Guide

2. Set up QuickBooks so it feeds the app

Working Order reads your QuickBooks — it doesn’t ask you to rebuild your shop somewhere else. These are the QuickBooks habits that make everything downstream work. Most shops already do half of it.

1. 1

   Products & Services — your labor and your parts

   In QuickBooks: Gear → Products and services. This list is where your tasks and parts come from, so it’s worth ten minutes.

   • Service items are work you perform — “Paint Service”, “Engine Rebuild”, “Diagnostics”. Only Service items become tasks a tech can clock into.
   • Non-inventory items are parts you buy for a specific job and don’t keep on a shelf — most parts, for most shops.
   • Inventory items are things you stock and count. These show up under Inventory Parts with live on-hand numbers.

   Press New to add one. Name it the way you’d say it out loud — the name is what your crew reads on the job.
2. 2

   Categories — how a job gets organized

   From the same page: More → Manage categories → New category. Categories can nest, and Working Order uses them to group a job:

   • Body → Body Panels, Body → Paint
   • Chassis → Brakes, Chassis → Suspension
   • Drivetrain → Engine, Drivetrain → Transmission

   Assign each product or service to a category, and a job page organizes itself the same way — tasks and the parts bought for them sitting together under a heading your crew recognizes. Your inspection checklist is built from these categories too.No categories? Everything still works — tasks simply land under “Uncategorized” and a job is one flat list. If your shop does the same kinds of work over and over, categories are the single highest-value thing you can set up in QuickBooks.
3. 3

   One customer per job

   Working Order makes a job out of whatever the estimate is addressed to, so give each vehicle or project its own customer record rather than lumping everything under one name.

   • QuickBooks Plus or Advanced: use Projects under the customer.
   • Simple Start: use a sub-customer — tick “Is a sub-customer” and pick the real customer as the parent. Name it so you know it at a glance: “1972 Bronco — Smith”.

   Working Order detects which style your plan uses on its own — you don’t configure anything.
4. 4

   Estimates — where the work comes from

   + New → Estimate. Set the customer to the job, then add a line for each piece of work using your Service items, and a line for parts you already know about. Hours in the Qty column become the estimated hours your techs are measured against.The one thing people miss: an estimate only becomes a job when its status is Accepted. Typing a name into “Accepted by” and a date into “Accepted date” does not change the status. Use the status dropdown on the estimate itself, or Update Status from the estimates list, and pick Accepted. The job appears in Working Order seconds later.

   

   Those six lines are the whole job. Lines 1–4 are Service items, so they become tasks your techs clock into — the Qty column (46, 62, 12, 14) becomes the estimated hours. Lines 5 and 6 are parts items, so they land on the job as estimated parts. Notice the category prefixes (Body:Body Panels, Chassis:Brakes) — that’s what groups the job page.

5. 5

   Parts you buy — expenses and bills

   When parts arrive, enter the vendor’s paperwork in QuickBooks as usual: + New → Expense (paid on a card) or Bill (pay later). Two habits make them land on the right job:

   • Use the Item details lines, not Category details, and pick your part items — that’s what carries the part through.
   • Set the Customer on each line to the job, and tick Billable if you’re passing the cost on.

   The order shows up in Working Order ready to receive, with the vendor, tracking, and receipt attached — and the parts appear on the job under the right category.

   

   This is the shape to copy. Category details is empty; the parts are on Item details lines, each with a product (Body:Paint:Paint Parts), Billable ticked, and a Customer/Project naming the job. One expense can feed two different jobs, exactly as it does here.

6. 6

   Pay types — only if you run QuickBooks Payroll

   Payroll → Employees → pick a person → Pay types. Make sure each tech has the pay types you intend to map in Working Order: Regular and Overtime at minimum, plus any custom ones your shop uses like Shop Maintenance or Administrative.QuickBooks assigns pay types per employee, so a type that exists for one tech may be missing on another. If a tech is missing the mapped type, Working Order refuses to export that entry and names the person and the pay type to add — it never silently pays someone under the wrong type.No QuickBooks Payroll? Everything else works; the pay type dropdowns simply stay empty and hours still sync for invoicing.

   

   These are the names you’ll pick from in Working Order’s Mappings page — Overtime Pay for the overtime default, and hourly types like Administrative or Shop Maintenance for the overhead your crew clocks into.

3. Running the shop

For managers · the daily and weekly rhythm.

1. 1

   The jobs board

   Every accepted estimate shows up here as a job card, grouped by status. The numbers on each card are hours clocked against hours estimated, so you can see a job drifting before it’s a problem. Drag a card to another column to change its status — it pushes back to QuickBooks Projects too. Change the column count, sort order, or search by job name or estimate number from the controls up top.

   
2. 2

   Inside a job

   Open a job and the estimate lines are grouped by category. Each category header shows its tasks and its parts, with estimated and actual hours on the right. The Parts tab on a category splits what was purchased, what was estimated, and any take-off parts pulled off the vehicle — each with its status, bin, and shelf location. The buttons across the top open the job’s inspection, spec sheet, and photos.

   
3. 3

   A single task

   Tap a task to open its controls. The number beside it (370.2) is the estimate and line it came from in QuickBooks, so nothing was retyped. From here you can see that task’s timesheets, attach photos, assign crew, set priority, and toggle billable. Techs clock in from the same row.

   
4. 4

   See who’s on the clock

   On the Clock answers “who’s here and what are they on?” at a glance — who is clocked in, on which job and task, for how long, and who is off the clock. Handy first thing in the morning and when someone forgets to clock out.

   
5. 5

   Approve the week and send it to QuickBooks

   Timesheets is the weekly routine. Review the entries, fix anything odd, then Approve All. Press Sync Week and you get a preview per employee — regular hours, overtime, and exactly what will change — before anything is written. Confirm, and the hours land in QuickBooks on the right service items and pay types, ready for payroll and invoicing.

   • In QuickBooks on a row means those hours are already there.
   • Invoiced means the time is on a customer invoice and is protected from edits — no double billing.
   • Lock Week freezes a pay period once payroll is run. Unlock, edit, relock if you need a correction.

   The app is the system of record for time: edits made to those entries inside QuickBooks are re-asserted on the next sync.

   
6. 6

   Parts, orders, and inventory

   Every vendor bill or expense in QuickBooks becomes an order to receive, with its parts, tracking numbers, and receipts attached. Non-Inventory is the flat list of every purchased part with its vendor, bin, location, and status. Inventory Parts is your QuickBooks inventory with live on-hand counts, and Use on Job to pull stock onto a job. Print QR labels for parts, bins, and shelves from Labels — scanning one on a phone opens exactly what’s in that tote.

   
7. 7

   It comes back as an invoice

   Because the hours carry the customer, the service item, and the task with them, billing is ordinary QuickBooks work: open the job’s customer, add the billable time and parts, send the invoice. Nothing is retyped and nothing is estimated twice.

   

   Look at line 11: [September 04] [370.3] Front disc brake conversion, 3 hours at $195. That started as line 3 of the estimate, became a task a tech clocked into, synced back as time, and is now billed — with the date and estimate line still attached so anyone can trace it.

8. 8

   Show the customer the work

   Reports → Customer Report. Pick the job and a date range, and you get every hour worked on it — the task, who did it, when, how long, and the note they wrote at clock-out — plus the photos taken along the way. Share it as a link that needs no login, or save it as a PDF.This is the answer to “what am I paying for?” It pairs with the QuickBooks invoice: clean line items on the bill, the whole story one tap away. Reports also cover estimated versus actual hours, so you can see which kinds of work you price well.

   

   Every line here was typed by a tech at clock-out on their phone — which is exactly why the app insists on a work note. Thirty-one hours of work a customer can actually read.

4. For technicians

Everything a tech needs, and not much more. Works on any phone.

1. 1

   Sign in

   Your manager invites you by email. Go to workingorder.com on your phone and sign in with Google or Intuit using that same address — there’s no password to remember. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app.
2. 2

   My Tasks

   This is your list: the tasks assigned to you, grouped by job, on jobs that are actually in progress. Each row shows the estimated hours and what’s been clocked so far. Tap a task name to jump to it on the job page if you need the detail, parts, or photos.

   
3. 3

   Clock in and out

   Press In on the task you’re starting. A banner stays across the top of the app with a running timer wherever you go. When you’re done, type a short work note — what you actually did — and press Clock Out. The note is required because it’s what ends up in front of the customer and on the invoice.Switching jobs? Just clock in on the new task; the old one closes out for you. Not on a job — shop cleanup, admin, a paid break? Use the Overhead menu at the top right.
4. 4

   Photos

   The camera button on the clock-out banner (and on any task) attaches photos to the job and to your time entry. Take them as you work: before and after, damage you found, part numbers, the finished panel. They show up on the customer’s report and settle questions months later.
5. 5

   Fixing your own timesheet

   If your shop allows it, you can correct your own entries on the Timesheets page — trimming a forgotten clock-out, for example. You can shorten your own time but not extend it, and you can’t touch entries that are already in QuickBooks or in a locked week. Every manual change is logged, so an honest fix is never a problem — just tell your manager if something looks wrong.

5. Good to know

What does Working Order change in QuickBooks?

Time, and job status. Approved hours are written as time entries against the right customer, service item, and pay type; job status updates QuickBooks Projects. Everything else — estimates, items, bills, invoices, inventory — is read, never rewritten. The app never creates invoices or moves money.

How current is the data?

QuickBooks notifies us within seconds of a change — accept an estimate and the job appears. A nightly sweep catches anything a notification missed, and Sync All in Settings forces a full refresh whenever you want one.

Which QuickBooks plans work?

Simple Start, Plus, and Advanced. Plans with Projects use them; plans without use sub-customers, and the app detects which automatically. Features your plan doesn’t include — inventory tracking, vendor bills, payroll pay types — are simply skipped rather than broken. Single-currency (USD) companies only.

More than one company?

One login can belong to several shops. A company switcher appears in the top bar when you have more than one, and the data stays completely separate.

Leaving, or want your data?

Settings → Export All Data gives you everything as files, any time. Disconnecting QuickBooks revokes our access immediately, and deleting your workspace removes your data and shows you a receipt of exactly what was deleted.

Still stuck?

Email support@workingorder.com and a human who knows shops will answer.