Running the day

The dashboard

The dashboard is today. Until your shop is set up it starts with Get started: connect Lightspeed, install the extension, choose add-ons and, with the Booking page, turn on booking for a location. Then: bookings made today, change requests waiting, open workorders and the locations taking bookings; who's dropping off today, with Receive beside each bike still in the appointment status; recent bookings; and a glimpse of the reports. Workorders themselves stay in Lightspeed and on the Workorders page.

Receiving a booked bike

When a booked bike arrives, press Receive. It's on the dashboard, on Bookings and Workorders, and on the workorder in Lightspeed when the extension is installed. One press reads the workorder's status live from Lightspeed and moves it to your received status (chosen under Statuses → Receiving bikes). The booking's timeline follows at once. Receive only shows while the workorder is still in an appointment status, so there's no way to press it twice.

Bookings

With the Booking page, Bookings lists every online booking with its day, services, mechanic and state (pending, created, failed, cancelled). A booking's page has the customer's details and bike (with its Bike Archive specs), the Lightspeed workorder link, the status link to copy, photos the customer added, Retry sending to Lightspeed if the workorder failed, and Cancel booking.

Workorders

Workorders is every workorder in your Lightspeed account, booked online or not, as of the last sync (every five minutes). Each shows its status in your colour, the customer and bike, and the ETA, with Receive where it applies and Ticket for its ticket page. With Status pages, each also has its status link to copy; workorders made directly in Lightspeed get a link the first time someone needs one, and Make a link replaces one that can't be shown again.

The workorder ticket

Each workorder has a ticket page, made to print or to open on a phone by scanning the QR code on the shop tag. It's free. It has the job: the customer, the bike, the status, when it came in and is due, the mechanic, the receipt note and the labor and parts (without prices). The bike card comes first: the bike's torque specs, derailleur hanger and frame standards from Bike Archive. If nobody has said which bike it is yet, the ticket asks, as the bike card does in Lightspeed. With the Status pages add-on, it also has a QR code for the customer's status page. Print prints it; the page never prints by itself unless you came from Print tag on the bike card. Only your shop's staff can open it.

The ticket also shows the workorder's photos. With the Phone tools, Add photos on a phone opens the photo page for this workorder: take photos and each one is added as it's taken, up to 33 a workorder. The same photos show in Lightspeed under the notes, through the extension's Photos.

Schedule and hours

The Schedule page shows the week: who's on each day at each location, and how much work is already booked to each mechanic (online bookings and Quick Book check-ins, by their services' minutes). Under it, Hours is where each person sets their weekly hours, up to three shifts a day (9 to 12 and 1 to 5 around lunch, say), and their days off. You edit your own; admins edit anyone's. Only people whose role takes work appear on the week, and only linked employees have hours to set.

The bay board

With the Booking page, each location has as many stands as you set in its details. Put a booked bike or a walk-in note on a stand with the mechanic working on it, and clear it when it comes off. Bikes booked for today that aren't on a stand yet are listed as waiting.

Quick Book

With the AI integration add-on, Quick Book turns a one-line note into a Lightspeed workorder at the counter. Type the job the way you'd write the tag:

bike for joseph thomas blue trek marlin has shifting issues recommend basic drive rider says clicking from rear cassette

bike.tools drafts the customer (matching an existing one if it can), the bike, what's wrong, what the rider said, the services from your menu and the due date. Check the draft, fix anything, and press Create. Only then are the customer, bike, workorder and labor lines made in Lightspeed. Nothing reaches Lightspeed before Create.

Your job presets are on the draft too: tick one and its lines go on the workorder. When the customer is a match, Quick Book reads their bikes in Lightspeed and their last ten workorders: their bikes are listed on the draft, and when the note names one it's picked, so the workorder goes on it instead of adding the bike again. If it can't tell which, you pick one of theirs or A new bike before you create. It notes when the bike was in lately or the same problem is back. A bike it's sure of gets Bike Archive's year, make and model and is linked to it. When it can't tell the year or trim but knows the range (a Giant Reign), the bike is named for the range, spelled Bike Archive's way, and Which one lists the years and trims to pick from if you know it.

In Lightspeed, Quick Book is a page laid out like Lightspeed's own workorder, with the chat on the right (see Quick Book in Lightspeed). The chat shows each step as it happens (identifying the customer, reading their workorder history, finding similar past jobs, checking the parts the note names in stock, searching Bike Archive, writing the workorder) and what it noticed in their history; the workorder on the left fills in as it's written. Change the customer, the bike, the employee, the status, the due date, the hooks and the receipt and internal notes there, add labor from your menu with Add labor…, and take a line off with its ×. With AI turned on, Quick Book can also read any of your synced workorders and search your Lightspeed inventory: the parts a note names (a chain, a tube, pads) are looked up first, the part itself before lube and tools and what's in stock first. When the note settles which part, it's added as a line of its own; when it doesn't (a worn chain on a bike whose speed it can't tell), the receipt note gets a Possible extra line with a price range for the part and labor, from your own prices. It can read the bike's standards from Bike Archive too (headset, bottom bracket, axles, hanger). It picks a status other than your usual one only when the note calls for it, fills in a hook the note gives ("hook 14"), and a workorder it mentions, like #143, opens in a new tab. When the bike is back for the same problem within 90 days (brakes again, a flat again), the internal note starts with "Rider has been in for this before" and the workorder to see. When it asks something (which customer, which bike), the likely answers show as buttons under its question: tap one, or pick the customer or bike in the workorder, and it drafts again with that answer. It only ever reads; the draft is the one thing it writes, and nothing reaches Lightspeed before Create.

Under Quick Book → Settings: the status new workorders start in, the default due date and who they're assigned to; your shop shorthand ("basic drive" means Drivetrain – Basic); and optional Lightspeed labor item IDs so your reports group the labor. Under Every workorder, tick the services and presets that go on every draft (a bolt check, a final check-over), and write Your rules in your own words ("always recommend a bolt check"): Quick Book follows them on every draft. Add to every receipt note and Add to every internal note put your own words on every draft's notes. Under Hooks, say how you number and use your hooks, and Quick Book writes them that way. With AI turned on for bike.tools the drafts get better; without it a built-in parser does the job, and it adds the ticked services and your notes but can't read your rules.

Quick Book identifies the customer from the customers bike.tools keeps from Lightspeed. Someone it doesn't find is taken to be new, and before Create adds them, it asks Lightspeed once more for a customer with the same email, or the same mobile number and name, and uses that one instead of making them twice.

Quick Book learns your shop's style

Under Quick Book → Settings → Your shop's style, Learn from my workorders reads your latest 300 workorders, with customer names, numbers, emails and serials taken out, and writes a style guide of how your shop writes them: the lines you put on common jobs, your usual times and prices, how your notes read. Drafts then follow it, with a few of your past workorders most like the job as examples. It runs by itself the first time the shop gets AI integration, shows how far it got while it reads, and can be run again any time. The guide is yours to edit. Every workorder Quick Book creates is kept as an example too, and your examples are only ever used for your own shop.

Quick Book reads your workorders' internal notes too, for the context staff wrote down, unless Read internal notes is off under Settings → What bike.tools keeps (more). They're never shown to customers, and turning it off deletes the notes bike.tools kept.

Change requests

With the Booking page, when a customer proposes new contact details from their status page, it waits here. Approve to update their bike.tools record and their Lightspeed customer, or decline. Either way the customer sees the outcome on their timeline.

Reports

Every shop gets a preview on the dashboard. With the Booking page, Reports opens the full page: turnaround (median, 90th percentile, and the share of jobs done within 24 hours and 3 days), online bookings and cancellations by day, busiest days and top services.

Search and shortcuts

Press / or Ctrl+K anywhere in the admin, or the Search button, and type what you're after: a page, a setting, an option, an add-on, a location, or a help section. Press ? to list the keyboard shortcuts.