Features
What it actually does.
Not a list of adjectives. This is the work a South African workshop front desk does in a day, and what Upshift does with each part of it.
Quotes
Price the job while the customer is still standing there
A quote starts from the car, not from a blank form. Type a registration and the vehicle, its owner and its history come with it.
Build it line by line
Labour, parts, consumables and packages, in whatever order you work. Drag a line to move it. Give any line a zero price when it is goodwill or covered under a previous repair.
Multiple notes under a single line, each on its own row — so 'Blank off plates' and 'Fitted' read as two facts, not one run-on sentence.
Ask for a deposit
Half up front before work starts, or a fixed amount for a big parts order. Set it as a percentage and it follows the quote when the lines change.
The quote prints the deposit, the balance on completion, and your banking details beside them — so the customer can actually pay it.
Send it however they read things
Email it with your logo and letterhead, or send the link over WhatsApp. Either way you get a proper PDF you can save to your own machine.
You see the moment they open it, and the customer can approve the quote from the link itself.
Quote the same job again
Duplicate any quote onto a new draft and change the customer or the vehicle. The same brake job for a different Hilux takes seconds.
Validity that means something
Set how long a quote stands — 7, 14, 30 or 60 days — once in Settings, and every new quote picks it up. The document says the date out loud.
Nothing falls through
When you start a new quote for a customer or a car that already has one sitting unanswered, Upshift tells you before you write a second one.
Invoices
A tax invoice that will not be queried
The invoice is the only part of your system your customer ever sees, so it is the part built with the most care.
Compliant by default
Your name, address and VAT number, the customer's details, the vehicle, the VAT rate and the totals. A workshop that is not VAT-registered issues a plain Invoice instead of a Tax Invoice, automatically.
The VAT rate is frozen onto the document the day it is issued, so a later rate change cannot restate an old invoice.
One tap from an accepted quote
Same lines, same vehicle, same numbers. No retyping, and no transcription mistake on the one document that has to be right.
If the quote asked for a deposit, it asks whether that deposit arrived and records it, so the invoice shows what is genuinely still owed.
Know when it lands
Every invoice you send is tracked from draft to sent to viewed. You see the minute the customer opened it, so a follow-up call is informed rather than awkward.
Chase on your terms
Overdue reminders are a button on the invoice, not an automation. The invoice records when it was last chased so nobody sends a second one the same morning.
Deliberate: an unattended chaser would demand money against years of imported history, some of it long settled.
Find it by anything
Search by invoice number, customer name or vehicle. Tick several at once and action them together. Sort by date, number or amount, with the date on every row.
Zero-balance receipts
Once an invoice is settled it reads R 0,00 and says Paid in full — so you can send the same document back to the customer as their receipt.
Payments
What you have been paid, and what you have not
Record money as it comes in, against the invoice it belongs to, on the day it actually arrived.
Every way money arrives
EFT, card, cash or SnapScan — plus an Other option that requires you to type what it actually was.
A trade exchange or a deposit taken at reception prints as that on the statement, instead of an unexplained 'Other' a year later.
Backdate it properly
The date is the day the money arrived, not the day you got round to capturing it. Part payments are normal — the invoice moves to Partial and shows the balance.
Fix it afterwards
Took it down as EFT when it was cash? Open the payment and change the method, the date or the amount. Remove one entirely if it landed on the wrong invoice.
The invoice follows in both directions — back to Partial when the amount drops, back to Sent or Overdue when the last payment comes off.
Statements
Send a customer a running-balance statement of everything invoiced and everything paid, in the same branding as the invoices themselves.
One view of all of it
Every payment across every invoice on one screen, filtered by method, with what you have collected and your most-used method at the top.
Outstanding, accurately
What each customer owes is worked out from the invoices and payments themselves, rather than a stored number that drifts out of date.
Vehicles
The car is the file, not the customer
Workshops think in registrations. So does Upshift — every quote, invoice and job hangs off a vehicle, and the history stays with the car.
Registration, VIN and odometer
Search by plate or by chassis number. The VIN prints on the document so you can order the right part against the exact car.
The odometer only ever goes up — a typo cannot walk a vehicle's reading backwards.
Full service history
Every job ever done on that car, pulled together from the invoices. Walk up to something you last saw eighteen months ago and know exactly what went in.
Correct it on the spot
Fix a customer or vehicle detail straight from the invoice when the front desk has taken something down wrong, without leaving the document.
Duplicates caught
Two records for the same person, spelled differently, is how a service history gets split in half. Upshift surfaces likely duplicates so you can merge them deliberately.
Fleet customers
One business, many vehicles, one statement. Company VAT and registration numbers print on the invoice so your customer can claim their input VAT.
Knows when it is due back
Set the next service by date or by kilometres when you close the job, and Upshift estimates from past readings roughly when that mileage will land.
Job cards
A sheet for the bench, not for the customer
The technician's copy is a different document to the invoice, and it is built as one.
No prices on it
Labour, parts to fit and consumables, each with a tick box. What the job is, not what it costs.
The car, not the owner
Vehicle, registration, VIN and the odometer reading. The customer's name and number do not need to travel to the bench and into the car.
Room to write
Ruled lines for the technician's notes, spaced far enough apart to actually write between, and a sign-off with the date beside it.
Sized so a card with a long parts list still prints on one A4 sheet.
Parts & stock
Stock that keeps itself honest
What is on the shelf, what it cost you, what you sell it for, and what is about to run out.
Deducts as jobs complete
Fit a part on a job and it comes off the shelf. No separate stock-take ritual to remember at the end of the week.
Low-stock warnings
Set a reorder point per part and get told before you run out mid-service, not after.
Oil and fluids by the litre
Bulk items are tracked by volume with their own pack prices, because you do not buy engine oil in units of one.
Cost and margin
Cost price and selling price on every part, so you can see what a job actually made rather than only what it billed.
Saved services and rates
Your standard jobs and labour rates saved once, so a minor service is two taps instead of six lines typed out again.
Expenses too
Workshop expenses recorded against categories and suppliers, so the VAT and profit figures are based on both sides of the business.
Reminders
Repeat work without the admin
The money in a workshop is in the customer coming back. That is a diary job, and diaries get forgotten.
Service due, automatically
Set the next service when you close the job. Upshift watches both the date and the kilometres and emails the owner before it falls due — in your name, with your colours.
Off until you switch it on. The day your system starts emailing your customers should be a decision, not a default.
Nobody gets pestered
A vehicle contacted recently is left alone, and there is a ceiling on how many go out per night, so a first run across years of history cannot flood your customer list.
Overdue stays manual
Chasing money is a judgement call about a person you know. It is a button on the invoice, and the invoice remembers when you last pressed it.
Reports
Numbers you can hand to your accountant
Not a dashboard full of charts nobody reads. The handful of figures that answer how the workshop is doing.
Invoiced versus collected
What you billed and what actually came in, over any period. The gap between the two is the number that matters.
Revenue by month
Where the year is going, month by month, so a quiet patch is visible while you can still do something about it.
Aged receivables
What is current, what is 30 days out, what is 60, and what is older than that — grouped so you know who to phone first.
Top customers
Who is actually keeping the lights on, over the period you choose.
VAT, both sides
Output VAT on what you invoiced and the VAT on your recorded expenses, ready for the return.
An export your accountant accepts
Hand over a clean export of the period rather than a shoebox and an apology.
Team
More than one person at the front desk
A workshop is not one login shared around on a sticky note.
Invite your people
Everyone who works the front desk gets their own account on the same workshop, by email invitation.
Technicians on the job
Keep your technicians on file and assign work to them, so the schedule and the job card say who has it.
Your data is yours alone
Every record is fenced to your workshop in the database itself, not by a filter in the app that somebody could forget to write.
Branding
It should look like your workshop, not like software
Your customer should not be able to tell which system produced the invoice.
Your logo and your colour
Upload the logo once. It goes on the invoice, the quote, the job card, the statement and every email that leaves the system.
Two letterheads
Your colour as a bar across the top of the page, or a stripe down the left edge. Both print cleanly on an office laser.
Deliberately not a big filled block — those come off a laser printer as a streaky grey slab and drink a toner cartridge.
Your own words
A strapline under your name, your banking details, your default payment terms, and a note at the foot of any document.
See it with your own cars in it.
Start the 14-day trial, import what you have, and price a real job on it this afternoon.