A phone repair shop keeps three sets of books at once: spare parts on the shelf, customer devices in a notebook or a chat, and technician pay in the owner’s head. QUINCEFIN pulls all three into a single document — the work order. It writes off the part, records which device it went into, calculates the technician’s share, and shows the profit on that specific repair straight away.
Phone repair accounting: work orders, IMEI and warranty in one system
An accessories shop that also does repairs is really two businesses under one roof. Retail runs on its own logic: hundreds of low-value SKUs, barcodes, a till. The workshop runs on another: every repair is different, a part goes into one specific device, and the technician is paid a share of the labour, not of the receipt.
The trouble starts where the two meet. The screen you fitted for a customer is the same screen that sat in stock as a product. Keep repairs in a separate system from your warehouse and the numbers drift apart within a week.
What a work order gives you
A work order is a single document that holds:
- the labour and services performed — what the customer is billed for;
- the spare parts used — written off from the same stock retail sells from;
- technician pay — a percentage of the labour or a fixed amount;
- the cost and margin of that individual repair.
Once posted, the system writes the parts off stock, records the revenue, books what you owe the technician, and updates your management P&L. No side spreadsheets.
Tying a repair to a specific device
What matters most in a workshop is knowing not “John Smith brought a phone in” but “this particular iPhone 13, this IMEI”. QUINCEFIN handles that through partner objects.
The mechanics are straightforward:
- Create an object type — “Smartphone”, for example.
- Give that type your own attributes: IMEI, model, colour, purchase date.
- Add the customer’s devices as objects on their record.
- Pick the specific device on the work order — the system only offers objects belonging to that customer.
From there it compounds. Each device carries its full history: which repairs it has had, which parts went in, how much profit it brought. When a customer comes back six months later insisting you already replaced that part, the answer takes ten seconds instead of a flick through a notebook.
The same mechanism works for any equipment — laptops, tablets, watches. You define the object type and its fields yourself.
Spare parts: serial numbers and batches
On the Materials tab, the work order writes parts off stock. If a part is tracked by serial number, you can pick the exact number on the line — so you know which individual unit went into which device.
If serial numbers were not captured when the goods were received, they can be added to existing stock with a separate “Assign serial numbers” document under Warehouse / Warehouse documents.
For small consumables — glue, ribbon cables, screws — serial tracking is overkill; a plain batch write-off is enough. The system lets you mix both approaches in one document.
Technician pay
The Payroll tab settles the usual argument about who earned what this month. You set the pay pool — a percentage of the labour total on the order, for instance — and the system splits it between the technicians, either evenly or by set shares.
The result is not an estimate but a booked liability to a named technician, which lands in costs and immediately affects the cost of that repair. If two people worked on the device, each gets their share from the same document.
What the workshop actually earns
QUINCEFIN calculates repair cost automatically:
Cost = parts + technician pay
After that it is ordinary margin arithmetic, except calculated per job rather than “on average for the month”. The work order report shows:
- profitability of each repair and each type of work;
- which customers and devices make money and which lose it;
- how each technician performs;
- customer payments and outstanding balances on completed work.
This is usually where owners discover that replacing a screen on a popular model earns less than a small repair, because the part is expensive and the market price is squeezed.
Stages: where every device stands
A work order carries a Stage field — “New”, “In progress”, “Completed” and any others you define for your own process: awaiting diagnosis, awaiting parts, ready for collection.
For a workshop this replaces the whiteboard or the group chat: the list of open work orders shows how many devices you are holding, which are waiting on a part, and which can go back to the customer.
Warranty
Warranty slips in QUINCEFIN run on categories: each category can carry its own warranty text, which is pulled into the printed form. Terms for a screen replacement and a battery replacement can therefore differ, and the technician does not have to keep them in mind.
When a customer returns with a warranty claim, the device history shows the repair date, the part fitted and its serial number.
Retail and workshop on one stock
The real gain for an accessories shop with a workshop is that both sides draw on the same stock. A screen sold through the till and a screen consumed on a work order reduce the same quantity.
Alongside that, one system holds:
- the retail till with fiscal receipts;
- marketplace and website orders drawing on shared stock;
- settlements with parts suppliers;
- a profit report broken down by channel and product group.
More on this scenario on the accounting for phone and accessory shops page.
Frequently asked questions
Can I track devices by IMEI?
Yes. IMEI is set up as a custom attribute of the “Smartphone” object type, after which each repair is tied to a specific customer device.
Are parts written off the same stock as goods for sale?
Yes, there is one warehouse. A work order draws on the same balances that retail sales reduce.
Can I record which individual unit of a part was fitted?
Yes, if the item is tracked by serial number — you select it on the materials line.
How is technician pay calculated?
As a percentage of the labour total on the order or a fixed amount, split between several technicians.
Can I see the profit on each repair separately?
Yes. Cost is made up of parts and pay, and margin is calculated per work order.
Try it on your own data
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