Replace your whiteboard with a real-time Kanban board your whole team can see. Drag-and-drop repair orders between status columns. See who's editing what. Track every job from scheduled to paid. 100% free.
Walk into most auto repair shops and you'll find the same thing: a whiteboard covered in smeared dry-erase marker with half the info outdated by 10am. Or worse, a service writer who keeps everything in their head and nobody else knows what's going on. When that person calls in sick, the shop grinds to a halt.
Here's what happens without proper workflow management: jobs get lost between statuses. A car sits in a bay waiting for parts but nobody updated the board. A customer calls to check on their vehicle and your team scrambles to figure out where it's at. A tech finishes a job but the service writer doesn't know for 20 minutes because nobody walked over to tell them. Sound familiar?
Shop Commander's job board fixes all of this. It's a visual, drag-and-drop Kanban board that gives everyone in the shop — service writers, techs, managers, parts people — a real-time view of every active job. When a tech moves a card from "In Progress" to "Completed," every screen in the shop updates instantly. No walking across the shop. No shouting. No whiteboard that's wrong 30% of the time.
And unlike the $300–500/month platforms that offer similar functionality, Shop Commander is completely free. Same features. Better real-time sync (WebSocket vs. polling). Zero cost.
Shop Commander's Kanban board is the command center of your shop. Every active repair order appears as a card in the column that matches its current status. Need to move a job from "Estimate" to "Authorized"? Drag it. Need to reprioritize what gets done next? Drag cards up or down within a column. The board is always right because it's always live.
Configure columns to match your shop's specific workflow. Common setups include Scheduled, Estimate, Authorized, In Progress, Waiting for Parts, and Completed — but you decide what columns you need and what they're called. Status mappings connect each column to the repair order lifecycle. Your board, your rules.
Move repair orders between columns to update their status instantly. Reorder cards within a column to set priority. The UI uses optimistic updates so the drag feels instant — the system confirms in the background. A 5px movement threshold prevents accidental drags when you're just clicking. Smooth, fast, and intuitive.
Every card on the board shows the RO number, customer name, vehicle year/make/model, total price, assigned technician, and status badge. You can see what you need to know without opening the RO. Cards with active customer alerts (VIP, health concern, balance due) get a red border that's visible from across the room.
Configure which columns appear on your board and whether internal tasks are visible. Managers can set up the board to match the shop's workflow, then let the team drag cards between columns all day. Settings persist per shop — set it once and forget it. If your workflow changes, reconfigure in 30 seconds.
This is where Shop Commander is genuinely different from everything else on the market. Most shop management platforms use standard HTTP requests — your browser asks the server "anything new?" every few seconds, and the server responds. It works, but it's slow. There's always a delay.
Shop Commander uses WebSocket technology — the same technology that powers real-time chat apps and live trading platforms. Instead of your browser asking for updates, the server pushes updates to every connected device the moment anything changes. When a tech moves a card from "In Progress" to "Completed," every service writer's screen updates in under a second. When a customer approves an estimate from their phone, the board updates immediately. No refresh. No waiting. No stale data.
This matters more than most people realize. In a busy shop with 5 techs and 2 service writers all working simultaneously, stale data causes real problems. Conflicting edits. Duplicate work. Missed status changes. WebSocket sync eliminates all of it.
Changes broadcast to every connected user in under a second via WebSocket. Desktop, tablet, phone — everyone sees the same thing at the same time. No manual refreshing. No "let me reload the page." Your board is always current, always accurate, always live.
Amber badges on the board show which team member is currently editing each repair order. If your tech opens RO-1042, every service writer sees "Matt is editing" on that card. This prevents conflicting edits and saves the awkward "wait, I was already working on that" conversation. You know who's touching what, always.
When a user switches back to the Shop Commander tab after working in another app, data refreshes automatically. No need to hit F5 or worry that you're looking at old information. The system detects when the tab regains focus and pulls fresh data. Simple, invisible, and essential.
When you drag a card, it moves immediately on your screen. The system confirms the change in the background. This means every interaction feels instant even on slower connections. If a rare conflict occurs, the board self-corrects. The result is a board that feels as responsive as a native app, running in your browser.
Every repair order in Shop Commander follows a defined lifecycle from the moment it's created to the moment it's paid. The status workflow — Scheduled, Estimate, Authorized, In Progress, Waiting Parts, Completed, Invoiced, Paid — maps directly to your job board columns. Move a card, update the status. Update the status, the card moves. It's always in sync.
ROs are auto-numbered sequentially per shop (RO-1041, RO-1042, etc.) so there's never confusion about which job you're talking about. Promised date tracking shows exactly when work is due, with visual overdue indicators when you're behind. And comeback detection automatically flags a repair order when the same vehicle returns within 30 days — so you catch potential warranty issues before the customer has to tell you.
Unlimited service lines per RO with individual labor, parts, and sublet totals. Customers can approve or decline individual line items — declined items automatically feed into follow-up campaigns. Canned job quick-add applies predefined service templates with pre-configured labor hours and parts. Technician assignment per line item tracks who did what.
Full parts management per RO: part number, description, vendor, brand, quantity, cost, price, markup. Core charge tracking for deposits and returns. Parts status workflow (Needed, Ordered, Received, Installed, Returned) with order tracking, vendor info, and markup calculations. Automatic price markup based on your shop's parts matrix.
Generate shareable estimate links customers can view on any device. Line-by-line authorization with digital signature capture, IP address logging, and timestamped PDF snapshots. Send estimate links via SMS. When a customer authorizes work, your team gets an instant WebSocket alert and the board updates immediately. No phone tag. No delays.
Record payments by cash, debit, credit, e-transfer, cheque, or other. Split payments across multiple methods. Payment voiding with reason tracking. Real-time balance calculation. Completed ROs generate customer-facing invoices with print-ready formatting. Text-to-pay links let customers pay from their phone.
Your shop doesn't just do repair orders. There's cleaning. Equipment maintenance. Parts runs. Training sessions. Inventory counts. All the stuff that keeps the shop running but doesn't generate an RO. Most shop software ignores this work entirely. Shop Commander doesn't.
The built-in task management system handles all non-RO work with auto-numbered tasks, priority levels (low, normal, high, urgent), categories, assignments, due dates, checklists, comments, and file attachments. And here's the key part: tasks can appear on your main job board alongside repair orders.
Internal task cards show up with a purple border to distinguish them from RO cards. You can drag them between columns just like repair orders. Toggle task visibility on or off in board settings. And recurring task templates automatically regenerate tasks on a daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly schedule — so the "clean the shop" task shows up every Friday without anyone having to create it.
Auto-numbered tasks (T-001, T-002). Priority levels with color-coded indicators. Categories: cleaning, maintenance, errands, training, organization, shop improvement, administrative. Status workflow: Open, In Progress, Done, Blocked, Waiting. Assignment to specific team members. Due dates with overdue highlighting. Estimated effort tracking in minutes.
Add checklist items to any task with completion tracking and a visual progress bar. Team discussion via comments on individual tasks. File attachments including photos with camera capture. Full activity log tracks every change to every task — status updates, reassignments, comments. Complete accountability for every shop task.
Define tasks that automatically regenerate on a schedule. Recurrence types: daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Choose which day of the week or date of the month. A background worker creates new task instances every 15 minutes. Activate, deactivate, edit, or delete recurring templates anytime. The shop floor stays clean without anyone remembering to assign it.
Every major shop management platform offers some version of a job board. Tekmetric has one. Shopmonkey has one. Shop-Ware has one. They all cost $199–999/month for the privilege of dragging cards around a screen.
Shop Commander's board does everything theirs do — drag-and-drop, customizable columns, repair order cards with key details, status workflow management — plus real-time WebSocket sync that none of them offer. While their boards poll for updates every few seconds, Shop Commander pushes changes instantly. Your team is always looking at the truth. Always.
Add internal task management, recurring tasks, live editor badges, customer alert highlighting, and it's not even close. More features. Better technology. Zero cost. That's what happens when a shop owner builds software for shop owners instead of investors.
Shop Commander's real-time Kanban board replaces your whiteboard, your sticky notes, and your service writer's memory — with a system that's always right, always live, and always free.
Free setup. No credit card. No catch.