moved off their bay, they learn the button does something. If nothing changes, they stop pressing it.
→ Getting Started for Technicians
Is this timing my technicians?
It times the job. The reason lists are about what got in the way — parts, equipment, complexity, approvals — not about who was working.
If check-in data starts being used to criticise individuals, the honest numbers stop within a fortnight, and every figure in the product becomes fiction — including the ones you actually needed. The measure survives only as long as it is safe to answer truthfully.
The board keeps asking about jobs that are fine.
Your grace and cap are too tight for your kind of work. Diagnostic work in particular needs generous settings, because diagnostic time is genuinely unpredictable.
Why can a vehicle not be handed over automatically when the work finishes?
Because a vehicle is not handed over when the work is done — it is handed over when somebody gives the keys back. BayWise will keep telling you the bay is being held; it will never decide the car has left.
Setting up
What is the one thing that most affects plan quality?
Bay descriptions, with explicit exclusions. Second is recording technician skills against everybody who holds them rather than just your strongest person. Third is realistic service durations.
How long does setup take?
Two to three hours for a ten-bay shop, most of it describing bays and technicians. That is where the time should go.
→ Getting Started for Account Owners
One technician is always overloaded.
Look at the skills of the people around them before anything else. A skill recorded against one person tells BayWise only one person can do that work, and you will get exactly the plan that implies.
A bay is never used.
Its role, capabilities or equipment are excluding it from work it can actually do. Check the role is Work, and check the capabilities are not narrower than reality.
Practical limits
Does it work without AI configured?
Yes. The board, the plan, re-planning, check-ins, day close and every operational screen work identically. What you lose are the assistants — photo setup, skill suggestions, the repair analysis, BayWise Intelligence — not the engine.
Can I schedule further ahead than today?
Yes. Future days are planned with the full model — that day’s hours, availability, closures and capacity.
Does BayWise call or message my customers?
No. It identifies which promises are at risk and by how much. The conversation is yours, because it is a relationship with commercial consequences BayWise cannot see.
Can I use it on a tablet on the floor?
Yes. The board is built for it, and compact card density is designed for wall displays.
What happens to my data if I downgrade?
You keep full read access to everything. You simply cannot add new items beyond the smaller plan’s limits.