Workshop Software Virtual Assistant: a VA who runs the diary while you run the hoists

Nobody googles “workshop software virtual assistant” with clean hands. You search it because Workshop Software is already doing its job: the diary is full, the job cards exist, the parts arrive, the invoices sync to Xero. What it cannot fix is that the person keying, confirming, ordering, reminding and chasing is the same person under the car. Every booking confirmed is a job interrupted. Every reminder run that goes out late is a quiet week in three weeks’ time. Every invoice raised at 9pm is another evening the workshop followed you home.

And if you found this page mid-comparison, weighing Workshop Software against MechanicDesk or whatever your Capricorn mates run, it is worth saying early: the admin does not disappear in either. Both need a human driving the diary, the reminders and the money. This page is about who that human should be.

The daily rhythm a VA runs in your Workshop Software

Here is what a normal day looks like for a DotVA placement inside an Australian workshop’s build.

Before the first car rolls in. The Booking Diary gets its morning pass. Tomorrow’s bookings are confirmed by SMS so tomorrow’s no-shows shrink today. Anything that came in through online bookings overnight gets triaged into a real slot with an honest duration, not the fifteen minutes the customer optimistically picked. Today’s diary is checked against the bays and techs you actually have, so the day you walk into is the day the diary says it is. When Mrs Nguyen texts back to move her 60,000 km service, the VA reshuffles the slot and backfills the gap before it costs you an hour of hoist time.

As the cars land. Bookings become job cards, and this is where a good VA earns their keep quietly. New customers get the rego lookup run so make, model and VIN come in clean instead of typed from memory at the counter. The vehicle’s service history gets a glance so the card reflects what was recommended last visit. The customer’s actual words go on the card, “intermittent squeal from the front end over speed bumps,” not “brakes?”, so your tech reads the card instead of walking to the office to ask. Duplicate customer records get merged and disconnected mobiles updated as they surface, because a reminder run sent to dead numbers is a reminder run wasted.

Mid-morning, parts. The parts your techs call for get keyed onto the job cards they belong to, with purchase orders raised against the right supplier. Where you order through Repco SmartLink or Burson EzyParts, the VA places the order from inside the job, so the part number and buy price arrive on the card rather than on a crumpled supplier invoice in someone’s top pocket. Stock is receipted as it lands, which means the job’s cost is true before anyone raises an invoice off it, and your stock-on-hand figure starts meaning something again.

Afternoon, the money run. Finished job cards get worked into invoices one at a time: clocked labour checked against the card, every keyed part confirmed on it, invoice raised and sent while the customer is still at the counter, or that evening at worst. A finished-but-uninvoiced job card is money you have earned and not asked for, and the VA’s standing instruction is that the queue hits zero before they log off. Then the sync watch: any invoice or contact that errors on its way to Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks gets its mismatched name or missing field fixed and re-pushed, so your bookkeeper opens a clean ledger at BAS time instead of an archaeology project.

Weekly, the work that fills future weeks. The service-reminder run goes out by SMS off next-service-due dates, and the rego-reminder run off the vehicle records. Then the part software cannot do: the replies get answered within minutes and turned into booked diary slots, because a reminder answered two days later books somewhere else. If you run Workshop Software’s digital inspections, the declined-work list gets worked too. The customer who knocked back brake pads in March gets a friendly follow-up in July with the inspection photos re-attached. Account and fleet debtors get their statements and their chasing cadence, with anything disputed escalated to you with the job card attached.

None of that is exotic. It is exactly the loop you run now, in fragments, between cars. The difference is that the VA’s entire shift is the loop.

The honest bit

A few things Workshop Software will not do, no matter who is driving it, and pretending otherwise would waste your money.

It will not answer your phone. Online bookings take some pressure off, but an Australian workshop still lives on inbound calls, and a VA working inside your systems is not automatically a voice on your line. If the ringing phone is your real problem, that is a deliberate setup, phone answering during workshop hours as part of the role, and it is worth reading the virtual receptionist page before the discovery call so you can ask for it properly.

The reminder runs are only as good as the data underneath them. If next-service-due dates were never set consistently, half your customers have no mobile recorded, or one customer exists three times under three spellings, the first weeks of a placement are honest cleanup work before the reminders start pulling bookings. We will tell you on the call if that sounds like your build, because a reminder run off dirty data mostly generates confused phone calls.

Stock is a discipline, not a feature. Workshop Software’s stock-on-hand is only true if parts get booked out when techs grab them, and no VA in Manila can stand in your parts room enforcing that. What they can do is tighten the paper side, keying, ordering and receipting properly, and flag the jobs where the parts on the card do not match the parts that walked out.

And it is worth knowing that Workshop Software is Australian-built, from a company whose roots in workshop systems go back to 1992, which is exactly why its diary, rego handling and supplier integrations fit AU workshops so well. It is also why the platform assumes there is someone in the office. That someone does not have to be you.

What stays with you

Everything that needs a qualified person or a judgement call from someone who has held the part in their hand. Roadworthy and defect decisions. Diagnoses, and anything a customer asks that sounds like one, escalate to you under a written rule; the VA never talks a customer through what might be wrong with their car. Warranty calls. Whether a vehicle is safe to release. And pricing: your labour rates and markup rules live in Workshop Software’s settings, the VA works inside them and never edits them.

The boundary is enforced by the login, not by trust. The VA gets their own named Workshop Software user on a Manager-level group, which covers the diary, job cards, purchasing, reminders and invoicing while Company Settings and the accounting integration configuration stay closed. If you want them ordering through your supplier integrations, that access lives a level higher, and granting it is your call. Do not share your owner login to save five minutes; a named user means every action in the system sits under the person who did it. Credentials live in 1Password and confidentiality is signed before the VA sees a single customer record.

What it costs and where to start

The whole loop above sits in the admin tier: $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST, typically 10-15 hours a week, which lands most workshops around $500-1,100 a month. If you want the same person owning the full books as well as the Workshop Software front office, reconciliation and BAS-ready ledgers, that is the bookkeeping tier at $25-35.

Placement takes 7-10 business days from the discovery call, with 5-7 days supervised inside your Workshop Software before any solo work, because your job types, markup rules, reminder settings and supplier accounts are nobody else’s. The $500 deposit is refundable and credits your first month, the first 30 days carry a recalibrate-or-replace guarantee, and there is no lock-in beyond 14 days notice. Your VA is Manila-based and works your workshop’s hours, so the diary pass happens before your first car, not after your last one.

The wider picture for your trade is on the auto mechanics industry page, the calendar management page goes deeper on how a shared diary actually gets run, and the VA cost guide has the full pricing breakdown.

Or skip ahead and book a discovery call with Jenn, the founder. Thirty minutes, no card. Bring two numbers: how many finished job cards are sitting uninvoiced right now, and when the last service-reminder run actually went out. She will tell you straight which hours a VA can take off you, and whether your build needs a cleanup fortnight first.