For small shops of 2 to 10 people

In a one-person shop, the system is the owner's head. At three or four people, that stops working. The person at the counter writes the ticket, a mechanic does the work, and a different mechanic finishes it the next day. Each handoff is a chance for the note about the customer's budget, or the part that is on order, to get lost.

Small shops also hit the permissions question for the first time. You want the part-timer who works Saturdays to be able to fill in a checklist, but not to change your tune-up template. You want your head mechanic to build templates, but maybe not to publish a form on the public internet. And you want to see who did the work on a bike that comes back.

The money gets harder to see too. With three mechanics, you can no longer tell by feel whether labor is being charged properly. You need the time on the ticket and the parts on the invoice to line up, and you need to spot the job that took four hours and was billed for one.

Starter is $20 per user per month with two modules. Growth is $99 a month with 10 users and five modules included, and $20 for each user beyond ten. For a small shop, the choice comes down to two questions: how many people sign in, and how many modules you want.

If you want two modules, the crossover is at five people. Four users on Starter cost 4 x $20 = $80, less than Growth. Five users on Starter cost 5 x $20 = $100, one dollar more than Growth at $99. From five users up, Growth is cheaper and gives you three more modules. At ten users, Starter would be $200 and Growth is still $99.

If you want three or more modules, for example Service, Phony and Accounting, you need Growth at any team size, because Starter covers two. Phony adds $0.12 per minute of call time on either plan. Every workspace starts with a 30-day free trial with every module on, so you can find out which modules you actually use before you choose.

Today, a small shop gets the handoffs written down. The counter takes a request or writes a quote, the approved quote becomes a job, and each visit on it has a mechanic and a day on the week schedule. The next mechanic to pick up the job sees the instructions and the lines the customer approved, and the visit cannot be closed until the required checklist is in. That matters more with four people than with one, because the thing that drifts first as a team grows is the quality of the tune-up.

Time is covered too. Mechanics clock in against the visit they are working on, in work, drive, shop or break, and a manager approves the week. Overtime is worked out to California rules, daily and weekly, and the monthly report shows hours per person with the straight, time-and-a-half and double-time split. What you cannot do yet is export hours to payroll or have them flow onto the invoice, and job costing, which sets labor and parts against the price, is on the roadmap.

The rest of the gaps are plain. There is no bench board by status, sending a quote or invoice does not email it, payments are recorded by hand, and there is no parts inventory. If you need any of those now, keep your current tools for them alongside BIKE.co.