Garage & Fleet Software Glossary

Plain-English definitions for the terms Kenyan garage owners, fleet managers, and parts sellers hear when evaluating software — job cards, KRA eTIMS, M-Pesa reconciliation, insurance workflow, and more.

Workshop Metrics Compliance & Payments Insurance Fleet Car Wash Parts & Retail

Workshop

Digital Job Card: The digital record of a vehicle’s visit — intake condition, photos, estimate lines, parts used, labour, technician assignment, and payment status — replacing carbon-copy paper job cards. Every status update and handoff happens on the same record instead of being re-typed across WhatsApp, a notebook, and an invoice book.
Garage Management Software: Software that runs a workshop’s day-to-day operations — intake, job cards, estimates, inventory, technician tasks, invoicing, and reporting — in one system instead of separate spreadsheets, paper, and chat threads.
Workshop Management System: Used interchangeably with garage management software; emphasises the operational side — bay scheduling, technician workload, and parts/labour tracking across a repair shop of any size.
Multi-Branch Workshop Management: Running job cards, inventory, staff, and reporting for more than one workshop location from a single account — with owners able to compare branch performance rather than checking each location separately.
Paper-to-Digital Migration: The process of moving a workshop off paper job cards and ledgers onto digital job cards and invoicing — typically customers, vehicle history, and open jobs first, then historical records.
Body Shop Software: Garage software configured for collision and panel-beating work specifically — estimate templates for parts and paint, insurance workflow emphasis, and before/after photo evidence per repair stage.
Garaji Network: GARAJI’s partner discovery programme — free public listings for garages, tow operators, parts shops, wash bays, and mobile mechanics so drivers can find and book verified vehicle-care providers near them, independent of whether the provider uses GARAJI’s workshop software.
Garage OS: GARAJI’s mobile-first shop-floor product built around a simple check-in → quote → work → handover flow, aimed at owners and technicians who want workshop software without a heavy ERP learning curve.
Classic ERP: GARAJI’s full-depth workshop back office — finance, detailed reporting, and deep settings — for garages that need ledger-level control alongside day-to-day job cards.

Metrics

Bay Utilization: The share of a workshop’s available service bay-hours actually spent on paying jobs. Low bay utilization usually means jobs are waiting on parts, approvals, or technician availability rather than the bay itself being busy.
Profit Per Bay: Gross profit generated per service bay over a period — a workshop-level KPI that combines job volume, average ticket size, and bay utilization into one number owners can track weekly.
Technician Productivity Tracking: Measuring billed hours, jobs completed, and rework rate per technician from job-card data, instead of estimating from memory at month-end.

Compliance & Payments

KRA eTIMS: The Kenya Revenue Authority’s Electronic Tax Invoice Management System. Businesses issue fiscal invoices through an eTIMS-compliant device or software so sales are reported to KRA in real time. Garage software with native eTIMS support issues the fiscal invoice from the same job card used on the shop floor, without re-keying totals into a separate device.
M-Pesa Reconciliation: Matching M-Pesa till or STK Push payments to the correct job card or invoice automatically, instead of a front-desk or accounts team manually cross-checking SMS confirmations against a paper ledger at day-end.
STK Push: The M-Pesa prompt sent to a customer’s phone asking them to enter their PIN to complete a payment — used at vehicle handover so payment and invoice happen in the same moment as pickup.

Insurance

Insurance-Ready Estimate: A repair estimate formatted with the line-item detail, part sourcing notes, and photo evidence an insurance assessor expects — reducing the back-and-forth queries that otherwise stall claim approval.
Assessor Approval Turnaround: The time between submitting a repair estimate to an insurer’s assessor and receiving sign-off to proceed. A common bottleneck in insurance-linked repair work when evidence and estimates are scattered across email and WhatsApp.

Fleet

Fleet Management Software: Software for tracking a company’s own vehicles — maintenance schedules, fuel, inspections, driver assignment, dispatch, and cost per vehicle — distinct from garage software, which serves repair shops working on third-party customer vehicles.
GarajiFleet: GARAJI’s standalone fleet operations product — vehicle records, inspections, fuel and maintenance logging, dispatch, and cost analytics for organisations that operate their own vehicle fleet rather than repairing customer vehicles.
Cost Per Vehicle: Total maintenance, fuel, and downtime cost attributed to a single fleet vehicle over a period — the core KPI fleet managers use to decide when to repair versus retire a vehicle.

Car Wash

Clean Garaji: GARAJI’s car wash floor product — lane check-in, wash packages, attendant KPIs, and M-Pesa checkout for wash bays, distinct from full workshop repair software.
Lane Throughput: Vehicles processed per wash lane per hour — the operational metric wash bay managers use to plan staffing at peak hours (weekend mornings, month-end).

Parts & Retail

Counter Sales / Autoparts POS: Point-of-sale software for a spare parts counter — fitment lookup by vehicle make/model, stock control, M-Pesa checkout, and linking counter sales to workshop pull-outs so parts used on a job automatically leave stock.
Fitment Lookup: Matching a spare part to the specific vehicle makes, models, and years it fits — reducing wrong-part sales and returns at a parts counter or marketplace.

See these terms in a real workflow

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