Set Up Your Workflow

What a step is

A step is one stage in your recon process. Recon is the work between buying a car and putting it on the lot. Think of steps like stations on a shop floor. Each car rolls from one station to the next. When it reaches the last station, it’s done.

EasyRecon shows your steps as columns on the board. Move a car from one column to the next and the board updates in real time. Everyone on your team sees the same thing.

You decide what your steps are. They should match your real process — the one you already do, just not on paper anymore.

Start simple

Copy your whiteboard. Copy your spreadsheet. Whatever you’re using right now, that’s your starting point.

Don’t add steps for edge cases. Don’t try to track things you don’t track today. Build a simple skeleton first. You can always add steps later. You can rename them. You can reorder them. Nothing is permanent.

The most common mistake on day one is over-engineering the workflow. A shop with six real steps doesn’t need twelve in the software.

The default workflow EasyRecon gives you

When you first set up EasyRecon, you get an 11-step template called Retail Recon (Universal). It covers the full recon cycle from intake to frontline.

This is a starting point — you can change anything. Times below are defaults; your shop may need different numbers.

Step	What happens	Time goal (default)
Incoming	Car arrives. Logged in the system.	—
In Transit	Car is on its way from auction or trade.	—
Ready For Service	Car is on your lot and ready to start recon.	30 min
Inspection	Multi-point inspection. Find what needs work.	2 hours
Estimate Approval	Manager reviews and approves the repair estimate.	1 hour
Repair	Mechanical and body work happens here.	8 hours
Offsite	Car is at an outside vendor — body shop, glass, etc.	3 days
Detail	Interior and exterior detail.	4 hours
Photos	Lot photos taken. Car ready to list.	1 hour
Frontline	Car is on the lot. Retail-ready. Recon is done.	—
Wholesale	Car is disposed of without retail prep. Recon is done.	—

The four steps with no time goal (Incoming, In Transit, Frontline, Wholesale) are bookends. They don’t count toward your Active Days score. More on that below.

Add, rename, and reorder steps

You can change any step at any time. Open Admin → Steps to get started.

Open Admin from the main menu.
Tap Steps.
To add a step, tap Add Step, type a name, and set a time goal if you want one.
To rename a step, tap the step name and type the new name.
To reorder, drag the step to the position you want.
Tap Save when you’re done.

Changes take effect right away. Cars already in a step stay there — you don’t need to move them after a rename.

If you remove a step that has cars in it, EasyRecon will ask you where to move those cars first. Nothing disappears without your say.

Time goals — what counts

Every step can have a time goal. The goal is the target time you want a car to spend in that step before moving on.

Time counts from the moment a car is moved in to the moment it’s moved out. Think of it like a punch clock on the shop floor. The clock starts when the car arrives. It stops when the car leaves.

When a car goes over its goal, the board flags it. You’ll see a color change on the card. That’s your signal to check in.

Goals are in minutes in the system. On the board, EasyRecon converts them to hours or days so they’re easy to read.

You set goals per step. A goal is optional. If you leave it at zero, the board won’t flag that step for time.

Active Days, explained

Active Days is the most important number on the board. It tells you how long a car has been in the working part of recon.

Not all time counts. The intake steps (Incoming, In Transit) and the terminal steps (Frontline, Wholesale) are excluded. Active Days counts only the middle — from when a car enters Ready For Service to when it exits Photos.

That window looks like this:

[Incoming] [In Transit] → [Ready For Service] ─────────────────── [Photos] → [Frontline]
                                 ↑                                      ↑
                          Active Days starts                    Active Days ends
                         (default: Ready For Service)           (default: Photos)

Everything between those two arrows is the working recon window. Inspection, Estimate Approval, Repair, Offsite, Detail — all of it counts.

This matters because it separates the time you control from the time you don’t. You can’t speed up transit from auction. You can speed up repair. Active Days tracks the part that’s on you.

Get notified when a car enters a step

You don’t need to watch the board all day. You can subscribe to specific steps and get a notification each time a car lands there.

Pick the steps you care about. A tech might subscribe to Repair. An advisor might subscribe to Frontline to know when a car is done.

Step subscriptions are per-user. Each person on your team sets their own. You can change them any time from your profile settings.

For details on all notification types, see Notes, Mentions & Notifications.

Labels on steps — assigning vendors and techs

Labels are tags you apply to a car. A label can route the car to a vendor or assign it to a tech.

When a car enters a step, you can apply a label to tell the system who’s handling it. The vendor or tech gets notified automatically. No phone call. No text from you.

For example, your body shop step might have a label for your regular shop. When you apply it, the shop gets a message with the car details.

For full label setup instructions, see Labels, Vendors & Media.

Terminal steps: Frontline and Wholesale

The default workflow has two terminal steps, not one.

Frontline means the car is retail-ready. It passed recon and is on the lot for sale.

Wholesale means the car was disposed of without retail prep. Maybe it failed inspection, or the numbers didn’t work. It goes to auction or gets sold wholesale.

Both are dead ends. Once a car enters either one, it’s done from a recon perspective. It comes off the active board. Its history stays in the system — you can always look it up — but it stops counting toward your metrics.

You won’t move a car out of Frontline or Wholesale. Those are exit doors, not pass-through steps.