Walk-in and Manual Bookings
Overview
Not every booking comes through your online portal. Customers walk in without an appointment, call ahead to schedule, or you need to log a job for a fleet vehicle on the spot. The Walk-in and Manual Booking feature lets you create bookings directly from your dashboard -- quickly and without friction.
autoGMS gives you two ways to do this:
- Quick Booking Panel -- A slide-over panel accessible from every page in the dashboard. Ideal for service advisors handling walk-ins or phone calls while doing other work.
- Full Booking Page -- A dedicated page for creating manual bookings, with the same form but more screen space. Useful when you are focused on intake or processing multiple vehicles.
Both methods use the same booking form, so the experience is consistent regardless of which one you choose.
Why it matters:
- Lets your reception team log walk-in customers in seconds without navigating away from their current page
- Supports both individual and business customers with dedicated workflows for each
- Automatically finds existing customers as you type, preventing duplicate records
- Handles fleet and batch bookings so you can process multiple vehicles for a single business in one session
- Integrates with DVLA vehicle lookup for UK garages, pulling in vehicle details from a registration number
How to Access
Quick Booking Panel
- Look at the top header bar of your dashboard -- it is visible on every page.
- Click the New Booking button (the calendar-plus icon).
- A panel slides in from the right side of the screen.
You can open the Quick Booking panel from any page in the dashboard. There is no need to navigate to a specific section first.
Good to know: The New Booking button is available to owners, admins, and garage staff. Technicians do not see this button, as booking creation is typically handled by reception or management.
Full Booking Page
- From the left sidebar, navigate to your garage.
- Click Walk-in & Manual Bookings in the sidebar menu.
You will land on a full-page version of the booking form with more room to work.
Good to know: The MOT Dashboard also uses this same booking form when you click "Book MOT" on a vehicle row. The form opens pre-filled with the customer and vehicle details from the MOT record, and the MOT service is automatically selected.
The Quick Booking Panel
The Quick Booking panel is designed for speed. When a customer walks in or calls, you can create their booking without leaving whatever page you are currently working on.
What you will see:
- A panel that slides in from the right side of your screen, overlaying the current page.
- The panel is wide enough to show the full booking form comfortably.
- A booking mode switch in the panel header so you can choose Individual or Business before filling the form.
- A close button in the top corner to dismiss it without submitting.
- A sticky action bar at the bottom with your submit and reset buttons always visible.
When to use it:
- A customer walks in and you are in the middle of checking the workshop view.
- You get a phone call while reviewing analytics and need to log a booking immediately.
- You want to quickly create a booking without navigating away from your current task.
The Full Booking Page
The Full Booking Page renders the same form as the Quick Booking panel, but as a standalone page rather than a slide-over. This gives you more screen space and a less cramped experience when you are focused entirely on booking intake.
When to use it:
- You are processing several walk-in customers in a row during a busy morning.
- You are handling a fleet intake with multiple vehicles to book.
- You prefer working on a full page rather than a side panel.
Form Sections
The booking form is divided into clear sections that guide you through the information you need to capture. Each section is described below.
Customer Information
The first thing you will do is identify who the booking belongs to. At the top of the Quick Booking panel and the Full Booking page, there is a booking mode switch where you choose Individual or Business before filling the customer section.
Individual Customers
Select Individual (the default) and fill in the following fields:
- First Name (required)
- Last Name (required)
- Phone Number (required) -- Includes an international phone input. Use the correct country code for the customer so the booking links to the right contact record. The country-code picker is searchable, so you can type a country name or the first digits of the dial code (for example,
971) to jump to the right option quickly.
Automatic customer lookup: As you type a customer name or phone number, autoGMS searches your existing customer database in real time. After a brief pause (about a quarter of a second), matching customers appear below the active field. Each match shows the customer's name, phone number, and how many vehicles they have on file.
If you see the right customer, click their name to auto-fill the form with their details. This saves time and prevents you from accidentally creating a duplicate customer record.
Good to know: The auto-lookup works from either the name fields or the phone field. Phone matches can auto-fill immediately when there is one exact match; name searches are best when you want to browse and choose the right customer from the list.
Business Customers
Switch the toggle to Business and the form adjusts to show business-specific fields:
- Business -- A dropdown listing all business accounts registered with your garage. Select an existing business, or choose Add New Business to create one on the fly.
- Business Name -- Appears when you select "Add New Business." Enter the company name here.
- Contact First Name (required)
- Contact Last Name (required)
- Phone Number (required) -- The contact person's phone number, with the same international input and auto-lookup as individual bookings. The country-code picker is also searchable by country name or dial-code digits.
Good to know: If you select an existing business that has fleet vehicles registered, you can pick from those vehicles in the next section instead of entering them manually. For an existing individual customer chosen from the lookup, autoGMS can prefill the vehicle make, model, VIN / chassis number, and saved number plate or registration from a saved vehicle to speed up entry.
Vehicle Information
Next, you describe the vehicle being booked in.
- Make -- Select from a searchable dropdown of car manufacturers. You can type to filter the list.
- Model -- Once you select a make, the model dropdown updates to show only models for that manufacturer. You can also type to filter.
- Add New Model -- If the vehicle's model is not in the list, select "Add New Model" and a text field will appear where you can type the model name manually. This is useful for rare, very new, or modified vehicles.
- Year -- The vehicle's year of manufacture.
- VIN / Chassis Number -- The vehicle identification number or chassis number (optional but recommended for accurate records). The manual booking form now exposes this as a dedicated field, and saved-vehicle lookups can prefill it when the customer has a single matched vehicle on file.
- License Plate -- The vehicle's registration plate number and, where applicable, emirate or region. This is optional by default, but your garage can make it mandatory from Booking Settings. For UAE garages, the plate fields adapt by emirate; for example, Sharjah supports numeric plate codes from
1through10, and Dubai accepts numeric plate codes alongside its letter codes.
Registration Lookup (UK Garages Only)
If your garage is based in the UK, the registration section includes a DVLA lookup option:
- Registration Number -- Enter the vehicle's UK registration plate.
- Fetch DVLA Data -- Click this button to look up the vehicle through the DVLA.
When the lookup completes, the form displays the vehicle's details pulled from official government records:
- MOT status -- Whether the certificate is valid, expiring soon, or expired.
- Vehicle details -- Make, model, year of manufacture, colour, fuel type, and engine size.
- MOT information -- Expiry date, last test date, and mileage at last test.
- Advisories -- Any advisory notices from the most recent MOT test.
- Failures -- Any failure items recorded on the last test.
The make and model fields in the form are automatically populated from the DVLA data, saving you from entering them manually. The system normalizes common DVLA make names (e.g., "MERCEDES" becomes "Mercedes-Benz", "VW" becomes "Volkswagen", "LANDROVER" becomes "Land Rover") to match your existing vehicle database.
Good to know: The DVLA lookup uses the same government data source as the MOT Dashboard. If the plate is incorrect or the vehicle is too new to have MOT records, the lookup may return limited or no results. Double-check the plate format if you get an unexpected result.
Good to know: If your garage enables Require Number Plate / Registration in Booking Settings, staff must complete the registration field before they can queue or create a manual booking.
Booking Information
With the customer and vehicle identified, you now set up the booking itself.
- Vehicle Type -- Select the type of vehicle (sedan, SUV, truck, sports, other, and fleet types if enabled). This is important because it determines which price tier applies to the selected service.
- Service -- A searchable dropdown showing all services available at your garage. Each option displays the service name alongside its price in your garage's local currency. Only services that have pricing configured for the chosen vehicle type will appear.
- Drop-Off Date -- The planned customer drop-off date. Dates that are fully booked (based on your garage's daily capacity setting) are greyed out and cannot be selected.
- Completion Date (optional) -- The target job completion date promised to the customer. It cannot be earlier than the drop-off date.
- Arrival Time Slot -- If your garage uses slot scheduling, this appears on its own row beneath the date fields and shows the live available slots for the selected drop-off date.
- Notes (optional) -- Click Add Notes to reveal a text area where you can type any special instructions, customer requests, or details about the issue. This field is collapsed by default to keep the form clean.
Service Line Items
Below the main service selection, you can add additional service line items to the booking. Each line item has:
- Label -- A name for the sub-service or additional work item
- Description -- Optional detail about the item
- Quantity -- How many units (defaults to 1)
- Unit Price -- The price per unit
Click Add to add more line items. This is useful for bookings that involve multiple pieces of work beyond the primary service, such as additional parts or supplementary labor.
Good to know: The currency shown next to each service price matches your garage's configured location. A UAE garage will see AED, a UK garage will see GBP, and so on. This is handled automatically based on your garage settings.
Business and Fleet Bookings
When you are creating bookings for a business customer, autoGMS provides a batch booking workflow that lets you queue up multiple bookings and submit them all at once. This is designed for businesses that bring in several vehicles at the same time -- fleet operators, rental companies, or corporate accounts.
How Batch Booking Works
- Switch the customer type to Business and select (or create) the business account.
- Fill in the vehicle and booking details for the first vehicle.
- Instead of clicking "Create Booking," click Add to Queue. The booking is added to a queue displayed at the bottom of the form.
- The form resets so you can enter the next vehicle's details.
- Repeat for as many vehicles as you need to book.
- When you have added all vehicles, click Submit All to create every booking in the queue at once.
The Batch Queue
The queue section appears below the form once you add your first item. For each queued booking, you will see:
- The vehicle's make and model
- The selected service
- The license plate number
Each queue item has two action buttons:
- Copy -- Duplicates the queue item. This is useful when multiple vehicles need the same service and you only want to change the vehicle details.
- Remove -- Deletes the item from the queue.
There is also a Clear All button that empties the entire queue if you need to start over.
Fleet Vehicle Selector
If the selected business has fleet vehicles already registered in autoGMS, you can pick from those vehicles directly rather than entering details manually. This uses the saved vehicle records for make, model, registration, and vehicle type, making business intake significantly faster for repeat fleet customers.
For saved business vehicles:
- Select one or more vehicles from the list shown under the Vehicle section.
- Choose a service for each selected vehicle directly in that selector.
- Add shared notes, date, time slot, and line items once, then create all selected bookings together.
- If you need to book a vehicle that is not already saved on the business account, clear the selection and return to the manual vehicle-entry flow.
Good to know: Business accounts show saved vehicles after you pick the business. Individual customers do not get the same selector UI; instead, selecting an existing customer from the phone lookup can prefill the saved make, model, and number plate or registration to speed up manual entry.
Action Buttons
The action bar at the bottom of the form stays visible as you scroll, so you always have access to your submit and reset options.
| Button | When it appears | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Reset | Always | Clears the entire form and starts fresh. |
| Create Booking | Individual mode | Submits the booking for a single customer and vehicle. |
| Add to Queue | Business mode | Adds the current form data to the batch queue without submitting yet. |
| Submit All | Business mode, when the queue has items | Creates all queued bookings in one go. |
Prefill from Other Features
The booking form supports being pre-filled with data from other parts of the dashboard. You do not need to do anything special to trigger this -- it happens automatically when another feature opens the booking form with context.
- MOT Dashboard: When you click "Book MOT" on a vehicle row in the MOT Dashboard, the booking form opens with the customer name, phone number, vehicle details, and registration number already filled in. The MOT service is automatically selected from your garage's service list.
- Business Account Pages: When you open the booking form from a business account, the business is automatically selected and contact details are pre-filled via the initialBusinessId parameter.
Tips and Best Practices
-
Use the Quick Booking panel for speed. If a customer is standing at reception, you can create their booking without leaving whatever page you are on. The panel is designed for exactly this scenario.
-
Let the auto-lookup do the work. Start typing the customer's name or phone number and wait a moment. If they are already in your system, selecting the match is much faster and more accurate than retyping their details.
-
Always check for existing customers before creating new ones. Duplicate customer records make your reports less accurate and can confuse your team. The auto-lookup helps prevent this, and you can trigger it from either the name fields or the phone field.
-
Use the batch queue for fleet customers. When a business drops off several vehicles at once, adding each to the queue and submitting them all together is much faster than creating individual bookings one at a time.
-
Add notes for anything unusual. If the customer has mentioned a specific symptom, needs the car back by a certain time, or has any preferences, add a note. Your technicians will see it when they pick up the job.
-
Double-check the vehicle type before submitting. The vehicle type determines the service price, so selecting the wrong type could mean quoting the wrong amount.
-
For UK garages, use the DVLA lookup. Fetching vehicle data from the registration number is faster and more accurate than asking the customer for their car's make, model, and year. It also captures information like fuel type and engine size that customers often do not know off the top of their head.
-
Keep business accounts up to date. If a fleet customer's vehicle list changes frequently, make sure you add new vehicles to their account. This makes the fleet vehicle selector more useful over time.
-
Use service line items for detailed job scoping. If a booking involves multiple pieces of work, add them as line items rather than trying to capture everything in the notes field. This keeps pricing transparent and makes invoicing more accurate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between the Quick Booking panel and the Full Booking page?
They use the same form and produce the same result -- a new booking in your system. The only difference is how the form is displayed. The Quick Booking panel slides over your current page so you do not lose your place. The Full Booking page gives you a dedicated screen with more room to work.
Can technicians create bookings?
No. The New Booking button in the header is hidden for users with the technician role. Booking creation is restricted to owners, admins, and garage staff to keep the workflow controlled.
What happens after I submit a booking?
The booking is created with a Pending status. It appears in your bookings list and calendar. From there, it follows the standard booking lifecycle: Pending, then Confirmed, then In-Service, then Completed.
Does the system check for double-bookings?
The date picker disables dates that are at full capacity based on your garage's maximum-bookings-per-day setting. If Time Slots are enabled, the form also checks slot-level availability and prevents staff from selecting a slot that has already reached capacity.
Can I edit a booking after creating it?
Yes. Once the booking is created, you can edit its details from the bookings list or the booking detail page. You can change the service, adjust the price, update notes, and modify vehicle details -- all before the booking is completed.
Why do some services not appear in the dropdown?
The service dropdown only shows services that have pricing configured for the vehicle type you selected. If a service is missing, check that it has a price set for that vehicle type in your garage's service settings.
How does the customer auto-lookup work?
As you type in the customer name fields or the phone field, the system waits briefly (about 250 milliseconds after you stop typing) and then searches your customer database for matches. Results appear below the active field showing the customer's name, phone number, and vehicle count. Click a match to auto-fill the form.
Can I create a booking for a new customer who is not in the system yet?
Yes. If the auto-lookup does not find a match, simply continue filling in the customer's details. A new customer record will be created automatically when you submit the booking.
What phone number formats are supported?
The phone input supports international numbers and standard phone validation, so most valid phone formats will be accepted. Make sure you enter the customer number with the correct country context so it links to the right contact record.
Can I add multiple services to a single booking?
Each booking has one primary service. However, you can add service line items below the main service to capture additional work, sub-services, or supplementary charges. For business customers, you can also use the batch queue to create multiple separate bookings quickly.
What happens if I click Reset by accident?
The Reset button clears the current form fields. There is no undo for this action, so you would need to re-enter the information. If you are working with a batch queue, the Reset button only clears the form -- it does not remove items already added to the queue.
Can I use the Quick Booking panel on mobile?
Yes. The panel is responsive and works on mobile devices, though the full-page version may be more comfortable on smaller screens due to the additional space.
Why is the registration lookup not showing for my garage?
The DVLA registration lookup is a UK-only feature. It only appears when your garage is configured as a UK location and the customer type is set to Individual. If you are a UK garage and still do not see it, check your garage region settings.
What are service line items?
Service line items let you add additional pieces of work to a booking beyond the primary service. Each line item has a label, optional description, quantity, and unit price. They appear below the main service selector in the booking form. Items with a label but no price will be flagged as incomplete.
Quick Reference
| I want to... | Go here | Do this |
|---|---|---|
| Open Quick Booking panel | New Booking button (calendar-plus icon in header) | Panel slides in from the right |
| Open Full Booking page | Sidebar → Walk-in & Manual Bookings | Full-page booking form |
| Switch to business mode | Panel/page header → Business toggle | Form adjusts to show business fields |
| Find existing customer | Phone Number field → start typing | Auto-lookup shows matches after a pause |
| Select existing customer | Click a match in the auto-lookup results | Form auto-fills with their details |
| Create new customer | Fill in name and phone (no match found) | New record created on booking submit |
| Look up UK vehicle | Registration Number field → Fetch DVLA Data | Pulls make, model, year, MOT status from DVLA |
| Select a service | Service dropdown → search/select | Price shown based on vehicle type |
| Pick a drop-off date | Drop-Off Date picker | Fully booked dates are greyed out |
| Set a promised finish date | Completion Date picker | Optional, but cannot be earlier than drop-off |
| Pick a time slot | Arrival Time Slot dropdown (if slots enabled) | Shows available slots for selected drop-off date |
| Add notes | Add Notes link → text area | Type special instructions |
| Add extra line items | Service Line Items section → Add | Enter label, description, qty, price |
| Queue a fleet booking | Business mode → Add to Queue | Adds to batch queue, form resets |
| Submit all fleet bookings | Submit All button | Creates all queued bookings at once |
| Clear the form | Reset button | Clears form (does not clear queue) |