What are the steps in a repair shop workflow?

Six: intake (record customer, device, fault, condition and promised date), diagnosis (establish the actual fault), approval (get agreement on a specific price), repair (do the work and record the part cost), handover (return the device and collect or record the balance), and close-out (count the till against expected cash). Every shop performs all six, whether or not they are recorded.

Why should you photograph devices at intake?

Photographs of the device's condition when it arrived are the only reliable defence against a customer claiming that damage happened during the repair. It takes about twenty seconds and settles a dispute category that otherwise has no resolution.

Should you quote a repair price before diagnosing it?

No. A price given at the counter before the device is opened becomes a price the shop is held to when the real fault turns out to be more expensive. Take the device in as a diagnostic, examine it, then quote — and use software that does not force a price into a required field at intake.

Why does a repair shop need to count the till daily?

Because the difference between counted cash and expected cash is the only honest measure of whether the day was recorded correctly. A shortfall may be theft or error; a surplus usually means a sale was never rung up, which means stock left the shop with no record and reported margin is wrong.

Operations9 min read

Repair Shop Workflow: From Intake to Close-Out

The complete process of managing repairs from customer intake through delivery and payment, and where each step usually leaks money.

Published July 18, 2026

The six steps every repair passes through

Whatever the size of the shop, a repair passes through the same six steps: intake, diagnosis, approval, repair, handover, and close-out. Shops differ in how formally they run each one, not in whether the step exists. The ones that run informally still perform the step — they just perform it from memory, which is where the losses come from.

Step	What has to be true at the end of it	Common leak
Intake	Customer, device, fault, condition and promised date are recorded	Pre-existing damage not photographed, argued about at handover
Diagnosis	The actual fault and the part needed are known	A price quoted at the counter before anyone opened the device
Approval	The customer has agreed to a specific price	Verbal approval nobody wrote down
Repair	Work done, part cost recorded, technician attributed	Part cost never captured, so margin is guessed
Handover	Device returned, balance collected or recorded as owed	Pay-later agreed and then forgotten
Close-out	Counted cash matches expected cash, differences explained	Till never counted, so theft and error are invisible

Intake: the step that decides your disputes

Intake is a five-minute step that determines whether the shop wins or loses every argument that follows. Two things carry that weight: photographs of the device's condition as it arrived, and a written record of the fault the customer described in their own terms.

Photographs settle the frequent claim that a scratch or a crack appeared during the repair. The customer's own description of the fault settles the less frequent but more expensive claim that the shop fixed the wrong thing.

The single highest-return change most shops can make is photographing devices at intake. It costs about twenty seconds and eliminates a category of dispute that has no other resolution.

Diagnosis and approval: stop quoting at the counter

Quoting before diagnosis is the most expensive habit in the trade. A price given at the counter to sound decisive becomes a price the shop is held to once the device is open and the fault turns out to be the board rather than the screen. The shop then either eats the difference or has an argument.

Take the device in as a diagnostic, examine it, then quote. Software should let you do that without forcing a number into a required field — if the intake form demands a price, staff will invent one.

Approval needs to be recorded against the job with the amount and the time. Verbal approval that nobody wrote down is, in practice, no approval at all.

Repair: capture the part cost while you know it

Margin is invented after the fact in most shops, because nobody recorded what the part actually cost. For a shop that orders parts per job — the normal pattern in Egypt — the true cost is known for about a day and then lives only in a WhatsApp thread with the wholesaler.

Record the cost against the job at the moment you pay it. Everything downstream — job margin, category profitability, whether a particular repair type is even worth taking — depends on that one number, and it cannot be reconstructed later.

Handover: the last chance to collect

At handover the device leaves and the leverage goes with it. Whatever is not collected now is a receivable, and receivables in this trade age badly.

Settle the deposit against the final total, so the balance is a number rather than an argument
Collect the balance, or record explicitly that it is owed — never let it be neither
Record the warranty terms on the job itself, at the price and coverage agreed today
Ask for the review while the customer is holding a working device and pleased about it

Pay-later is a legitimate business decision for a regular customer. Pay-later that nobody recorded is just an unpaid job.

Close-out: count the till every single day

Close-out is where a shop finds out whether the day's story is true. Expected cash is derived from what was recorded; counted cash is what is physically there. The difference is the only honest measure of how well the other five steps were run.

Investigate a surplus as seriously as a shortfall. A till that is over almost always means a sale was not rung up, which means stock left without a record and the reported margin is wrong.

One practical detail: if the shop closes after midnight, the business day has to end when the shop does. Counting a 12:40am sale against the following day splits one evening's takings across two dates and makes every daily comparison meaningless.

Frequently asked questions

What are the steps in a repair shop workflow?: Six: intake (record customer, device, fault, condition and promised date), diagnosis (establish the actual fault), approval (get agreement on a specific price), repair (do the work and record the part cost), handover (return the device and collect or record the balance), and close-out (count the till against expected cash). Every shop performs all six, whether or not they are recorded.
Why should you photograph devices at intake?: Photographs of the device's condition when it arrived are the only reliable defence against a customer claiming that damage happened during the repair. It takes about twenty seconds and settles a dispute category that otherwise has no resolution.
Should you quote a repair price before diagnosing it?: No. A price given at the counter before the device is opened becomes a price the shop is held to when the real fault turns out to be more expensive. Take the device in as a diagnostic, examine it, then quote — and use software that does not force a price into a required field at intake.
Why does a repair shop need to count the till daily?: Because the difference between counted cash and expected cash is the only honest measure of whether the day was recorded correctly. A shortfall may be theft or error; a surplus usually means a sale was never rung up, which means stock left the shop with no record and reported margin is wrong.

Horus Repair runs this loop for you

Intake, repairs, parts, cash and customer updates on one screen — Arabic-first and EGP-native. From E£599/month, 30-day free trial.

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