Paper job cards and software job cards compared

What does paper do well?

Paper's simple. A sheet clipped to a clipboard needs no login, no screen and no power. A technician can write on it with oily hands in the bay, and anyone who walks past can read it.

Plenty of small workshops run on paper for that reason. The trouble starts when the sheets pile up.

What goes wrong with paper cards?

One software maker's guide describes the old way. Records "may have been hand-written and stored in a filing cabinet"¹. It adds that there was "a different piece of paper created for each stage and no way of quickly seeing every job or invoice for one customer"¹. That's a maker describing the problem its own product solves, so read it as one side of the story. But the practical point holds. A customer rings and asks what was done last time. Somebody has to find the sheet.

Other paper problems are familiar. The same details get copied by hand onto each document. A whiteboard shows only what someone last wrote on it.

What changes in software?

Three things, mostly.

Details are entered once. The same maker says software works by "automatically replicating the information gathered at one step and auto-completing the documents required at the next steps"¹. A booking becomes a job card, and the card becomes an invoice.

Records can be searched. In one maker's workshop board, a search bar finds jobs by job number, customer name, and vehicle registration or description². Paper has no search bar.

The whiteboard can go. That same maker says its board "replaces what many workshops would previously do on a job board or whiteboard"². The board page has more.

Does software get rid of paper entirely?

Not necessarily. One maker's help page says its job card can still be printed and kept on paper³. Cards can be printed in bulk, which that page calls useful "at the start of the day"³.

The printed card also leaves a few fields blank on purpose. For that maker, odometer, hubometer, hours, WOF expiry and service due are left empty because they're "intended for manual completion after printing"³. (WOF is a roadworthiness inspection used in New Zealand.) So a workshop can keep a paper step where it suits the floor, while the record itself lives in the software.

What should a workshop ask before switching?

A few plain questions.

• Who will fill in the card in the bay: a technician on a phone or tablet, or reception afterwards?
• Does the software print a card for the technician who prefers paper?
• Can old paper records be kept somewhere findable? Records and privacy rules differ by country, so check with the relevant regulator, such as the ICO in the UK, the OAIC in Australia or the FTC in the US, or with a lawyer.
• Who sees which parts of the card?

The maker's own help pages are the place to check each answer, not a summary on a site like this one. The what a job card is page lists what a card holds, which helps when comparing.