The Tenant Journey

This page walks through what a newly registered workshop owner does with TheGarageOS — from first signup to running a fully operational shop. Use it as the end-to-end narrative; individual feature pages go deeper on each step.

Day 0 — Sign up

You arrive at app.thegarageos.com/register. The signup is three steps:

1. Account — your name, email, and a strong password.
2. Workspace — your workspace URL (becomes <workspace>.thegarageos.com) and your shop name (what customers see).
3. Plan & payment — Pro or Enterprise, payment method, optional referral code.

After checkout, you land on a provisioning status page that walks you through five live stages: Queued → Provisioning → DNS Ready → Roles Configured → Ready. When the status flips to Ready, you're redirected to your workspace subdomain.

Day 0 — Log in for the first time

You log in at <workspace>.thegarageos.com with the same credentials. You land on the Dashboard — a real-time summary of your shop (updated every 30 seconds).

The dashboard surfaces counts that match the modules you've enabled: users, roles, customers, vehicles, vendors, products, open POs, warranty claims, sales, invoices, accounting entries.

Day 1 — Configure your shop

Before your first job, work through the Settings tab.

Workspace settings

Settings → Workspace

• Shop name — what appears on documents and the customer portal.
• Logo — direct upload to private storage.
• Brand color — applied to your customer portal and PDFs.
• Country, timezone, phone, address.
• Business registration numbers — VAT/TIN/BR — country-specific fields for invoicing.

Team & roles

Settings → Users — invite technicians, service advisors, and managers. Invitees receive an email link to set their password and create their account.

Settings → Roles — review the six built-in roles (owner, admin, manager, staff, mechanic, viewer) or build your own. Roles are made of feature :: sub_feature :: action permissions (e.g. inventory_vendor_management :: vendors :: write).

Workshop setup

Workshop → Bays — add one bay per physical lift or work area. These are the tiles on your Bay Floor view.

Workshop → Services — define the services you offer (oil change, brake job, diagnostics, etc.), with labour time, default pricing, and optional checklists.

Workshop → Service Categories — group services into categories for reporting and price list organization.

Workshop → Insurance Payers — add the insurance companies you bill (needed for split invoicing).

Inventory setup

Inventory → Categories — organize your parts.

Inventory → Vendors — add your suppliers. Each vendor gets a ledger, PO history, and contact info.

Inventory → Products — add the parts you stock. TheGarageOS tracks weighted-average cost automatically as you receive POs, so job P&L is always accurate.

Settings → Payment Accounts — add the cash, bank, and card accounts you reconcile against (used by both job payments and POS).

Document templates

Settings → Document Templates — style your invoices, delivery challans, gate passes, receipts, and payslips. Pick a primary color, font family, and section toggles. Live preview before saving.

Day 2 — Your first customer and vehicle

CRM → Customers → New — create a customer record (name, phone, email). Optionally assign a membership plan if you run a loyalty program.

Vehicles → Customer Vehicles → New — attach a vehicle. Make, model, year, plate, fuel type, gearbox, odometer reading. The vehicle is linked to your master catalog so future visits pre-fill known specs.

CRM → Appointments → New (optional) — book the customer in for a service window. Appointments can be converted to jobs in one click.

Day 2 — Your first job

Jobs → New — create a job. Pick the customer + vehicle, describe the concern, assign a bay.

The job appears on the Bay Floor (/jobs?view=floor) and the Kanban board (/jobs?view=board).

DVI

Open the job, run a DVI from the DVI tab. Walk through the template, grade each item, attach photos. Anything below good generates a recommendation on the Overview tab.

Quote

Switch to the Quotation tab. DVI findings are pre-filled as line items. Adjust labour and parts, send for approval.

The customer receives a portal link — they review photos, approve or reject, optionally with a message.

Repair

Approved quotes transition the job to in_progress. The mechanic clocks in to each service line from the Services tab. Real-time progress appears on the Bay Floor.

Quality check

When work is done, the job moves to qc. If everything is good, it goes to pending_delivery. If not, it loops back to in_progress — a fully tracked rework.

Invoice & payment

Generate the invoice from the Payments tab. For insurance jobs, the customer and insurer invoices are split automatically. Take payment (cash / card / bank). The GL updates the moment the payment posts.

Delivery

Mark the job Delivered. The customer gets a satisfaction survey link. The job closes, the bay is free, and the cycle repeats.

Week 1 — Daily operations

After a week, your daily loop looks like this:

1. Morning — check the Bay Floor, see what's waiting.
2. Open new jobs — Jobs → New from incoming vehicles.
3. Run DVIs — photo-backed inspections, automatic recommendations.
4. Send quotes — through the customer portal.
5. Track work — clock-ins, parts, progress on the Bay Floor.
6. Invoice & collect — single-click invoice, accept payment.
7. Close the day — review the dashboard, send any pending reminders (CRM → Appointments).

Week 2+ — Beyond the core loop

Once the daily loop is solid, layer in the rest of the platform:

Counter sales & returns

Sales → POS Terminal — a fast checkout screen for walk-in parts sales. Same invoice pipeline as a job, with product search and customer search.

Sales → Returns — handle returns with restock/scrap options. Returns can be linked to warranty claims.

Inventory & warranty

Inventory → Purchase Orders — order from vendors, receive stock, auto-update weighted-average cost.

Inventory → Warranty — handle customer warranty claims, send them to the vendor, track resolution, return to customer.

CRM & memberships

CRM → Membership Plans — create loyalty plans (gold / silver / bronze) with discount %, included services, durations. Membership discounts flow automatically into quotes and invoices.

CRM → Customers → Ledger — a double-entry-backed statement of every charge and payment per customer.

Staff & payroll

Staff → Employees — employee records (designation, salary, department, shift, employment type).

Staff → Attendance — clock-in/out via web or physical device (secure key-rotating biometric/RFID terminals supported).

Staff → Leave — leave types, allotments, requests, approvals. Approved leave auto-creates attendance records — never out of sync.

Staff → Payroll — configurable components, advances, monthly salary sheets. Salary sheets post directly to the GL — no separate journal entry needed.

Accounting

Accounting → Chart of Accounts — standard account types with parent-child hierarchies. Some accounts are system-protected (core GL accounts) and cannot be deleted.

Accounting → General Ledger — every invoice, payment, credit note, and payroll entry auto-posts here. Manual entries are validated for balance (debits = credits, ≥ 2 lines).

Accounting → Reports — Trial Balance and Profit & Loss, both computed live from the journal.

Workshop analytics

Workshop → Analytics — KPI cards:

• Revenue (this week)
• Jobs completed
• Bay utilization (%)

Plus:

• Technician efficiency (flat-rate vs. actual hours, % efficiency)
• Per-job P&L (gross profit and margin)
• Revenue by service category — which service lines actually make money
• Bay utilization — average job duration per bay

Settings & ongoing

• Document templates — adjust PDF styling at any time.
• Branding — update logo, brand color, shop details.
• Roles & permissions — add custom roles as your team grows.
• Tax settings — country-specific (Bangladesh, Malaysia live; pluggable for more).
• Subscription & billing — Settings → Subscription to view plan, trial end, and renewal date.

What you should never have to do

A few things the platform handles automatically so you don't have to think about them:

• Status drift — the FSM rejects invalid job transitions.
• Manual GL postings — every invoice / payment / payroll posts to the ledger automatically.
• Out-of-sync leave & attendance — approved leave generates attendance records via date generation.
• Stock reconciliation on returns — credit notes with restock flag adjust inventory automatically.
• Feature gating — modules you haven't enabled are hidden from the sidebar; you can't accidentally access what you don't have.

That's the loop. Once you have customers, vehicles, services, vendors, and products set up, the platform runs the shop end-to-end — and the dashboard tells you whether you're making money.

Next: read about a specific area — Bay Floor, Jobs & DVI, Quotes & Invoicing.