MOT Management for UK Garages

MOT bookings, reminders, history, zero-rated VAT – all built in.

MOTs are the heartbeat of an independent UK garage.

A typical workshop runs MOT bookings, MOT reminders, MOT history checks, and zero-rated MOT invoicing across the diary every day. Most garage software bolts these together as separate add-ons. In Torqueflow they’re one connected workflow.

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DVLA lookup built in

Zero-rated VAT per labour code

Voice AI offers MOT times

How MOTs work in Torqueflow

One connected workflow, from the lookup to the invoice.

DVLA lookup

Type a registration, get the vehicle.

Type a registration number, get the vehicle straight from DVLA – make, model, colour, MOT status, MOT expiry date, tax status. No manual entry, no typos, no out-of-date records. The vehicle’s MOT history populates automatically, including past advisories and fail reasons.

This matters because every MOT booking starts with “is this car due?“ – the DVLA lookup answers that in 2 seconds.

MOT bookings in the scheduler

Drop into the bay diary with the right defaults.

MOT bookings drop into your bay scheduler the same way as any other appointment. Give your MOT bay the MOT type, and an MOT booked online only goes into a bay that can take it.

Automatic MOT reminders

Set the timing once. Torqueflow fires the rest.

Torqueflow checks every vehicle against its DVLA MOT expiry date each day and sends reminders on its own. Out of the box they go 60, 30, 14 and 7 days before the MOT runs out, and you can switch tiers off or change the timing.

By SMS: a short message with the registration, the due date and a tap-to-call link.
By email: the same details with room for your own wording.

Each reminder can carry your online booking link, so the customer can book themselves without a phone call.

Voice AI handles MOT booking calls

Customer rings. Voice AI finds the time. Your team books it in.

Customer rings to book their MOT. The Voice AI:

Recognises the caller by phone number and pulls up their vehicle and MOT due date.
Checks which vehicle they mean (“Is this for the Focus or the Octavia?”).
Asks how soon they need it and checks your real diary.
Offers them real dates, morning or afternoon.
Sends your team a written summary with the time they picked, ready to put in the diary.

Your team puts it in the diary. The AI has done the asking, the checking and the offering.

Zero-rated VAT on MOT labour

Set once per labour code. Every MOT invoice gets it right.

MOT testing is zero-rated for VAT – but most garage software treats VAT as a single org-wide setting, forcing you to manually adjust every MOT invoice. Torqueflow lets you set VAT per labour code.

Configure the MOT labour code as zero-rated once and every MOT invoice gets it right automatically. No manual adjustment, no quarterly reconciliation pain.

MOT history on every vehicle

Every test, every advisory, on the vehicle record.

Open any customer’s vehicle record and you see the full MOT history pulled from DVLA – every test date, every pass, every fail, every advisory.

When the same car comes back two years later, you don’t have to ask what was advised last time. It’s already there.

Why this matters

Independent garages run MOTs as a high-volume, low-margin workflow.

The economics only work if the surrounding admin is automated.

The garages that win on MOT volume aren’t the ones with cheaper testers – they’re the ones whose software does this for them.

Booking automation

MOT bookings are simple enough that a human shouldn’t have to take the call. The Voice AI takes it and finds the time, and all your team does is put it in the diary.

Reminder automation

Chasing the customer for next year’s booking is what drives repeat business. SMS reminders do this without needing your team to remember.

VAT automation

MOT labour is zero-rated; getting that right per-invoice is the difference between a clean VAT return and an evening with a calculator.

What you need to do an MOT in Torqueflow

Once it’s set up, the daily flow is short.

Customer rings → Voice AI offers real dates and your team puts the one they pick in the diary. Or customer taps the booking link in their reminder → books themselves online.
Customer arrives → mark the vehicle present, technician picks up the job card.
MOT happens → tester records the result. (We don’t run the MOT testing equipment itself; that’s the DVSA-approved MOT system. Torqueflow keeps the job, the invoice and the customer side of it.)
Customer collects → invoice generates with zero-rated VAT on the MOT labour line, paid in person via TakePayments terminal or by Stripe link if they want to pay later.
Reminder for next year → set automatically. When the new expiry date comes through from DVLA, the reminders re-arm, so the customer hears from you before it’s due without you remembering.

Frequently asked

The questions garages ask before they switch.

No – the MOT testing equipment and its computer system are VOSA/DVSA-approved and supplied separately. Torqueflow handles everything around the MOT: bookings, reminders, history, VAT, invoicing, customer comms. The two systems sit alongside each other in the workshop.

Yes. The defaults are 60, 30, 14 and 7 days before the MOT expires. Switch any of them off, change the day counts (up to 90 days before), add your own, and edit the wording for email and SMS.

Yes. The customer portal includes online booking, and the SMS and email reminders can carry your booking link. They tap, pick a slot, you have the booking.

Yes, and it’s one of the calls it handles most. The AI checks the scheduler and offers the caller real dates. Your team gets a written summary with the time the caller picked, ready to put in the diary.

You configure the MOT labour code in Settings → Finance → Labour & Time as taxable=No (or VAT rate=0%). Every MOT labour line on every invoice picks it up automatically. No manual VAT adjustment per invoice.

Partly. The workshop KPI dashboard breaks sold hours down by labour code, so MOT labour shows up on its own line. There’s no MOT pass-rate report.

We pull MOT history from DVLA’s public lookup. Direct integration with the DVSA testing service for live test status during the test itself isn’t part of the current product.

Soft-deleted customer records keep the MOT history (HMRC retention applies). Reminders stop firing for deleted customers automatically.

Try Torqueflow for MOTs.

Start a free trial and set up your zero-rated MOT labour code, your reminder tiers and your bookable MOT. Or book a demo and we’ll show you the Voice AI offering a caller real MOT dates on a real garage’s diary.

Start a 14-day trial yourself

Or book a demo.

MOT Management for UK Garages