Workshop management software, built for New Zealand

Workshop management software is the system that runs the shop: bookings, job cards, parts, labour, invoicing and the customer history behind all of it. Hoist does that job for New Zealand workshops, with rego lookups from official vehicle records, WoF and CoF reminders, and two-way Xero sync. Every feature switched on from day one.

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The job board in Hoist workshop management software: Pending, In Progress, Ready and Completed lanes, each job showing its number, tags, vehicle, rego, customer, technician and total
“The software is easy to use, straightforward, and constantly improving.”
KirstineAdvance Automotive, Palmerston North

What running the shop on scattered tools actually costs

  • The job lives in four places

    A booking in the diary, a card on the bench, parts in a spreadsheet and the invoice in the accounting package. Every handover is a chance to lose a line, and the margin goes out with it.

  • Nobody can answer the phone properly

    A customer rings about the noise you fixed last year and the answer is in a box, a text thread on somebody’s personal phone, or nowhere at all.

  • Declined work is never seen again

    The brakes the customer put off in March are the job you should be quoting in September. If that only lives in a technician’s memory, it is revenue you already found and then threw away.

What Hoist does

  • The vehicle fills itself in. Type a rego and make, model, year, VIN and the WoF expiry come back from official NZ vehicle records, and Hoist tracks WoF and CoF due dates from there. Lookups are metered, see the pricing page, so you are not typing a vehicle in by hand.

  • One job card from booking to invoice. The card carries the reported fault, the agreed work, photos and inspection findings, parts and labour. When the job is done the card becomes a GST invoice in one click and syncs to Xero, so nothing is typed twice.

  • Talk to the customer from inside the job. Send a text about the extra work and their reply comes back threaded against the customer, not to somebody’s personal phone. Connect a mailbox and the email about a job sits beside the job too.

  • Work they declined comes back around. Anything a customer says no to stays on the vehicle as deferred work. Next time it is in the bay, the job you already priced is waiting there instead of being forgotten.

A Hoist work order: the customer, their Hilux with its WoF expired, and a pending front brake job with its labour and parts

What you get

  • One system for bookings, job cards, parts, labour and invoicing
  • Rego lookups and WoF dates from official NZ vehicle records
  • Two-way customer texting threaded against the customer
  • Deferred work tracked so declined jobs come back as revenue
  • Two-way Xero sync, so the books keep themselves
  • Live chat and phone support from New Zealand, and we do the data migration for you

Common questions

What is workshop management software?
It is the system an automotive workshop runs on. It holds the booking diary, the job cards, the customer and vehicle records, parts and stock, technician time, and the invoicing that comes out the other end. The point of it is that those things talk to each other, so a job booked on Monday becomes a card on Tuesday and an invoice on Wednesday without anyone re-typing it.
How much does workshop management software cost in New Zealand?
Hoist publishes its full price and every usage rate on the pricing page rather than quoting on request, with every feature switched on and no tier to upgrade into. Others in the New Zealand market sell in tiers, usually with fewer users included and features held back for higher plans, so compare on the plan and user count you would actually need rather than the entry price.
What does Hoist include that costs extra elsewhere?
Two-way customer texting, a connected mailbox, deferred work tracking, two-way Xero sync, digital inspections, purchase orders and supplier bills, time clock and labour billing, and reporting. All of it is in the one plan. On top of the plan you pay only for what you use and who uses it, and every one of those rates is published on the pricing page rather than quoted on request.
Does it work on a phone or tablet in the workshop?
Yes. Technicians use the Hoist mobile app for iOS and Android, or any phone or tablet browser, to add photos, readings and inspection findings from the pit without walking back to the office.
How hard is it to move off what we use now?
We do the migration for you. Customers, vehicles and service history come across, and we help you get set up. Get in touch before you cancel anything so there is time to take a clean export from your current system.

Related reading

Explore other features

Job Card SoftwareWOF & Service RemindersBooking System & DiaryXero IntegrationInvoicing SoftwareRego Lookup

Try it on your own jobs

Every part of Hoist is free for 14 days, or we can show you around first.

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Or call us on 04 242 0451