Build Your Service Catalog
The service catalog is the list of standard services your workshop offers. Every job created in BayWise is linked to a service from this catalog. That link is what gives the scheduler its default duration estimate, its skill requirement for AI matching, and its category tag for analytics.
Without a structured catalog, every advisor ends up creating one-off job descriptions with their own names and time estimates. One advisor books a “Full Service” at 2.5 hours; another books the same work as “Major Service” at 3 hours. Neither can be compared in your analytics. Your AI scheduling suggestions become unreliable because there is no consistent baseline to reason from. Your reporting fragments into noise.
A well-maintained catalog takes thirty minutes to set up and pays dividends for as long as you run the workshop.
BayWise comes pre-loaded with 15 sample services (e.g. Oil Change, Brake Repair, Wheel Alignment, Dent & Paint) to demonstrate how the catalog works and let you start scheduling immediately. These are realistic entries — you can use them as-is, rename them, adjust durations to match your workshop’s actual averages, or delete them and build from scratch.
Who can manage the catalog: Location Manager, Org Admin, Account Owner.
Add a service
Open Catalog Settings
From the main navigation, go to Settings → Catalog.
The Catalog screen has two tabs: Services and Equipment. You are on the Services tab by default. You will see any services already configured for this location, or an empty list if you are starting fresh.
Click Add Service
Click the + Add Service button in the top-right corner.
The Add Service panel opens on the right side of the screen.
Enter the service name
In the Service Name field, enter the name exactly as it should appear on job cards, the calendar, technician assignments, and reports.
Choose names that are unambiguous to everyone in your workshop — front desk staff, workshop controllers, and technicians. If your team calls it “Full Service,” enter “Full Service.” Do not enter “FS” or “Svc-A” — abbreviated names cause confusion and undermine the value of the catalog.
Examples from Sharma Motors, Mumbai:
- Full Service
- Oil & Filter Change
- AC Service & Regas
- Minor Dent Repair
- Full Respray
- Tire Replacement (x4)
Select a category
The Category dropdown groups the service for filtering and analytics. Choose the category that best fits the primary nature of the work:
| Category | Typical services |
|---|---|
| Maintenance | Routine servicing, oil changes, tyre rotation, brake pads, fluid top-ups |
| Repair | Engine work, gearbox, suspension, AC service, component replacement |
| Diagnostic | Electrical diagnostics, engine diagnostics, fault code reading, ADAS calibration |
| Body Work | Panel beating, dent repair, structural repairs, body assembly |
| Finishing | Spray painting, respray, surface prep, detailing, ceramic coating |
Each category maps to a filter in the analytics module, so services you place in the same category will appear together when you run category-level reports. Choose the category that makes the most analytical sense for your operation, not just the broadest possible bucket.
Set the estimated duration
Enter the Estimated Duration in hours and minutes. This is the amount of time a bay and technician will be blocked for this service type when a job is scheduled.
Set this to your actual average completion time — not an aspirational target, and not a worst-case buffer. If your team completes Full Services in an average of 2 hours 20 minutes across the last six months, enter 2h 20m. The duration estimate is the foundation of your capacity planning. Inflated durations lead to underbooked bays; underestimated durations lead to schedule collisions.
For services with high variability — a Full Respray, for instance — set the duration to the most common case and train advisors to override it per job when they book work that is clearly above or below average.
Assign a skill requirement
The Skill Requirement field links the service to a specific skill type. This is the signal the AI scheduler uses to suggest the right technician for a job.
When an advisor books a Tire Replacement job and requests an AI assignment suggestion, BayWise looks for technicians who have the Tires skill and are available at the scheduled time. If no skill requirement is set, the AI treats any available technician as a candidate — including paint specialists for general work.
Select the skill type that represents the primary capability required to perform this service. Common pairings:
| Service | Skill Requirement |
|---|---|
| Full Service | Master Technician |
| Oil & Filter Change | Oil & Lube |
| AC Service & Regas | A/C Service |
| Minor Dent Repair | Denting |
| Full Respray | Spray Painting |
| Tire Replacement (x4) | Tires |
| Battery Replacement | Electrical |
| Wiring Fault Diagnosis | Diagnostics |
Skill requirement is optional, but leaving it blank for any service that requires a specific capability will degrade AI suggestion quality. Set it for every service that is not truly general-purpose work.
Save
Click Save. The service is created immediately and is available:
- In the service dropdown when creating a new job
- As a filter option when browsing the job list
- In analytics under its assigned category
Edit a service
Open Catalog Settings
Go to Settings → Catalog → Services.
Open the edit panel
Click the edit icon (pencil) to the right of the service you want to change.
Update the fields
All fields — name, category, duration, and skill requirement — are fully editable.
A few important consequences to understand before saving:
- Name changes apply immediately to new jobs. Existing jobs retain the name that was in use when the job was created. If you rename “Major Service” to “Full Service,” historical jobs will still show “Major Service” in their job details.
- Duration changes apply to new jobs only. Existing scheduled jobs retain the duration they were booked with. This is intentional — changing a catalog duration should not silently shift the calendar slots of jobs already confirmed with customers.
- Skill requirement changes apply immediately to future AI suggestions. If you add a skill requirement to a service that previously had none, the next AI suggestion for that service type will filter candidates by that skill.
Save
Click Save. The changes take effect immediately for all new jobs.
Delete a service
Services can only be deleted if they have no job history — that is, no job has ever been created using that service, at any status. If a service has been used even once, the delete option will be unavailable.
Prefer renaming or deactivating over deleting. If a service is no longer offered but has historical jobs, deleting it would break those job records. Instead: rename the service to indicate it is discontinued (e.g., “Wheel Balancing [DISCONTINUED]”) or contact your account owner to discuss archiving. For services created by mistake with no job history, deletion is safe — click the edit icon and scroll to the bottom of the panel to find the delete option.
Service catalog best practices
Use consistent names across your team
Decide on a standard name for each service and apply it universally. If the front desk, the workshop controller, and the analytics export all refer to the same work by the same name, your data stays coherent.
At Tanaka Auto Service in Osaka, the workshop owner discovered during a quarterly review that “Full Service,” “Complete Service,” “Periodic Service,” and “Service A” had all been used in the previous six months for the same work type. Average duration calculations were meaningless. Consolidating to a single name “Periodic Maintenance Service” and archiving the duplicates restored the data quality within one reporting period.
Set durations from real data, not estimates
If you have been running jobs in BayWise for more than a few weeks, use your completed job history to calibrate your catalog durations. Filter completed jobs by service type and look at the average actual duration. Adjust your catalog entry to match. Repeat this every quarter, especially for services where your team’s speed is changing as they build proficiency.
Assign skill requirements to every non-trivial service
The quality of AI scheduling suggestions is directly proportional to how precisely skills are mapped to services. A catalog where every service is either blank or tagged “General” will produce suggestions that are only marginally better than random. A catalog where each service has the right skill requirement mapped will consistently surface the best-fit technician.
Align categories with how you use analytics
If you want to be able to answer questions like “What percentage of our bay-hours last quarter went to paint work vs. denting work?”, your catalog categories need to match those groupings. Before assigning categories, think about the breakdown you want to see in reports. If Electrical and Diagnostics are two distinct areas of your business that you want to measure separately, keep them separate in your service catalog from day one.
Review the catalog quarterly
Service catalogs drift over time. New services get added ad-hoc, old ones become obsolete, durations fall out of step with actual performance. A quarterly review — typically 30–45 minutes — keeps the catalog accurate and prevents your analytics from degrading.
Sample service catalog (Sharma Motors, Mumbai)
The following table illustrates a well-structured catalog for a medium-sized general automotive workshop:
| Service Name | Category | Duration | Skill Requirement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full Service | General | 2h 30m | Master Technician |
| Interim Service | General | 1h 15m | General |
| Oil & Filter Change | Oil & Lube | 45m | Oil & Lube |
| Tire Balancing | Tires | 30m | Tires |
| Tire Replacement (x1) | Tires | 20m | Tires |
| Tire Replacement (x4) | Tires | 1h | Tires |
| Brake Pad Replacement (front) | General | 1h | Master Technician |
| Brake Pad Replacement (rear) | General | 1h | Master Technician |
| AC Service & Regas | A/C Service | 1h 30m | A/C Service |
| Battery Replacement | Electrical | 30m | Electrical |
| Wiring Fault Diagnosis | Electrical | 1h 30m | Diagnostics |
| Minor Dent Repair | Denting | 3h | Denting |
| Panel Replacement | Denting | 1 day | Frame Straightening |
| Full Respray | Painting | 2 days | Spray Painting |
| Partial Respray (1 panel) | Painting | 4h | Spray Painting |
| Surface Prep & Prime | Painting | 3h | Surface Prep |
| Body Assembly & Fit | Denting | 5h | Body Assembly |
This table is for illustration. The right catalog for your workshop depends on the services you actually offer. Start with your ten most common services, configure them correctly, and add less-frequent services as you encounter them. A small, accurate catalog outperforms a large, inconsistent one every time.
Common questions
Can I have two services with the same name? BayWise will allow it, but it is strongly discouraged. Duplicate names create confusion in the job creation form and in analytics. If you need to distinguish between two variants of the same service — for example, a full service for petrol vehicles versus diesel — use a suffix: “Full Service (Petrol)” and “Full Service (Diesel)”.
A service we offer is not in the skill requirement list. What should I do? The skill requirement list corresponds to the skill types available in your technician profiles. If the skill type you need does not exist, it needs to be added to your skill library first. Contact your account owner or location manager to add the new skill type in Settings → Skills before returning to the catalog to map it.
We offer the same service at multiple locations but with different durations. How do I handle that? The service catalog is scoped per location. If your two locations have different average completion times for the same service — because of different equipment, team experience, or workflow — configure them separately in each location’s catalog. Keeping each location’s catalog accurate to its own performance is more valuable than enforcing artificial consistency across locations.
Can advisors override the duration when booking a specific job? Yes. The catalog duration is a default. When creating or editing a job, advisors can change the duration for that specific job without affecting the catalog entry. This is intentional — a standard Full Service takes 2h 30m on a Toyota Corolla, but the same service on a Range Rover Sport may need 3h 30m. The override is per-job; the catalog default remains unchanged.
How does the service catalog affect analytics? Every completed job contributes to analytics under the service name and category it was booked with. Over time, the analytics module builds a picture of average actual duration versus estimated duration for each service, which bays were most commonly used for each category, and how technician performance varies across service types. None of that is possible without a clean, consistent catalog.