Every price on a work order comes from your item catalog. Get the catalog right and the rest of Service is quick; get it wrong and your team will fight the search box all season.
Service is in product beta. Everything described here is live and supported. Where a capability isn't built yet, we say so and give you the workaround we use with other yards.
Service uses the same catalog as the rest of Dockwa
There is no separate service catalog. Parts and labor both live in your item list at Sales > Items, alongside everything you sell at the counter. Three item types can be used on a work order:
Item type | Appears on a job as | Typical use |
Standard | Parts | Filters, oil, paint, zincs, shrink wrap, hardware |
Fuel | Parts | Diesel or gas burned on a job, oil by the quart |
Labor | Labor | Yard rate, mechanical rate, haul-out flat rate |
Boat storage, deposit, electric and fee items can't be added to a work order at all. If you need to bill one of those, it belongs on a reservation or a contract, not a job.
Create a labor item
Labor is its own item type, and it only appears once Service is switched on for your marina. Any labor you want to bill has to exist as a labor item before it can go on a job.
Go to
Sales > Itemsand click + New Item.Set Item type to Labor. This can't be changed after you save, so pick carefully.
Give it a Name your team will recognize — Yard labor, Mechanical labor, Haul & block.
Choose a Default price type:
Per hour — the standard shop rate. Quantity on the job is hours.
Flat rate — a fixed charge for the whole job, whatever it takes.
Per foot — priced off the boat's length. Dockwa fills the quantity in from the boat on the work order, so you never measure twice.
Enter the Default price, set your tax, and pick a Category if you use them.
Leave Service labor checked under Availability, then save.
Good to know: Most yards run two labor items — a yard rate and a mechanical rate — and that's usually enough to start. You can add as many as you need, and different jobs on the same work order can use different rates.
Make parts available to Service
The Availability section at the bottom of the item form controls where in Dockwa an item can be used. Standard and fuel items arrive with Service parts already checked, including the items you had before Service was turned on — so in most cases there is nothing to do.
Uncheck Service parts on any item you want to keep out of the work-order search. Retail merchandise and café items are the usual candidates.
Make your items easy to find
When someone adds a part or labor line to a job, the item picker searches three fields at once — name, SKU and barcode — so staff can type whatever they know.
The practical implication: fill in the SKU with the part number your team actually says out loud. Someone who knows a filter as 2010SM can then type that, while someone who only knows it as "the Racor filter" finds it by name. Neither has to learn the other's vocabulary.
Name | SKU | Both of these find it |
Racor fuel filter element | 2010SM |
|
Shaft zinc 1 1/4" | Z-125 |
|
Inventory and tax
Tax comes from the item. Each line inherits whatever tax its item is set up with, so taxable and non-taxable items can sit on the same job. There is no tax setting on the work order itself.
Stock is never blocked. Service does not check inventory levels. You can sell a part you don't have on the shelf; the item simply goes negative and shows as negative.
Deactivated items get flagged. If an item on a template or a job has been made inactive, Dockwa marks it with an Inactive badge and won't let you save until you reactivate or remove it.
Common questions
Do I have to enable every existing item for service one by one?
No. Standard and fuel items are switched on for service parts automatically, and existing catalogs are backfilled. You only need to touch the items you want to exclude.
Can I add fuel to a job?
Yes. Fuel items are available to Service by default and show up under parts.
Can I set availability during an item import?
Yes — service availability is one of the fields on the item import, so you can set it in bulk rather than item by item.