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For auto body shops

15 orders, 4 stations, 6 weeks lead time —
all in one view.

Body shops have orders in four phases at once, frame benches that are blocked and spare parts that are missing. Gantway shows you for every order where it stands, what's holding it up and which station frees up next.

Gantway digital desk — lifts, frame bench, paint booth as stations with utilization

Three lifts, one frame bench, one paint booth — each station with live utilization. See at a glance which order is where right now.

A typical body shop

This is the business
Gantway is built for.

12
employees: body panel beaters, painters, mechanics
6
stations: 3 lifts, 1 frame bench, 1 paint booth, 1 assembly
15
parallel orders — 10 accident, 3 restoration, 2 custom build
1–3 wks
insurance lead time before repair start
up to 6 wks
spare-part delivery time for special orders

In this business, almost everything runs today on shouts across the shop and the foreman's experience. Gantway turns that into a structure that works even when the foreman isn't in the room.

Das Problem

Five problems
every body shop knows.

01

You don't know which phase which vehicle is in.

Ten accident cars, three restorations, two custom builds — all at once somewhere between teardown and handover. Who's doing what right now isn't recorded centrally anywhere. The foreman has it in his head, and when he's not there, everyone asks everyone.

02

When one phase slips, all the following ones slip with it — unnoticed.

Straightening takes a day longer. The paint booth was scheduled for Tuesday. Now the vehicle sits, the painter waits and the appointment with the customer is tomorrow. Phase delays cascade quietly until the damage is already done.

03

Lift and frame bench are too few stations for too many orders.

Three lifts, one frame bench — and 15 vehicles that all have to get on them at some point. Without a central picture of station utilization, you decide by gut feeling: too much backlog one day, idle time the next.

04

Spare parts block the next phase without warning.

Three days per the catalog, four weeks in reality. The vehicle occupies a lift, the paint slot has long been assigned, the customer asks about the rental car. Spare-part delivery times are the most common unplannable element in the business — as long as you don't make them visible.

05

Insurance approvals build up backlog before the work even begins.

Appraiser, cost estimate, approval by the insurer — that takes one to three weeks and isn't your decision. But capacity planning still only starts once the approval is in. Without a lead-time view you lose two weeks of runway.

Wie Gantway hilft

Body shop logic
right in the planning.

Station utilization with traffic-light colors in Gantway

Lift, frame bench, paint booth: utilization at a glance.

The digital desk shows each station with its current and planned occupancy. You see immediately where a slot frees up and which vehicle can be scheduled in next — without notes and without asking around.

To the digital desk

Tasks with status badges inside an order

Phase dependencies: paint slot only when straightening is done.

Gantway knows the body shop phase chain: teardown — straightening — painting — assembly — handover. Each phase has its own status and a responsible person. If a phase shifts, you see immediately which follow-on phases are affected — before the painter turns up for nothing.

To order management

Orders in progress with progress bars

Spare-part status right on the order.

Every ordered part carries an order date and expected delivery date. When a part blocks the next phase, that's visible in the order — not only when the panel beater stands in front of an empty stockroom.

To materials management

Station overload as a conflict marker

Scheduling conflict spotted before it happens.

When two vehicles are supposed to go on the frame bench at the same time, the conflict engine flags the conflict immediately. You resolve it with one click — instead of discovering it in person tomorrow morning.

To the conflict engine

Employee pool for assigning via drag & drop

Qualifications: the right employee for every phase.

Body panel beater, frame-bench experience, certified painter — every qualification is stored in the system. Gantway plans phase-specific: only someone trained for it gets onto the frame bench.

To qualifications

Time clock with a large clock-in button

Hours records phase-precise — insurance-proof.

Employees log times mobile, straight onto phase and order. In the end, logged hours match the appraisal. You hand over records, not estimates from memory.

To time tracking

What sets auto body shops apart from other trades

The insurance lead time
as a planned order phase.

No other trade has such a clocked lead time before the actual work. Appraiser appointment, cost estimate, insurance approval, spare-part order — everything runs in parallel, everything affects the repair start, none of it is under your control. Gantway turns this lead time into its own planning phase instead of treating it as waiting time.

Gantway Gantt — body orders with phases teardown, straightening, paint, assembly

Phase chain with dependencies Spare-part delivery date in the plan Insurance approval as a lead-time status

Approval funnel visible

All orders in the status "waiting for insurance approval" sit in their own view. You plan capacities already during the lead time — and give customers only dates the insurer will actually hold.

Spare-part window in the timeline

As soon as a part is ordered, Gantway enters the delivery date into the order timeline. If the delivery is delayed, the earliest possible paint slot shifts — automatically, without manual recalculation.

Keep end customer and insurer separate

In the CRM, Gantway distinguishes between the vehicle owner and the commissioning insurer. Communication, approvals and billing documents run via the right contact — no mix-ups.

Billable hours documented per phase

Every work hour is assigned to a phase: teardown, straightening, painting, assembly. For the insurance billing you pull a report — with documented times per phase, not with lumped daily totals.

Was das in Zahlen heißt

Marge, Auslastung, Termine —
an einem Ort.

Employees clock straight onto the running phase: teardown, straightening, paint, assembly. Insurance billing becomes a matter of records, not estimates.

  • Phase time tracking per order
  • Working-hours-law check as a warning
  • Month-end close as a PDF hours record

Gantway My Work — time clock with phase-precise time tracking per order

FAQ

Frequently asked questions. Answered briefly.

How do I keep many parallel repairs under control in an auto body shop?

Every order in Gantway runs through a clear workflow with statuses — from intake to handover. Tasks, hours, materials, comments and history sit in one detail view that everyone can see and that is always current.

Order management in detail

Can we record customer inquiries and vehicle history?

Yes. The built-in CRM keeps master data, contacts and the complete order history per customer. When someone calls about their vehicle, you immediately see what happened last — no binders.

CRM & customer management in detail

How do I know whether a repair was profitable?

Through pre- and post-costing: planned versus actual hours and costs, per order and line item. Loss-makers stand out while you can still react — not only at year-end.

Pre- and post-costing in detail

What does Gantway cost for an auto body shop?

Three plans, billed by active accounts — employees you only schedule cost nothing. Test free for 14 days, no credit card.

See pricing

How safe is our customer and order data?

Data is stored on servers in Germany, GDPR-compliant with a data processing agreement. Roles and individual permissions control who sees what, and every change is recorded in an immutable audit log.

Your question wasn't answered?

Ask us directly — in a 30-minute demo or by message. A person answers, not a canned reply.

Or by email: kontakt@gantway.com

Less backlog at the frame bench,
more vehicles finished.

Bring a running order — in 15 minutes we'll show you how it looks in Gantway with phase chain, insurance status and station utilization.