Saturday, eleven o'clock, six cars on the forecourt and one of them has been sitting for twenty minutes because nobody is sure whether it was booked for a wash or the full valet. The owner is standing by the till asking, and the lad who took the keys is inside a different vehicle with the vacuum running. Nothing has gone wrong exactly — the job just exists in one person's head instead of somewhere everyone can see it.
ProTakip is job management software for car washes, hand wash sites, valeting bays and mobile detailers. It runs on Android and iOS, works offline, and the first three months are free. It is built around throughput: cars in, work done, car out, paid.
Every vehicle on one board
Each car becomes a job with a registration, a customer, a package and a price, and it moves through four stages: booked in, in progress, ready and collected. Anyone on the site can see the board, so the person at the till answers the owner's question without walking the forecourt.
The registration is the key. Type it in and you have the customer, what was agreed today, and everything that vehicle has had done before. On a busy site that is the difference between a queue that moves and a queue that argues.
Stage changes are timestamped, which gives you something most washes never see: how long a full valet actually takes on your site, with your staff, on a Saturday. Whatever you assumed when you set the price, the real number will be different.
Packages, extras and pricing that holds
Car washing is a packaged trade — exterior, interior, full valet, machine polish, engine bay, headlining — and it is packages that make pricing manageable. In ProTakip you define your own packages and add extras on top: pet hair removal, tar and glue, ceramic top-up, seat shampoo, bigger vehicles priced up.
Price by the vehicle, by the hour, or as a fixed package; the method is yours. What matters is that the list is shared, so a weekend member of staff sells the same job at the same price you would have. Quoting an unusually filthy van is still a judgement call, but it becomes a judgement made against a known baseline rather than in mid-air. The approach in our price list guide transfers straight across to valeting.
Regulars, fleets and accounts
The money on most sites is not in the Saturday walk-ups. It is in the taxi drivers, the local garage, the delivery firm with eight vans and the customer who comes every fortnight. Those need a customer card with history and a running balance rather than a till receipt.
ProTakip holds job history, vehicles, notes and outstanding balance against each customer. A fleet account might have several registrations under one name, so a driver arriving with a van you have never met is still recognised as part of an existing account. Notes carry the small stuff that keeps them coming back — no pressure washer on the roof rack, black van gets waxed, invoice monthly.
For accounts settling later rather than at the till, the balance list tells you who owes what, oldest first. Our guide to collections and balance tracking covers chasing a business account without losing it.
Bookings, slots and the mobile detailer
Sites that take bookings have a different problem from drive-up sites: the diary. ProTakip's calendar and appointment management holds slots with reminders, so a customer who booked a full valet three weeks ago is expected when he arrives.
Mobile detailers live in this part of the app. Jobs carry the address and map location, the day is grouped by area, and the round is assigned to a vehicle or a member of staff. Travel between jobs is the biggest hidden cost in mobile valeting, and the fix is geography, not speed — our route planning guide covers how to build a day that does not zigzag across town.
The till, the shift and where the money went
Cash businesses need a record that survives the shift. The till in ProTakip tracks income and expenses by period and by staff member, so you can see what a Saturday took, what a particular member of staff handled, and where the consumables budget went.
ProTakip is not accounting software and will not file anything for you. What it gives you is the operational truth: what was charged per car, what came in, what is still owed, and how those numbers move week to week. That is what tells you whether the express wash is subsidising the valet bay or the other way round.
Handing the car back
Print a job ticket or receipt to a Bluetooth thermal printer at the point of handover, so the customer leaves with a record of what was done and at what price. On sites where cars are dropped off and picked up later, a printed ticket at intake stops the classic dispute about which package was agreed.
When a car is finished, ProTakip can send the customer a WhatsApp message automatically using your own template — a genuinely useful thing on a drop-off site, because it converts an hour of waiting around into an hour the customer spends elsewhere. Our notifications guide covers writing a message that gets read.
Staff, radios and the phone that never stops
Staff are added with an invitation code and given only the permissions they need. A washer can be limited to the jobs assigned to him with no view of your figures. Push-to-talk and in-app messaging replace shouting across the bays and the constant stream of internal phone calls.
On Android, ProTakip shows the caller on screen before you answer, with name, vehicle history and outstanding balance, and it works with no internet — see the caller ID guide for the detail. Under a metal canopy that offline behaviour is not a luxury.
Starting up and bringing your records across
Existing customers and vehicles can be imported from Excel or from another program, so you are not typing three years of regulars back in by hand; the migration guide explains how that works. If you are still comparing options, the nine criteria apply to any job management app. Sites that also clean carpets and upholstery in-house often run carpet and upholstery cleaning alongside, and operators with a separate mobile crew add home and office cleaning to the same account.
Frequently asked questions
Can I look a vehicle up by registration?
Yes. Registration is stored on the job and on the customer's vehicle list, so typing it in brings up the owner, today's booking and everything that vehicle has had done before. Fleet accounts can hold several registrations under one customer.
Does it handle valet packages with extras?
Yes. You define your own packages — exterior, interior, full valet, detailing — and add extras such as pet hair removal, engine bay or ceramic top-up on top. Pricing can be per vehicle, hourly or fixed per package, and the list is shared so weekend staff sell at your prices.
Can customers be told when their car is ready?
Yes, automatically over WhatsApp using a template you write yourself, triggered when the job moves to ready. On drop-off sites this is the single most useful message you can send, because it stops people waiting on the forecourt.
Is it suitable for a mobile detailer rather than a fixed site?
Yes. Jobs carry addresses and map locations, the day can be grouped by area and assigned to a vehicle, and the app works offline so a job can be closed and paid for on a customer's driveway with no signal.
Can I see what each member of staff took during a shift?
Yes. The till record filters income and expenses by period and by staff member, and job stage changes are timestamped against the user who made them, so shift takings and workload are both visible without a manual count.