Organise Bays into Zones
Zones group bays into named areas. They make a large floor readable and give each area an owner.
Who can do this: Location Managers, Org Admins and Account Owners.
Zones are optional. A shop where every bay does the same work does not need them, and BayWise plans identically without them — the board simply shows one ungrouped floor.
Creating a zone
Open Settings → Operations → Zones
Name the zone
Use the name your team says out loud — “Body shop”, “Fast lane”, “Paint”.
Choose a zone type
From the standard list of sixteen: rapid / express, mechanical, diagnostics / electrical, body / collision, paint / refinish, detailing / valet, parking, delivery, and the rest.
The type describes what the area is for, which makes the floor readable to anyone.
Name a supervisor
The technician responsible for the area. Their name appears on the zone header on the board.
Save, then assign bays
Each bay carries a zone. Set it on the bay, or use the grouping controls on the Bays screen.
How many zones
| Create a zone when | Do not create a zone for |
|---|---|
| A group of bays shares a kind of work | Each individual technician |
| A group of bays shares a supervisor | Each shift |
| A group of bays is physically separated | Each customer type |
A zone with one bay usually means you have described a bay, not an area. A zone with fifteen is usually two zones.
Examples:
| Shop | Zones |
|---|---|
| Müller Werkstatt, Berlin — six general bays | None |
| Sharma Motors, Mumbai — eleven bays | Rapid (4), Mechanical (5), Detailing & handover (2) |
| Santos Body Works, São Paulo | Body (6), Paint (2), Detailing (1), Parking (4) |
| Al Futtaim Auto, Dubai — twenty-two bays | Rapid, Mechanical, Electrical & diagnostics, Body & paint, Detailing |
What zones do and do not do
They do: group the board under headers with bay counts and supervisors; make filtering meaningful; give an area an owner.
They do not: decide what work goes where. That is each bay’s role, capabilities and equipment. A bay in the mechanical zone with alignment equipment can take an alignment job; one without cannot.
Using zones on the board
Cards appear under their zone header, showing the zone name, bay count and supervisor.
The board filter lets a supervisor narrow to their own zones — a body-shop supervisor watching two zones sees a five-card screen instead of twenty-two.
Bays not assigned to any zone appear under Other.
Common questions
Do I have to use zones? No.
Can a bay be in two zones? No. One bay, one zone. If a bay genuinely serves two areas, put it in the one it mostly serves and let the description carry the nuance.
Can I rename or retype a zone later? Yes. Nothing about the plan depends on the name.
Should parking be a zone? Yes, if you have a designated area. It keeps parked vehicles off the working floor, and it is the single easiest way to make a busy shop’s board honest.
Do technicians belong to zones? Technicians are not restricted to zones. Work reaches them by skill and availability.