Industry insights
Mobile mechanics: why workshop software never quite fits a van
Almost every Australian workshop package is built around bays, hoists and a front counter. If your workshop is a van, here is what that mismatch actually costs you — and what to look for instead.
Go through the Australian software directories for auto repair and you will find the same shape of product over and over: a booking grid built around service bays, a parts counter, a workshop diary. MechanicDesk, MechAxis, Auto Repair Bill, Workshop Software — all solid tools, all designed for a building.
Search those same directories for something built for a mobile mechanic and you will come up short. The listings that mention mobile work mention it as a line item, not a design decision.
If you work out of a van, that gap is not cosmetic. It shows up in your day.
What a workshop tool assumes that you do not have
A bay. Workshop software schedules against physical capacity — three bays, two hoists, one alignment rack. Your capacity is you, and the limit is not space, it is how far apart the next two jobs are.
A customer who comes to you. The whole booking flow assumes a drop-off time and a pick-up time. Yours assumes an address, access to the vehicle, and somewhere legal to park and work.
Travel being somebody else's problem. A workshop's day is a queue. Yours is a route, and the gap between two jobs is real unpaid time that has to live somewhere in the calendar.
A counter to pay at. Workshop invoicing assumes the customer walks past a terminal on the way out. You are standing in a driveway with a phone.
Each one on its own is a workaround. Together they are the reason so many mobile mechanics give up on the software and go back to a notebook and a group chat.
What actually matters when your workshop is a van
Buffers between jobs, not bays. The useful setting is a gap after each booking that belongs to travel. Book back-to-back on a map that is half an hour wide and the third job of the day is already late. Get the buffer right and the day holds.
The address captured at booking, not on the phone afterwards. A job without a street number is a phone call you will make from the kerb.
Job history that belongs to the vehicle. Rego, make, what you did last time, what you told them to watch. On a return visit six months later, that history is the difference between a confident quote and a guess.
Photos and notes taken on site. The worn pad you photographed is the quote. It is also the answer when someone questions the bill in a fortnight.
Payment where you are standing. Card at the kerb, or an invoice sent before you drive away. The alternative is chasing it on Thursday night.
Reminders that go out on their own. A mobile job is often a two to three hour block with a drive at each end. A no-show costs you the block and the fuel.
Being straight about one thing
Trimsy does not do route optimisation. There is no feature that takes tomorrow's eight jobs and orders them to cut your driving, and no multi-van dispatch board.
If routing is the thing breaking your week — if you are running several vans and the sequencing is the actual problem — that is a real reason to look at a dedicated field service tool, and we would rather say so than have you find out in week two.
What Trimsy does is the rest of it: online bookings against your real availability, travel buffers between jobs, the address and vehicle details captured up front, job notes and photos on site, quotes that become jobs that become GST invoices, and card payment through Stripe or Square wherever you are standing.
For a solo operator or a two-van business, that is usually the part that is broken. Routing is a problem you get to have later.
The pricing shape is different too
Workshop software is priced for a workshop. MechAxis lists from A$89 a month. Others sit in similar territory, because they are sold to a business with a building, a parts counter and several staff.
A van is not that business. Trimsy starts at A$24.99 a month, with 0% commission — no cut of your jobs and no per-booking fee. Card payments run at Stripe's or Square's own rates and we add nothing on top. Billed in Australian dollars with a GST invoice.
Where to start
Pick the one thing that is costing you most and fix only that.
For most mobile mechanics it is the gap between the call and the job — the quote given over the phone, half-remembered, never written down, argued about later. Getting that into a quote the customer accepts, which becomes a job with an address and a history, is worth more than any scheduling cleverness.
If instead the thing eating your week is the driving itself, be honest about that, and go and look at a routing tool. It is the right answer to that problem, and it is not ours.
Software names and prices are the publicly listed figures at the time of writing (October 2026) and change often — check with each vendor. See how Trimsy handles mobile work or compare plans.