Schedule a Job

Scheduling a job means placing it on the calendar grid: you are giving the job a specific bay, a start time, and an expected duration. Until a job is scheduled, it sits in the Unscheduled list on the left-hand side of the Scheduler with a status of Waiting Decision and occupies no bay time. Scheduling it is what moves it onto the board and makes it visible to the workshop floor.

A job can be created in advance (taking the booking) and left unscheduled for days or weeks. When the customer arrives, or when workshop capacity opens up, you schedule it. The creation date and the schedule date are independent.

Before You Schedule

Check these three things before placing any job on the calendar:

• Operating hours — BayWise will not let you schedule a job that starts or ends outside your configured workshop hours. Confirm these are correct in Settings → Operations.
• Bay availability — Look at the calendar grid for your target bay. If a job already occupies part of that slot, BayWise will flag a conflict.
• Tech Roster — If you plan to assign a technician at the same time you schedule, check that the tech is clocked in or at least available in the Roster panel. A job scheduled to a bay with no available tech is a production risk.

Method 1: Drag the Job Card onto the Calendar

This is the fastest method for advisors managing a live workshop floor.

Method 2: Schedule from the Job Detail Panel

Use this method when you want more control — for example, typing in an exact time rather than dragging to a visual slot.

Scheduling a Job on a Future Date

The calendar defaults to today. To schedule a job for a future date:

1. Use the forward arrow at the top of the calendar to advance to the target date, or click the date header and select a date from the date picker.
2. Proceed with either method above (drag or panel).
3. BayWise will still check availability against all other jobs booked for that future date.

This is the standard flow for pre-booked work: a customer calls on Monday, books a major service for Thursday, you create the job and immediately schedule it into Thursday’s calendar while the customer is on the phone.

Rescheduling a Job (Moving It)

Moving a job that is already scheduled works exactly like the initial drag-and-drop, with one additional consideration: the job may already have a technician assigned, and moving it to a different time may affect that tech’s workload or create an overlap with another job they are assigned to.

Scheduling Multi-Step Jobs

Multi-step jobs (for example, a full body repair with disassembly, panel work, paint, and final assembly) are scheduled one step at a time. BayWise enforces phase gating — a step cannot be started until the step before it is marked complete.

What this means for scheduling:

• Schedule the first step using either method above. This is the step the workshop will start on immediately (or at the designated time).
• Subsequent steps appear in the job’s step list but cannot be placed on the calendar until the preceding step reaches Complete status. At that point, the next step unlocks and can be scheduled into any available bay and time.
• This is intentional: the duration of early steps (especially in diagnostics or disassembly) is rarely known precisely in advance. Scheduling all steps upfront would produce a cascade of phantom conflicts.

For jobs at workshops like Santos Body Works where long multi-day repairs are common, this means the advisor re-enters the Scheduler at transition points — when disassembly is done, they schedule panel work; when panel work is done, they schedule paint — rather than trying to schedule the entire job chain on day one.

Scheduling Tips

These practices come from high-throughput workshops that run BayWise at capacity.

Schedule high-promise-risk jobs early in the day. If a job has a tight customer promise time and a long estimated duration, give it the first slot in its bay. If the job overruns, there is time in the afternoon to expedite or communicate with the customer. Placing a high-risk job at 14:00 in a bay that closes at 17:00 leaves almost no recovery window.

Leave the last bay slot unscheduled for emergency work. Walk-ins and urgent drive-ins are a reality in every workshop. If every bay is committed wall-to-wall, a genuine emergency forces you to delay a booked customer. Reserve one bay’s last slot (or designate one bay as the emergency bay) to absorb unplanned work. In a five-bay workshop, a common practice is to treat Bay 5 as the flex bay — never pre-booked past 15:00.

Check the Tech Roster before scheduling. A bay can be available even if every technician is at capacity. Before placing a job, confirm that the tech you intend to assign is clocked in and has WIP headroom. The Roster panel (accessible from the top of the Scheduler) shows each tech’s current job count and availability status in real time.

Use bay buffer time to protect transitions. BayWise enforces the buffer time you configured in Settings → Operations. However, if you repeatedly find yourself force-placing jobs to bypass buffer warnings, the buffer may be too generous for your workflow — adjust it rather than training your advisors to override it.