Free tools and templates for bike shops

Most shops run on standards that live in one person's head. The senior mechanic knows what a proper tune-up includes, the owner knows roughly what a brake bleed should cost, and the counter staff pick it up by osmosis. That works until May, when you hire two seasonal mechanics, the queue is out the door, and every bike leaves the stand with a slightly different idea of what 'done' means.

These resources are the written-down version. A tune-up checklist split into three tiers you can put on a menu board. A safety inspection that follows the M-check so nobody skips the headset. An e-bike diagnostic sheet that covers battery, charger, wiring, motor and sensors before anyone starts guessing. A work order template with every field a repair ticket needs. And two pieces of arithmetic most shops never do on paper: what your labor rate needs to be, and how to price a job from labor, parts and markup.

Everything here is free. Print it, copy it into your own system, change it to suit your bench. You do not need an account to use any of it.

A checklist on a clipboard is better than none. It still gets coffee on it, it still gets lost in the parts bin, and nobody can find last spring's inspection when the customer comes back asking what you checked. The three checklist resources here can each be rebuilt as a template in BIKE.co Service, which is live today.

In Service you build the template once, with sections and eight question types: short answer, long answer, dropdown, checkbox, number, photos, date and signature. Mark the answers that must be filled before the checklist can be submitted. Your mechanic fills it in on a phone or a shop tablet, takes photos of the worn cassette, and the customer signs at pickup. Every submission produces a PDF you can hand to the rider, and the checklists report lists every submission of a template on screen or as a CSV.

You can also publish a checklist at a public link, optionally behind an email code, so a fleet manager or a customer can fill in a pre-service questionnaire before they drop off.

The checklists do not sit on their own, either. Service also has quotes, numbered jobs with visits, a week schedule, time clocks and invoices. A template can be attached to every visit and made required, so a visit cannot be closed until the safety check is submitted, and the job cannot be billed until every visit is closed.

Start with the safety inspection. It is the one check every bike that crosses your counter should get, whether it came in for a flat or a full overhaul, and writing it down is the quickest way to cut comebacks. Then set your tune-up tiers and price them with the labor rate guide and the pricing calculator, so the menu on the wall matches what the bench actually does and what it actually costs.

If you service e-bikes, run the diagnostic checklist at intake, not after the bike has been on the stand for an hour. Half of e-bike complaints are a dirty contact, a loose connector or a magnet that has moved on the spoke, and you want to find those before you quote a motor.

Treat every template as a draft. Change the tiers, add your own checks, remove what you never do. The point is that the standard is written down and everyone on the bench is working to the same one.