From Frustration to Innovation

We’re specialists. At Torque GT, we live and breathe high-performance and unique Japanese vehicles. Our workshop is a finely tuned machine, or at least, it’s meant to be. Our customers trust us with their pride and joy, and a huge part of delivering the quality service they expect is having an efficient and organised workshop.

What was the problem?

Our journey to find the right garage management software was a long and frustrating one. We trialled and even fully adopted several of the big-name solutions on the market. Each time, we were promised the world: streamlined operations, integrated invoicing, and a digital panacea for all our administrative headaches.

The reality, however, was always a compromise. These off-the-shelf systems were rigid and prescriptive. They were designed with a one-size-fits-all mentality that simply didn’t mesh with our bespoke workflow. To use them, we were forced to bend our processes to fit the software's logic. It felt like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. We were spending more time battling the software than we were focusing on what we do best – working on incredible cars.

The core of our problem was this: we needed a simple, visual way to plan our workshop schedule and, crucially, to track the efficiency of our highly skilled technicians. We wanted to see at a glance what everyone was working on, how long a job was taking against its estimate, and where the bottlenecks were. The systems we tried either buried this functionality under layers of complexity we didn’t need or lacked the intuitive interface that was essential for our busy workshop environment.

This frustration was a constant topic of conversation. We knew what we wanted, but it just didn’t seem to exist. So, we decided to build it ourselves.

Building the solution

This is where the journey to WorkAuto began. Reece and Mike started from the ground up, designing a system with a single-minded focus: to solve the real-world problems we faced every day.

Our primary goal was to create a tool that gave us clarity. We wanted a system that would allow us to drag and drop jobs into a technician's timeline, set estimated hours, and then track the actual time spent. This wasn't about micromanaging our team; it was about understanding our capacity, identifying areas for improvement, and ensuring we were pricing jobs accurately and fairly. In short, it was about efficiency.

The initial versions were for our internal use only, a bespoke solution to our unique set of challenges. And it worked. For the first time, we had a clear, real-time view of our workshop's productivity. We could easily see who was working on what, how they were progressing, and plan our workload more effectively than ever before. We were no longer fighting our software; it was empowering us.

It quickly became apparent that we weren't the only ones facing these frustrations. Friends and colleagues in the industry would visit our workshop, see the system in action, and ask what we were using. Their feedback was universal: "We need this."

That's when we realised that what we had built for ourselves had the potential to help a lot of other garages. And so, WorkAuto was born.

What's Next?

We have intentionally kept WorkAuto focused on the essentials. It doesn't try to be an all-encompassing behemoth of a system. Instead, it does a few things, and it does them exceptionally well. It provides a simple, visual way to plan your workshop, track your technicians' time and efficiency, and gain valuable insights into the profitability of your jobs.

The journey from a frustrated garage director to the co-creator of a software solution has been a fascinating one. It’s a classic case of necessity being the mother of invention. We didn't set out to create a software company, but by focusing on solving a very real problem for ourselves, we've created a tool that we believe can genuinely help other garages to work smarter, not harder. We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve built, and we’re excited to see it helping other businesses thrive in the same way it has helped us at Torque GT.