Pricing a repair: labour and parts

The workshop (§26) already tracks the item, the fault and what stage the job is at. What it could not do was say what the work is worth — a quote was a description and a price, which cannot express "1 hour 45 at R650" or separate the labour you sell from the parts you buy. Those are different margins, and a service desk lives on the difference.

Open a job in Workshop and the job card now carries a costing sheet.

42.1 Labour and parts

• Labour is hours × rate. Enter 1.75 h at R650 and the line is R1,137.50. Time goes in to

hundredths of an hour, so 45 minutes is 0.75.

• Parts are real products off your catalogue, so what you fit leaves stock and costs what it

cost you.

Aura will not let you blur the two: a part cannot be billed in hours, and a labour line cannot hold a product. That refusal is the point — it is what keeps "what did we make on parts this month" answerable.

Parts leave stock when the customer pays, not when you fit them. A job that is quoted and never approved must not quietly consume your shelf.

42.2 The ceiling, and the two ways past it

The sheet holds four numbers: what you quoted, what the customer approved, what the job has actually run to, and anything you have written off.

The rule is simple and it is enforced, not advisory: the job cannot bill more than the customer approved. Go over and Aura refuses the handover and shows you the arithmetic:

Two exits, both deliberate. Record a new approval after phoning the customer — ordinary counter work, because ringing someone is not a manager's job. Or write off the difference, which is a manager's decision because it is money leaving the business. Either way somebody chose, and the choice is on the job.

42.3 The item does not leave unbilled

A job now closes only through handover, which is where the bill is raised from the costing sheet. Previously a job could be marked collected directly — the item went back over the counter and the sale stayed open, and because finished jobs drop off the board nobody ever saw it again. That is fixed: marking a job collected any other way is refused and points you at handover.

If you have anything that closed jobs automatically, point it at handover instead.