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Move work through Workflow Stages

The Workflow board is the live map of every open repair order in the shop: each card is a vehicle, each stage is a step in your process, and moving a card is how you tell BayEngine (and everyone watching the board) where that vehicle stands. Open it from Workflow in the sidebar. You move work two ways: drag the card on the board, or pick a stage from the dropdown on the repair order page. Both do exactly the same thing.

This page is about using the board. Adding, renaming, reordering, or removing stages is shop setup, covered in Workflow stages and operational defaults.

Anyone with the repair orders read permission can see the board; moving a card needs repair orders update.

Read the board​

The board has two views, switched by tabs at the top:

  • Board (the default) lays stages out as rows down the left side. A stage marked user-specific in settings splits into a column per technician, so a glance shows who owns what; an Unassigned column appears whenever a user-specific stage holds a card with no technician. Full-width stages (Dispatch and Ready for Pickup, on the default board) span the whole row.
  • Columns shows every stage as one vertical column, with no technician lanes.

Each card shows the customer (first initial and last name) with the Visit Type icon beside it, the vehicle, the RO number, estimated labor hours next to a wrench icon, and the Promise Time next to a clock icon (just the time when it's due today, date and time otherwise). A progress bar fills in as authorized work gets done; see Track Service progress and work time for how that percentage is computed. Clicking anywhere on the card opens the repair order.

Above the board, the search box narrows cards by RO number, customer name, or vehicle. The employees filter hides cards by technician (with Only me, All employees, and Select none shortcuts, and Unassigned as its own entry), and the stages filter hides whole stages you don't want on screen. Filters change only what you see, never the data, and your choices are remembered per shop on that browser.

Drag a card to a new stage​

Grab the grip handle in the card's top-right corner and drop the card where the work now stands. The rest of the card is a link, so the handle is the only part that drags; it also works from the keyboard. Where you drop within a lane is kept, so you can order a technician's queue by dragging cards up and down inside one stage too.

On the Board tab, the drop target can be a specific technician's column of a user-specific stage, and that drop does double duty: the repair order moves to the stage and that technician becomes its assigned technician. Dropping into the Unassigned column clears the technician; dropping into a full-width stage leaves the assignment alone. The Columns view has no lanes, so moves there never touch the technician. What the assigned technician controls is covered in Assign service advisors and technicians.

Everyone else's board updates as you drop. If the save fails, the card returns to where it was and you'll see "Could not move repair order" - try again.

When you drop a card into the last stage while it still has incomplete Services, BayEngine pauses the move and recommends completing them first. Use Mark Complete to stop active timers, complete the remaining Labor and Part Lines, and then move the card. Use Skip to move the card without changing the Services. Closing the dialog cancels the move.

Change the stage from the repair order page​

On the repair order page, the current stage is the colored pill in the header, in the stage's color from settings. Click it and pick the new stage from the list; each option shows its color dot. The move saves immediately and confirms with "Workflow stage updated".

One wrinkle: picking a user-specific stage when the repair order has no technician opens an Assign technician dialog first, because that stage files cards by technician. Choose one and click Update stage. If a technician is already assigned, the card moves straight into their lane.

Choosing the last stage with incomplete Services shows the same recommendation as the board. Mark Complete completes the remaining work before moving; Skip moves without changing it. This keeps the Customer Portal from showing the vehicle as ready for pickup while its Services still appear in progress.

What a stage move does​

A stage move is an operational statement, and BayEngine records it as one. The repair order's activity log gets an entry naming who moved it, from which stage, to which stage; see Add notes and maintain the Repair Order for reading the activity log. Reordering cards within one stage is not logged as activity, so tidying a queue doesn't bury the history.

A move can also start an Automation. The Repair Order Workflow Stage Changed trigger on the Automations page fires on every real stage change and can be narrowed to a specific from-stage, to-stage, or both - for example, creating a task whenever a card lands in Quality Control. A repair order's initial placement in the first stage does not fire it; only moves between stages do.

The customer's portal reads the board by position, not by stage name. While the card sits in the last stage, the portal shows "Ready for pickup" and marks the Pickup step ready; in any middle stage the vehicle reads as in service; in the first stage, as checked in. Moves are reflected the next time the customer looks - moving a card sends no text, no email, and adds nothing to the portal timeline. Moving a card backward out of the last stage simply takes "Ready for pickup" down again, so a premature move is fixed by dragging the card back. Because middle stages all read the same to the customer, your internal stage names and order stay internal. See Use the Customer Portal for approvals, status, documents, and payment.

What a stage move does not do​

The board tracks where the vehicle is, not what the customer owes. Moving a card never changes the repair order's financial status, its totals, or its invoice, and collecting a payment never moves a card. A move also does not change the service advisor, start or stop anyone's work time, or mark Services complete. The explicit Mark Complete choice in the Ready for Pickup recommendation is the exception: it completes the listed Services before performing the move. Skip performs only the stage move.

How work leaves the board​

There is no done stage to drag finished work into. A repair order leaves the board on its own, from whatever stage it was in, once staff marks the vehicle picked up, closes the visit without a sale, or deletes it - and those repair orders can no longer be moved. Marking pickup requires a finalized Invoice but does not require payment or a move to Ready for Pickup. Finalizing, paying, or refunding an Invoice never removes or locks the card. Getting a repair order to that point is covered in Complete, cancel, restore, print, or prepare a Repair Order for invoicing. New cards appear in the first stage the moment a repair order is created; see Create or convert a Repair Order. For stages that tend to collect stalled work, like Waiting on Parts, see Manage workload, waiting-for-parts, and holdover work.