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Carvikon vs a whiteboard
The whiteboard is free, fast and everyone can read it. Here is what it cannot do, what a digital job board adds, and when the whiteboard is still the right answer.
| Carvikon | Whiteboard | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | From $49 a month per shop | The board and the magnets |
| Update a car | Drag a card, or one tap on a phone | Walk over and move a magnet |
| Seen from | Any phone, computer and the shop TV, live | The room it hangs in |
| Waiting on parts or approval | A lane under the stage, so stuck cars look stuck | Usually the same column as cars being worked on |
| Late cars | A time limit per stage flags them for you | Someone has to notice |
| History | Time in every stage is kept for every car | Gone when the magnet moves |
| Customer updates | Sent when a car reaches the stages you choose | A phone call |
A whiteboard is the most honest piece of software in most shops: one picture, readable from across the room, updated in a second. Anything that replaces it has to keep those three things.
Where the whiteboard wins
It costs nothing, it needs no login and nobody has to learn it. For a one-bay shop with one person who knows where every car is, it may be all you need.
Where it stops working
As soon as more than one person needs to know where a car is, the whiteboard starts drifting. Magnets move when someone remembers, so by mid-week the wall and the floor disagree. It cannot show what a car is waiting for, how long it has sat there, or tell the customer anything. And it only exists in one room, so the front office and the owner at home still have to ask.
What Carvikon keeps and adds
Carvikon keeps the whiteboard's shape: one card per car, one column per stage, and a move that takes one tap. It adds what the wall cannot do: the same live board on phones, office computers and the shop TV; waits as lanes; a time limit on each stage; the time every car spent in every stage; and customer updates that go out when a car reaches the stages you choose.
When to keep the whiteboard
If one person runs the whole shop and customers never call to ask where their car is, keep it. The day a second person needs the answer, or a customer calls for it, is the day it starts costing you.
Questions shops ask
A digital job board with one card per car and one column per stage, shown on the shop TV and on every phone. It keeps the whiteboard's single picture and adds waits, late-car alerts, history and customer updates.
It should not be. In Carvikon a card moves with a drag on a computer or one tap on a phone, which is as fast as moving a magnet.
Rather see it first? Book a live demo