Statuses & automations

Statuses are the spine of the system. A ticket’s status answers “where is this job?”, and in BenchKey, changing it can also answer “what should happen next?” automatically.

Opening a status and turning its text message on, one click. Recorded from the real app with demo data.

Editing your statuses

Open Settings → Statuses & Automations. Your statuses should read like your shop’s actual workflow, for example:

New → Diagnosed → Waiting approval → In repair → Ready for pickup → Picked up

You can rename, reorder, add, and remove statuses freely. Keep the list short enough that everyone uses it the same way, a status nobody agrees on is worse than no status.

What a status can trigger

Each status can carry automations that fire when a ticket enters it:

• Send an email, e.g., “your estimate is ready” when entering Waiting approval
• Send an SMS, e.g., “it’s ready!” when entering Ready for pickup
• Update the portal timeline, the customer-facing step that lights up

Templates support variables, customer name, device, ticket number, portal link, and are edited in the visual editor.

Statuses with automations show a template chip (marked 2 above). Click the status row (marked 1) to attach an email template, an SMS template, or both, and preview exactly what the customer receives.

Automatic receipts

Below the status list, Receipt automation sends the receipt the moment any invoice is paid, an email with the invoice PDF attached and a text with the link, from every payment path (counter, portal, payment link). Leave it on; nobody remembers receipts on a Saturday.

Set it up by asking

The fastest path is the AI assistant: “text customers when their repair is ready and email them when the estimate is ready.” It wires the statuses and writes the templates, then lists what changed.

The portal timeline mapping

Customers don’t need to see every internal status. The portal timeline maps your statuses to customer-friendly steps, and you control that mapping per ticket type, walk-ins can have a short timeline, mail-ins a longer one that includes shipping stages.

Design advice from a working counter

• Automate the high-anxiety gaps first: drop-off → diagnosis, and ready-for-pickup. Those two messages eliminate most “any update?” calls.
• Make “stuck” visible: a Waiting on parts status plus aging reports means backorders resurface on their own.
• Let the automation be the discipline: if sending the estimate requires remembering, it won’t happen on busy days. Wire it to the status instead.