Which Commerce screens a workshop can rely on
Which Commerce & POS screens a workshop can trust today, which ones keep nothing yet, and where to keep job cards until service jobs are stored.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Automotive businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A workshop that switches on Commerce & POS finds a busy set of screens: a till, a board for service jobs, a stock screen, sales figures along the top and a branch picker. They look equally finished. They are not. Some write to the server and post to the ledger. Others only draw on the screen and forget everything when the browser closes.
That difference matters most on a Monday morning, when the service adviser books in six vehicles and wants every job card to still be there on Friday. This article goes through the screens one by one and says which ones a workshop can lean on today.
The till is the part that reaches the books
The till is the solid piece. Only a business that holds the Point of Sale add-on sees it, and the server refuses till requests from a business without it, so nobody rings up sales by accident on a plan that does not include them.
When a sale reaches the server, it posts a balanced journal in the same step: the payment method to its own account, the revenue, the output VAT, and cost of sales against inventory at the product's cost price. The parts sold come off stock at the till's location at the same moment. If you sell a set of brake pads and a bottle of brake fluid over the counter, the books and the stock both know about it before the customer reaches the door.
The till also gives you a live X report while it is open and a Z report frozen at cash-up, both as PDFs. Those reports, not the figures across the top of the screen, are what to use when you count the day.
Service jobs and the Service Work Order mode keep nothing
The service jobs board in Commerce stores nothing, and the screen says so. A job you drag from "booked in" to "on the hoist" is not saved anywhere. Close the tab and it is gone.
The till has a Service Work Order mode as well, alongside Lay-by, Quotation, Sales Order, Delivery and Click & Collect. These modes are labels only. Whatever mode is showing, the till records an ordinary sale, paid in full. It cannot hold an open work order, take a deposit against it, or add parts to it over three days while the car waits for a gearbox.
So the till is where a job ends, at collection and payment. It is not where a job lives.
A stock screen that depends on the till being opened
The Stock & Inventory screen inside Commerce shows products only if the till was opened earlier in the same browser session. Its stock buttons change what you see on that screen and nothing else. A parts manager who "adjusts" a quantity there has adjusted a picture.
The list that is kept on the server is the Item Master in the Accounting menu. It holds each product's SKU, name, category, selling and cost price, opening quantity and VAT treatment. When you want to know what parts exist and what they cost, look there.
Sales figures and a branch picker to ignore
The sales totals across the top of the commerce screens count only the sales rung up in that browser since the page was opened, and they are always shown in rand. Two counter staff on two computers will see two different "today" figures, and a Kenyan or Nigerian workshop will see rand on a shilling or naira day. Treat those numbers as decoration and use the X and Z reports.
The branch picker is worse than decoration. It lists three invented South African branches instead of your own locations, and whichever name is chosen is sent with each sale. Pick one name, tell everyone to leave it alone, and do not build branch reporting on it until the picker lists your own sites.
| Screen | What it keeps today | Rely on it for |
|---|---|---|
| Till | Sales, payments, stock movement, journals | Counter sales and collections |
| X and Z reports | Server figures per till | Cash-up and daily checks |
| Item Master | Products, prices, costs | Your parts list |
| Service jobs board | Nothing | Nothing yet |
| Till modes such as Service Work Order | A label | Nothing; every sale is a paid sale |
| Commerce Stock & Inventory | Screen only | Nothing |
| Top-of-screen sales figures | This browser only, in rand | Nothing |
| Branch picker | Invented names | Nothing |
Keeping job cards outside the till for now
Until the service screens store their work, keep the job card as a document. A simple routine:
- Write the job card or estimate as a PDF or a document built from text blocks, with the customer's name, registration number, the work and the estimate.
- Send it for the customer's electronic signature before the work starts. The signing console opens from the Sign button and the dashboard, and a signer from outside the business must be linked to a client or a CRM lead before the envelope goes out.
- The signed PDF and its completion certificate are filed back into Documents. Keep one folder per month or per customer and tag each card with the registration number so you can search for it later.
- When the customer collects, ring up the labour and parts at the till so stock and the ledger move.
In South Africa this routine also answers the law: section 15 of the Consumer Protection Act requires a workshop to give a repair estimate and get the customer's authorisation before doing work or charging for it, and the Acts Online text of section 15 sets out that duty. A signed estimate in Documents is a tidy way to show it was done.
Two other habits help. Card payments taken on the bank's terminal still have to be keyed at the till, which recording card slips at an unconnected till covers. And if a customer pays something up front for a big job, remember that the till cannot hold a deposit; why a deposit needs an invoice explains the route through receivables instead.
Where to go from here
Spend ten minutes walking a new service adviser through the table above, so nobody trusts the job board with a customer's car. Then decide how parts on a job should be charged, because typing them onto an invoice behaves differently from selling them at the till; why parts on a workshop invoice do not leave stock sets out the split that keeps stock right.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
