Always shipping.

Team now has a Roles tab listing, for all seven roles, every single thing they can and cannot do: where they can go, what they can change, what they can send. It is generated from the permissions the product enforces rather than written by hand, so if it says a role cannot do something, it cannot. Worth a look before you invite somebody.

Job totals, parts prices, labour rates and the prices in your parts catalogue are hidden from the technician role on the phone, as they already were on the web. What a technician still sees is the work itself, which parts, how many, and how long. Owners, managers and parts advisors are unchanged. Asking a customer to approve extra work is now limited to those three as well, since that screen quotes your prices to the customer.

When you ask a customer to approve extra work, the VAT rate comes from your workshop settings, so a garage registered at 5%, or not registered at all, sends the figure that actually applies. If your settings have not loaded yet the request waits rather than guessing, because the customer is being asked to agree to that number.

If your address, phone number, opening hours or logo are not filled in, the home screen now says so and takes you straight to the page that fixes it. Your address prints on every invoice and heads your booking page, so a blank one is worth knowing about. It also tells you when most of your customers have no mobile number on file, because those are the ones who never get an MOT reminder.

Restoring something now asks you to confirm, so a mis-tap while scrolling cannot put a deleted job or invoice back into your lists and totals. Each row also shows the time it was deleted rather than just the date, which is what you need when you have cleared out several things in one go.

Tap any job in a vehicle’s service history to open the full record, and tap an invoice number to go straight to that invoice. The whole row is the target now rather than the job number alone, so it works with a thumb.

Clear a notification and it appears under Cleared straight away. Restore it and it goes back to Active, instead of sitting in both lists until you closed and reopened the screen.

Everything belonging to the person signing out is cleared, so a shared phone or tablet in the workshop is ready for whoever picks it up next.

A technician opens the app on their own jobs for the week, grouped by when they are due, with anything overdue first and anything still unscheduled at the end. "Next" means the next TIME rather than the next day, so an 08:00 and a 16:00 job on the same day no longer tie. Their certifications and their time off are in there too, and the week it shows is the calendar week rather than the next seven days.

Their History lists the jobs you have completed and invoiced, each with its job number, and a vehicle's service history names the job number and the number of any invoice that came from it. Both open from there. Those are the two references somebody reads out on the phone.

One switch on their own account covers the email, the text and the notification, and it takes the MOT prompts off their home screen. Your own MOT list is unchanged, so you can still see what is due and ring whoever you like.

Removing a job puts it in a bin you can open, so you can see what was taken out and put it back. Booking in the app also offers exactly the services your garage sells, with their real durations, and sending a request now lands on the request rather than leaving you wondering whether it went.

The app greets you by name and names the workshop and the role you are signed in as, which is worth a second on a tablet several people share. Alongside it: pull to refresh on every screen that was missing it, every date and time reading in UK time, terms and privacy opening inside the app, and a note of what changed the first time you open a new version.

There is a switch on the customer's own account. With it off you will not chase them by email, text or notification about an MOT, and the MOT prompts come off their home screen. Your own MOT list is untouched, so you can still see what is due and ring whoever you like. The same switch arrives in the app with the next release.

A customer who books by typing their registration, rather than picking a car already on their account, turns up in your bookings list, the sidebar count, the dashboard and search like any other request. Managers and anyone on your front desk can open and action it, not just the owner.

If something interrupts an accept partway through, pressing it again finishes the job off. A booking the customer has since cancelled stays cancelled, and a request that has already been accepted cannot be declined on top of it, so the booking and the job on your diary always agree.

Accepting a booking fills in the make, model and colour on the job, so the jobs list, the job card and the tracking link you send the customer all name the vehicle. Two word makes like Land Rover and Aston Martin are read as one make.

Each line on a vehicle's history carries its job number and the number of any invoice that came from it, and both open from there. Those are the two references a customer reads out on the phone, so they sit on the page they are already looking at.

The History tab in a customer's account lists the jobs you have completed and invoiced, each with its job number, alongside any requests that were declined. Work you have billed stays on their record whatever happens to the invoice afterwards.

Signing in greets you by name and names the workshop and the role you are in, which is worth a second on a tablet several people share. Signing out confirms it before the sign in form comes back. Both respect the reduced motion setting on your device.

Pages across the portal open noticeably quicker, most of all when you are moving between the jobs list, the calendar and an invoice all day. Signing in and signing out work exactly as before, and removing someone from a workshop still takes effect straight away.

The buttons along the top of an invoice are grouped by what they are for: sending it to the customer, getting it on paper, and your accounts package. The action that matters right now is the one carrying colour, so on a paid invoice the green Paid badge is the first thing you see. Completion note is now called Completion certificate, which is what it produces, and it sits alongside the other two PDFs.

Ask the Help assistant whether you can print a quote and it tells you plainly: quotes give you a PDF to print, invoices print straight from the page. Ask how to take VAT off a single invoice and it names the exact tick box. Buttons across the portal also respond as you point at them, so what is clickable is obvious at a glance.

Version 1.7.21 is on Google Play now, with the iPhone version following once Apple releases it. The app watches for newer versions and offers you a button to go and get it, down to the smaller updates that keep the same version number. Clocking on and off confirms itself clearly either way, so a technician in a loud bay with gloves on knows the time went on the job.

A part's cost, sell price and markup stay in step with each other wherever the part is saved from: the parts screen, the app, or a price list import. What a customer is charged is the price you set, whichever way the part got there.

Every reminder now asks DVSA what the expiry actually is at the moment it goes out, so the date your customer reads is the date the government holds. If the car has been tested since, the reminder stands down and your record updates itself. A reminder saying an MOT has already expired will not send at all unless that has been confirmed first, because that is the one message that has to be right.

The new invoice screen has a search across your customer book. Type three letters of a name, a company, an email or a phone number and pick them, and their details fill themselves in. Leave the box alone and it offers the last few people through the door, which is usually who you are invoicing anyway. Building a job has worked this way for a while; now raising an invoice does too.

Invoices now carry the name your bank account is actually held in, plus the bank, both optional and both in Settings, Bank details. If you trade as Swift Cars but bank as SWIFTFIX AUTO LTD, your customer types the right payee and their banking app stops warning them. Leave it blank and your workshop name is used, exactly as before. The printed invoice gained a payee line it never had.

Cost, sell price and markup now move together on a stock item. Change the cost and the sell price follows your margin. Type the sell price you want and the markup works itself out. The form tells you what the part will invoice at while you are still looking at it, so there is never a question of which number the invoice believes. A sell price with no cost price is flagged rather than quietly saved.

MOT Alerts now lists every text that went out in your garage name: when it went, what it was for, which vehicle, and whether it reached the handset. A text a provider accepted but never delivered says so rather than claiming it landed, and anything refunded is marked. No message bodies and no customer numbers are kept, so this is a record of what we did for you rather than a second copy of your customers.

Book in a car whose registration is sitting in Trash and Autera says so in those words, and tells you to restore it. If two people book the same car at the same moment, the second one quietly joins the first.

Every vehicle on the alerts screen now shows the next reminder it is due and the day it will send, rather than leaving you to work the schedule out. The full cadence is written on the page in one sentence, so what you see and what the system does cannot drift apart.

Reminders now continue past the expiry date, at one day, one week and one month after, worded for a car that is already off the road. That is the window in which a customer is most likely to book. Every one is counted, so you can see what the chasing actually earned rather than assuming.

Every customer now has a notes thread. What they said on the phone, what they agreed to, why the job was held. Only your team sees them, never the customer. Each note carries who wrote it and when, and every note keeps its history: edit one and Autera keeps the words as they were, delete one and it stays in the history with a name against it. So when somebody says "your man told me the clutch was fine", you can look.

Clips filed against a registration now play in the browser, with a thumbnail in the folder so you can see which one is which. Photos and video sit in one viewer, so you can swipe from a picture of a wheel to the clip of the noise it makes without closing anything, and click outside to come back. The clip streams as you watch rather than downloading whole, so a five minute walkaround opens as quickly as a photo.

The list of links you have sent now shows the pictures. Each one says what it holds, "2 photos, 1 video" rather than "3 files", names the first few, and shows small previews of them. When a customer rings about the photos you sent last week, you can find the right link at a glance instead of opening three.

Your team page lists the invites you have sent that nobody has accepted yet, with the role and how long ago each went out, and lets you cancel one. Send an invite to the wrong address and the link stops working straight away. Managers can see and manage their own invites too, not just the owner.

Your invoice list now filters by date, and it asks you which date you mean: when it was raised, when it was paid, or when it was due. Pick a month, the last 30 or 90 days, this year, or your own two dates, and narrow it to one customer if you want. Above the list it totals what you are looking at and how much of it is still owed, so "what did we invoice in August" and "who has not paid me yet" are both one click. The filter stays in the address bar, so you can send the exact view to your accountant.

A new Needs you list on your jobs page, and a card on your home screen when there is anything in it. It gathers the work that has quietly stalled: finished but never invoiced, waiting on a part for over a week, in progress with no update for a fortnight, booked for a date that has been and gone, or waiting on you to sign it off. Every row says which one it is and for how long, so you can see what to chase without opening a single job.

The Overdue tab on your invoices now lists everything past its due date that still owes money, and the count on the tab matches the list underneath it. Any invoice that is late wears a red Overdue label wherever it appears, whatever it was marked as before, so the number on your dashboard, the reminder emails and the list all agree about who owes you.

Change a customer detail while raising an invoice and Autera asks what you meant: save it to their record, or keep it on this invoice only. They stay linked to the same customer either way, and if it really is a different person you can say so and start a fresh record.

For garages with more than one site, every invoice, quote, certificate and reminder now carries the address, phone number and VAT number of the branch that did the work, not the head office. Reply to one of those emails and it reaches that branch. Your counts, your diary and your lists follow the branch you are standing on, and a customer sees one premises rather than a mixture. Single-site garages see no change at all.

The tablet shows a code, you scan it with your phone, check the four-digit number matches, and it signs in as you, so the work on it is recorded against the person who actually did it. No camera to hand? Generate a one-time code under Settings and type it on the tablet instead. The code is also on the sign-in page itself, so a desk PC or a fresh tablet signs in with one scan and nobody types a password on a shared screen. Works in the browser today, and the Autera app gets it in the next update.

When you ring or message us about your account, we will ask for a verification code. Open Settings, then Help and Support, and tap Get verification code: six characters, good for fifteen minutes, works once. Read it out and we know it is really you. It also tells us your role, so if someone who is not the owner asks us to change your bank details, we say no. Nothing to set up and nothing to remember.

If your plan includes a set number of jobs a month, your home screen now shows how many you have used from the very first one, not a warning that appears when you are nearly out. It says what happens when you reach the limit and when the count resets, so the decision is yours to make calmly rather than halfway through booking a car in.

Assigned jobs now show the mechanic’s name on the card in the diary, so you can see who is on what without opening anything. Jobs with nobody assigned stay blank rather than showing a placeholder that reads like a person’s name.

Pick your garage colour in Settings and your invoices are drawn in it instead of the Autera navy. Choose anything you like: we work out whether the text sitting on it should be black or white, so it stays readable whatever you pick. On Starter and above, alongside your logo. Leave it alone and nothing changes.

Add as many mechanics and admin users as you employ, on any paid plan, at no extra cost. No per-seat fee: software should not charge you more at the exact moment your garage grows.

Drag a job onto the diary and it lands exactly where you dropped it, at the time you dropped it. The diary will not save a job it cannot place, and a card with no finish time still shows at a readable size.

Autera now tells you when a chunk of your customer records have no phone number and no email address, because a reminder cannot reach a record with nothing on it. It says how many and which, so you can fill the gaps before the next MOT round goes out.

Creating a quote from a diagnostic scan now confirms it worked instead of appearing to do nothing. The clock-in bar showing who is on the clock appears on the jobs list, not just the dashboard. And the invoices list pulls down to refresh like every other list in the app. Live on the App Store and Google Play, so your phone should offer it shortly.

If you are not VAT registered, set your rate to 0% and it stays there. Your invoices, quotes and certificates then carry no VAT line at all, rather than a £0.00 one, so what the customer reads matches how you trade.

Draft quotes can now be changed from the web. Correct a price, add a line, fix a description, in the same editor you already use for draft invoices. Once a quote has been sent it stays as the customer saw it.

Owners can move someone between roles from the Team page. Promote a technician to manager, or move an owner down, and they keep the one account and their history with it.

You can update the address you sign in with, from Settings. We send a link to the new address first and nothing changes until you click it, so you can never end up locked out of an address that does not work.

The person booking the car in can fill in a phone number or email address, so the record is complete and reachable from the moment it is created. Technicians still cannot change names, addresses or trade accounts.

Sharing a diagnostic report from a tablet now shows your 20 most recent jobs instead of 10, and searching finds a job by customer name, make or model, not just the job number or registration.

If you run out of the texts included in your plan, you can buy more without changing plan: 100 for £10 or 500 for £40. Bought texts do not expire at the end of the month and are only used once your monthly allowance is gone.

Reminders can now go out as a text as well as an email, from your workshop name. It reaches customers who have a mobile on file but no email address, who were getting no reminder at all before. Included in your plan allowance and switched on in Settings, and it never sends without you turning it on.

A full Class 7 job template for vans over 3,000kg, alongside the Class 4 one. Covers the commercial items a van has and a car does not: load area, side and rear doors, twin rear wheels, towbar and tail lift, and tyre load rating against the plated weight. It also flags the laden brake test up front, because an unladen van often will not make the required efficiency on the rollers. Added to every existing workshop, not just new ones.

Technician productivity (hours clocked vs hours sold), a live workshop flow view showing what is waiting on approval or parts, and a parts margin report that flags parts billed with no markup. All built from data you already enter.

One email each morning: yesterday’s jobs and takings, this morning’s queue, unpaid invoices and how each technician performed. You pick the hour and the inbox, and quiet days send nothing. Opt in from Analytics or Settings.

A dedicated home for the visual trades: booking menus shaped like a price list, timestamped check-in photos that settle was-that-scratch-there disputes, and before and after links that sell the next job.

Whichever plan you pick at signup, your 14-day trial runs with the full Workshop feature set: website, online booking, review booster, job tracker and health checks. You still only pay for the plan you chose.

Before a trial ends you now get told exactly which features stop and which stay, including whether your published website would go offline. No surprises either direction.

Type a customer address ending .con or gmial.com and Autera suggests the fix before the email ever bounces. On every customer form, the booking page, and in the mobile app.

Point your own domain at your Autera-built website. £5 a month or £48 a year once connected, and we do the setup for Workshop plans.

Our support desk now sees your WhatsApp messages and tickets the moment they arrive, with no refresh lag. You should feel it as quicker replies.

Every Workshop plan now includes a full website at yourname.getautera.com: themes, layouts, photo galleries, posts, testimonials, a map, an enquiry form and online booking. Edit it live, preview drafts safely, publish when you choose. Built in one day, refined all week.

Hand customers a certificate worth keeping in the glovebox: your branding, the work done, the date, the mileage.

When an email to a customer bounces, the customer record shows a warning chip so you find out at a glance, not weeks later.

Send customers a no-login link that answers the phone call for you: where their car is in the process, updated as your team works. The "is my car ready?" page.

Upload your factor’s price list and quote from real prices. The importer reads the common formats and maps columns for you.

Fuel or charge level recorded on the job in and out, number plate entry that accepts every era of UK plate, and a draft invoice can now be marked paid on the spot.

Sign up with a mistyped email domain and Autera notices straight away and tells you, so your welcome email reaches you first time.

Cancel and come back and your invoices from us are all still there. Your paper trail is yours.

Stability and polish across the board, and job deletion moved to the desk where it belongs, so a pocket tap can never delete a job.

Set your hours once and every surface agrees: your public profile, your website and your booking page.

Send a customer a link, they photograph the damage or the document on their phone, and it lands straight in the job folder. No app needed on their side.

Message Autera support on WhatsApp like you would a mate. Same team, faster channel.

Built on the new toolchain with faster startup and fixes throughout.

Status badges with stronger contrast, a calendar that uses the full height of the week, tidier printing, and a round of security hardening you will never see but benefit from daily.

Moving from another system or a notebook? Send us what you have and we bring your customers, vehicles and history across for free.

Type a reg that could never match a DVLA record and Autera says so immediately, while you are still on the field and can correct it.