Repairs and sales in the same system
A lot of Irish garages do both — workshop repairs and car sales. Car sales are an important revenue stream (we break this down in our guide to the cost of running a garage in Ireland). But most garage software only handles the repair side. The car sales end up tracked in a notebook, a spreadsheet, or someone’s head.
MotorWorks handles both. The car sales module uses the same vehicle records, customer database, and job card system as your workshop. Prep work on a sale vehicle is just another job — with the same labour tracking, parts ordering, and cost visibility.
How it works
Acquire a vehicle
Log the purchase — price, date, seller details. The vehicle goes into your system with full specs from the VRM lookup if it’s Irish-registered.
Track prep costs
Create internal jobs for any work needed before sale. Valet, service, repairs — all tracked through job cards with labour hours and parts costs. These costs feed directly into the vehicle’s P&L.
List it
Record where the vehicle is advertised — DoneDeal, Carzone, Facebook Marketplace, your forecourt. Track listing dates, URLs, and whether each listing is still active.
Manage enquiries
Log every enquiry with the person’s name, phone number, email, and where they found the listing. Track their status: interested, deposit paid, lost, or notified when the vehicle sells.
See your profit
Set the sale price and MotorWorks calculates profit per vehicle: sale price minus purchase price minus all prep costs. No spreadsheet needed. The reports module breaks this down across your full sales inventory.
Status workflow
Every vehicle sale moves through a clear workflow:
Acquired → Preparing → For Sale → Deposit Paid → Sold → Completed
You can see at a glance where every vehicle sits — which ones need prep, which are listed, which have deposits, and which are done.
Why it matters
Without this, garage owners track car sales separately from workshop operations. That means duplicate data entry, no visibility on true prep costs, and profit calculations done on the back of an envelope. If you’re not sure where your margins should sit, our garage profit margin benchmarks for Ireland are worth a look.
With MotorWorks, a vehicle you’re prepping for sale uses the same system as a customer’s car on the ramp. Same job cards, same parts ordering, same cost tracking. The only difference is the job type.
