Platform Overview
Carfix-Connect is a vehicle service management platform that connects three types of users: individual vehicle owners, company fleet managers, and service providers (garages, workshops, mobile mechanics). The platform handles the complete lifecycle from booking a service appointment through to invoicing and payment, with real-time communication at every step.
Every account starts as an individual. From there, you can register a company to manage fleet vehicles, or register as a service provider to accept bookings and manage a workshop. A single person can hold all three roles simultaneously — for example, a garage owner who also has personal cars and manages a company fleet.
Individual
Book services for personal vehicles
Company
Manage fleet, team, and budgets
Service Provider
Accept work and run your garage
Getting Started
- Visit the home page and select Vehicle Owner.
- Enter your name, email, phone number, and create a password.
- Verify your email by clicking the confirmation link sent to your inbox.
- You arrive at your personal dashboard — ready to add vehicles and search for providers.
Individual Users
As an individual vehicle owner, your dashboard is your central hub. Here is what each section does:
Dashboard & Vehicles
View all your vehicles at a glance, see upcoming bookings, active work orders, and spending summaries. Add new vehicles with plate number validation and manage ownership.
Search Providers
Find verified garages, workshops, and mobile mechanics. Filter by services offered, location, ratings, and verification status. View provider profiles with shop details, team size, and customer reviews.
Bookings
Book appointments with service providers. Select a vehicle, choose services needed, pick a date and time slot, and optionally request a specific mechanic. Track booking status from pending through confirmation to completion.
Work Orders
Monitor the progress of all active jobs. Review estimates, approve or reject proposed work, track service stages in real time, and accept checkout when work is complete. A badge shows items needing your attention.
Chat
Communicate directly with service providers about your vehicles. Real-time messaging with unread counts keeps you connected. Conversations are scoped per provider.
Reminders
Receive maintenance reminders based on mileage intervals or calendar dates. Mechanics can also leave recommendations after servicing your vehicle, which appear as reminders.
Budget
Set monthly or custom-period budgets across your vehicles. Track spending against budget limits with visual indicators. Payments to service providers automatically update your spend tracking.
Service History
A complete, chronological log of all services performed on your vehicles — every work order, every part used, every mechanic who worked on your car.
Reports
Visual reports on spending by vehicle, by service type, and over time. Understand your total cost of ownership.
Profile & Settings
Update your personal information, change password, enable two-factor authentication, and manage notification preferences.
Subscription
View and manage your subscription plan. Individual users get a trial period, after which you can subscribe for continued access.
Service Requests
Broadcast a service need to multiple providers at once. Describe the problem and your budget range, and providers in your area can respond with quotes. Compare responses and choose the best offer.
Company Membership
If you join a company (via invitation or during company registration), a My Company section appears in your sidebar. Depending on your assigned permissions, you can view fleet vehicles, manage bookings, approve work orders, chat with providers on behalf of the company, manage budgets, and more. Each permission (WO access, estimates, payments, checkout, fleet management, team management, and chat) is independently configurable by the company admin.
Service Provider Team Membership
If you are added to a service provider as a mechanic or team member, a Service Provider Membership section appears in your sidebar. You can view assigned work orders, manage bookings, handle inventory (if permitted), chat with customers and other providers, and access analytics — all scoped to the provider you belong to. Your role (owner, admin, accountant, manager, senior mechanic, mechanic) and specific permissions are shown as badges.
Company Fleet Management
Company accounts are designed for organisations that manage fleets of vehicles. The company portal gives fleet managers and team members the tools to centralise vehicle care.
Fleet Management
Add and manage all company vehicles. Each vehicle has full details (plate, make, model, year, colour, VIN) and a complete service history. Request deletion of fleet vehicles with admin approval workflow.
Fleet Assignments
Assign vehicles to team members. Track who is responsible for which vehicle, and manage reassignments when staff change.
Team Management
Invite team members by email. Assign roles (owner, admin, accountant, manager, staff) and granular permissions: can approve work, can approve estimates, can approve checkout, can approve payment, can manage fleet, can manage team, and can chat with providers.
Bookings & Calendar
Book services for any fleet vehicle. View all company bookings in a unified calendar. Filter by vehicle, status, or date range.
Work Orders
Track all work orders across the fleet. Approve estimates, monitor progress, and accept checkouts. A badge shows pending approvals.
Find Providers & Chat
Search for providers and initiate conversations on behalf of the company. Company chat is separate from personal chat, ensuring business communications stay organised.
Reminders
Fleet-wide maintenance reminders and mechanic recommendations. Stay ahead of scheduled services across all vehicles.
Budget
Set company-wide or per-period budgets with currency support (KES, USD, etc.). Budget spending updates automatically when payments are recorded against fleet vehicles. Accessible to admins, accountants, and members with payment approval permissions.
Reports
Fleet-wide analytics on spending, service frequency, and vehicle utilisation. Admin-only access.
Subscription
Managed by company admins and accountants. Subscription determines access level — when inactive, the company portal enters view-only mode.
Verification Workflow
After registration, a company enters Pending Verification. Platform admins review the submitted details and documents. If anything is missing, the company is moved to Pending Info — an "Action Required" alert appears in the sidebar prompting the owner to supply the missing information and resubmit. Once everything checks out, the company is marked Active.
Service Providers
Service providers (garages, workshops, mobile mechanics) have a dedicated portal with everything needed to run a vehicle service business.
Dashboard & Shops
Overview of active work orders, pending bookings, revenue summaries, and low-stock alerts. Manage multiple shop locations with addresses, phone numbers, operating hours, and map coordinates.
Bookings
View and manage incoming bookings. Confirm, reschedule, or decline appointments. Create bookings on behalf of walk-in customers. Assign mechanics to bookings. A badge shows pending bookings needing confirmation.
Work Orders
The core operational tool. Create work orders from bookings or independently. Add services with cost estimates, request and track parts, assign mechanics, manage the full lifecycle from diagnostics to checkout. A badge shows active work orders.
Team Members
Manage mechanics and staff. Assign roles (owner, admin, accountant, manager, senior mechanic, mechanic) with granular permissions: can approve work, can manage inventory, can manage team, can send estimates, can send invoices, and can chat.
Inventory
Track spare parts with SKU, brand, category, stock levels, and pricing. Set minimum stock levels for automatic low-stock alerts. Record parts usage per work order.
Customer Chat & Provider Chats
Two separate chat systems: one for communicating with customers about their vehicles, and a peer-to-peer chat for communicating with other service providers (for referrals, parts sourcing, etc.). Both show real-time unread badges.
Search Providers
Discover other service providers on the platform for networking, referrals, and collaboration.
Analytics
Detailed business metrics: work order volume, service type distribution, mechanic performance, booking trends. Available to owners, admins, and accountants.
Revenue
Track invoices, receipts, and payment status. Monitor revenue over time with filtering by period and currency. Available to owners, admins, and accountants.
Service Marketplace
View and respond to service broadcasts posted by individuals and companies. Submit quotes and compete for work based on price, reputation, and response quality.
Settings
Update business details, manage services offered, configure booking time slots, and update contact information. Owners can submit updates that trigger re-verification.
Provider Verification & Searchability
Providers must be verified by platform admins before they become searchable. A verified provider with an active subscription (or within their trial period) appears in search results. The verification badge builds customer trust and distinguishes you from unverified listings.
Work Order Lifecycle
Work orders are the heart of Carfix-Connect. They track a vehicle service job from start to finish. Here is the complete lifecycle:
Vehicle Check-In
The vehicle arrives at the workshop. The provider creates a work order linked to the vehicle and records initial mileage and the customer's problem description.
Diagnostics & Service List
The mechanic inspects the vehicle, identifies services needed, checks parts availability, and builds a list of work order services with estimated costs.
Estimate & Approval
The estimate is sent to the vehicle owner (or company fleet manager). The owner reviews the breakdown of services and parts, then approves, requests changes, or rejects the estimate.
Work Begins
Once approved, the work order moves to 'in progress'. Mechanics perform the repairs, use reserved parts, and update service statuses as each job is completed.
Quality Check
After all services are complete, a quality check ensures everything meets standards. If issues are found, the work loops back for rework.
Invoice & Payment
An invoice is generated showing all services, parts, taxes, and any discounts. The vehicle owner receives it and makes payment. A receipt is created and confirmed by the provider.
Checkout & Acceptance
The provider submits a checkout form with a road-test checklist and vehicle condition notes. The customer reviews the checkout, then accepts. The work order closes.
Closed
Service records and vehicle history are updated. Maintenance recommendations may be added. The vehicle owner can leave feedback.
Work order statuses: Draft → Awaiting Approval → Approved → In Progress → Quality Check → Completed → Awaiting Customer Checkout → Closed. If rejected at any stage, a work order can be cancelled.
Booking System
The booking system lets vehicle owners (individual or company) schedule appointments with service providers.
- Navigate to a provider profile from Search Providers.
- Select a shop location, choose the services you need, and describe the problem.
- Pick an available date and time slot. Optionally request a specific mechanic.
- Confirm the booking — the provider receives a notification and the booking appears as Pending.
- The provider confirms, reschedules, or declines the booking.
- On the booking date, bring your vehicle in. The provider checks you in and may convert the booking to a work order.
Messaging
Carfix-Connect offers three types of real-time messaging:
Customer ↔ Provider
Vehicle owners chat with service providers about their cars. Each conversation is scoped to a provider. Unread counts update in real time.
Company ↔ Provider
Company team members with chat permission can message providers on behalf of the company. Company chat is tracked separately from personal conversations.
Provider ↔ Provider
Peer chat lets providers communicate with each other for referrals, parts sourcing, or collaboration. Separate from customer-facing chat.
All message types support real-time delivery via Supabase Realtime, with unread badges updating live in the sidebar.
Subscriptions & Pricing
Carfix-Connect uses a subscription model with separate plans for individuals, companies, and service providers.
Every new account starts with a free trial period. Once the trial expires, you need an active subscription to continue using write features (creating bookings, work orders, etc.). Without an active subscription, your dashboard enters view-only mode — you can still see your data but cannot create or modify records.
Service Marketplace
The Service Marketplace is a broadcast-and-respond system that connects people who need vehicle services with providers who can deliver.
From the Service Requests page, create a broadcast describing what you need: select the vehicle, describe the problem, set a budget range, choose urgency level (low, medium, high, urgent), and specify your preferred location. The request goes live and is visible to relevant providers.
Security & Privacy
Data Protection
Your personal information is encrypted and stored securely. Only you and people you explicitly authorise can access your records — no exceptions.
Access Control
Every action on the platform is verified against your role and permissions. Whether you're a vehicle owner, team member, or provider staff, you only see and do what you're meant to.
Two-Factor Authentication
Optional TOTP-based MFA adds a second layer of protection. Set it up from your profile page using any standard authenticator app.
Continuous Monitoring
We regularly review and strengthen our security measures to stay ahead of threats. Your trust is the foundation everything else is built on.
Support & Feedback
Every user type has access to support and feedback tools from the bottom of their sidebar.
Support Tickets
Submit support tickets from any portal. Tickets are automatically assigned a priority level based on your subscription tier. Describe your issue, select a category, and track the resolution status. Limit of 5 open tickets at a time.
Feedback
Share suggestions, report bugs, or leave general feedback. Feedback is reviewed by the platform team to continuously improve the service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Every account starts as an individual. You can register a company or a service provider from that same account. Your personal dashboard stays separate from your company and provider portals, but you can switch between them from the sidebar.
Ready to get started?
Join Carfix-Connect today and experience a smarter way to manage vehicle services.