Getting Started for Workshop Controllers
Your job in BayWise is not to build the schedule. It is already built, and it rebuilds itself as the day moves.
Your job is the exceptions: the vehicles the plan cannot resolve on its own, and the calls only a person can make.
Who can do this: Workshop Controllers, Location Managers, Org Admins and Account Owners.
Before you start
- Your workshop’s bays, technicians and hours are set up
- You know your workshop’s clock-in rule — whether technicians must clock in to be planned
- Yesterday has been closed
The shape of your day
Open the board
The board is the home screen. Every bay is a card, grouped by zone, with the location’s own time running in the toolbar.
If a banner says an earlier day has not been closed, close it first — scheduling is stopped until you do. It takes a couple of minutes.
Take the morning reading — thirty seconds
Look at three things, in this order:
- The urgent count on the action centre. If it is zero, the day is planned and nothing needs you yet.
- The free count in the toolbar. How much capacity is genuinely uncommitted.
- Anything under “Could not schedule” — vehicles the day could not fit. These are your morning phone calls, and it is much better to make them at 08:00 than at 16:00.
That is the whole morning check. You are not reading the plan; you are reading the exceptions to it.
Work the action centre, not the floor
Open the action centre and work down it. Each row names a vehicle, gives a plain reason, and offers the actions available.
Start with Needs action — breached promises first, then promises falling due soon, then jobs that have run past their allocated time, then anything that has been paused too long or never started.
Then Unblock — finished vehicles still occupying bays. These are pure capacity you are not using, and clearing them takes seconds.
The other lenses are for looking at, not working: Waiting is the queue, In progress is the floor, and Could not schedule you handled in the morning check.
Handle the four exceptions that make up most days
A technician does not come in. Mark them absent. Their work is re-placed. Anything that cannot be re-placed appears by name under Could not schedule — those are your calls.
A job is going to run long. The technician reports it from the card, with how much longer and why. You do not have to chase this; the board asks. What you do is decide what to do about the vehicles behind it.
Parts have not arrived. Pause the work with the reason. The vehicle shows as held for parts, and if nobody updates it the board will ask whether it is still waiting.
Something fails its quality check. Reopen the stage. The vehicle goes back and carries a visible rework count so nobody mistakes it for fresh work.
Override when you need to, and mean it
You can always move a vehicle to a different bay, swap the technician, or pause the work. Your decision stands — it will not be quietly undone.
If you find yourself making the same override every day, stop overriding and change the configuration instead. An override fixes one car. A bay description fixes every car after it.
→ Move a car to another bay or technician
Check the change feed when you come back inside
The Updated control lists what changed while you were on the floor: cars in, cars out, work started, stages advanced, promises moved, things re-planned.
This is what makes it safe to leave the board.
Clear the exits before the last hour
At around an hour before close, filter the board to finished work and hand over anything ready. A vehicle finished at 15:00 and still in its bay at 17:00 is a bay you needed for the evening.
Close the day
Closing takes a couple of minutes. BayWise records what it can determine — what finished, what carried over, what never started — and asks you only about the things a person knows: is that parts hold still waiting tomorrow, is that unplaced car still wanted, is bay six actually empty now.
Close before you leave. If you do not, tomorrow’s scheduling will be stopped until somebody does.
What you should see after a normal day
- The action centre at or near zero urgent by close
- No finished vehicles still holding bays
- Every carried-over vehicle carrying a reason a person gave
- A day close recorded, with your name on it
What changes from how you worked before
If you have run a floor on a whiteboard or a grid, three habits are worth dropping deliberately.
Stop planning the morning. It is done. Time spent reading the whole plan is time not spent on the three cars in trouble.
Stop being the routing table. Technicians see their own work on the board. A technician asking you what is next is a sign they have not been shown the board, not a sign the plan is missing.
Stop absorbing delays silently. The old skill was quietly reshuffling a day around a delay so nobody noticed. That skill now hides information the shop needs. Let the delay be reported, let the day re-plan, and spend your attention on the customer conversation instead.
Common questions
A car is in a bay I would not have chosen. Do I move it? Only if it is actually wrong. If it is merely not what you would have picked, leave it — and if it keeps happening, look at whether the bay descriptions distinguish the two bays properly.
Why did a car move to a different bay by itself? Something changed — an absence, an overrun, a bay going out of service — and the day re-planned around it. The change feed tells you what moved.
I disagree with the plan. Override it. Then ask why the plan thought that was reasonable: nine times out of ten a bay or a technician is described differently from how you actually use them.
Can I plan tomorrow today? Tomorrow is already planned, and you can view it with the date control. It will keep changing until tomorrow arrives, because it is a live answer, not a document.
Nobody has clocked in yet and the board looks empty. If your workshop requires clock-in, technicians who have not clocked in are not planned. Either they clock in, or the rule is stricter than suits you.