Build Your Service Catalogue
The service catalogue is what you sell, and how long each thing takes. The durations here are what the plan is built from — after bay descriptions, they are the biggest lever on plan quality you have.
Who can do this: Location Managers, Org Admins and Account Owners.
Adding a service
Open Settings → Catalog → Service Catalogue
Enter the service name
The name your advisors use when booking: “Full service”, “Front brake pads and discs”, “Wheel alignment”, “Diagnostic — engine fault”.
Enter the duration in minutes
The time the work actually takes, on an average vehicle, by an average technician.
Leave it blank and the service is stored at the standard default length — the same length assumed for any job stage with no time of its own. The form tells you what that is.
Choose a category
Maintenance, Repair, Diagnostic, Body Work or Finishing. Categories group services and drive the icons on the calendars.
Save
Getting durations right
Optimistic durations are the most common self-inflicted problem in BayWise. Every job of that type is planned into a slot it cannot fit, so every one of them reports as running over, the promises behind them go at risk, and within a fortnight the floor has learned to ignore the alerts.
Practical guidance:
- Time the work, do not estimate it. Use the average of your last handful of that job, not the best one.
- Include the whole job. Getting the vehicle in, doing the work, road testing, writing it up.
- Do not include the changeover. That is bay buffer, and it is handled separately.
- Do not pad “just in case”. Padding every service is how a shop ends up looking full at 60 per cent utilisation.
Correcting them with real data
After a few weeks you do not have to guess. Per-Service Accuracy in analytics shows, for each service, how long it actually took as a percentage of the estimate.
| Reading | Means | Do |
|---|---|---|
| 95–105% | The duration is right | Nothing |
| Consistently above 100% | Underestimated | Raise the duration |
| Consistently below 100% | Overestimated | Lower it |
Two data points are needed per service before accuracy is shown at all, and a single spike is one difficult job rather than a pattern.
Reviewing this quarterly is the cheapest improvement available in the product.
Removing a service
A service referenced by past or current job stages cannot be deleted — its history would go with it. BayWise says so rather than failing silently.
Multi-stage work
A service is one piece of work. Work that runs through a sequence — a collision repair, a major mechanical job — is built from repair steps and presets instead.
→ Create repair steps · Create repair presets
Common questions
How granular should services be? Granular enough that the duration is meaningful. “Brakes” covering everything from a pad change to a full hydraulic overhaul has no useful duration; “Front pads” and “Front pads and discs” do.
A service takes much longer on some vehicles. Either split it — “Cambelt — 4 cylinder” and “Cambelt — V6” — or set the common case and adjust the estimate on the individual job.
Does the price live here? The catalogue carries what you offer and how long it takes. Billing rates are set on the workshop and on technicians.
Can I publish one catalogue to several locations? Yes, on plans that support multiple locations.
We hit the catalogue limit. Free plans cap the number of services. Consolidate near-duplicates, or upgrade.