Whereas traditional methods of payment require dipping a card in the same terminal as other customers or the hand to hand exchange of cash or check, the ability to pay by text message through SMS mobile payments takes the complexity and headaches out of the payment process for owners, service writers, and guests alike.
For auto repair shops in particular, giving guests the ability to pay by text not only streamlines the guest experience but also frees up service advisors from having to do a bunch of data entry, giving them more time to help other guests.
Here’s how text-to-pay works on our Integrated Payments, Tekmerchant. As you’ll see, we’ve built in opportunities to enhance efficiency while strengthening the relationship you have with your guests at each step of the process.
Step 1: Complete the Repair Order & Send the Invoice
By connecting Tekmerchant to Tekmetric, service advisors can quickly review the invoices of completed work and simply click a button to text the invoice to the guest.
Since the invoice is automatically generated from the repair order and is easy to edit within Tekmetric, the service advisor can reduce the time they would usually spend writing invoices.
Step 2: Collect Payment
Once the invoice is sent, the guest will receive a link that takes them directly to their invoice and pay screen. From there, they can review the work that was completed and make their payment, prompting them to input their billing information.
The customer inputs their card information, including their billing address, making it a verified payment.
At this point, all the service writer has to do is make sure that the payment has been approved and that everything checks out.
Pro Tip: Enhance Guest Service with a Call or Personal Text
Because service advisors and guests both have access to a digital invoice, it gives service advisors the opportunity to add a human touch to the payment process without the guest coming into the shop.
Consider having service advisors give guests a call or send a personal text message at this part of the process.
While this may seem like an extra step, it gives service advisors a chance to check-in with the guest to ensure all approved work was completed, which is a big step towards avoiding chargebacks.
Calling the guest is also a good chance to remind them of any maintenance that may need to be taken care of in the future and any upcoming deals or events. If the guest is too busy to take a call, Integrated Payments has a Text-to-Pay feature giving them the freedom to pay when they have time.
If everything looks good on the invoice, the guest can easily pay and move on with their day. You get paid fast and the guest is able to pay at their convenience.
Step 3: Return Vehicle to Customer
Once the payment has been processed, all that’s left to do is to return the vehicle.
Pro Tip: Add a Key Drop-Box for Convenience
Some auto repair shops use a key drop-box or locker to make vehicle returns more convenient for their guests and service advisors.
Most contactless drop boxes use programmable codes, so you can put the guest’s keys in a locker, send them the code, and let them pick up their car when they’re ready.
With a key drop-box, everyone wins: service advisors don’t have to worry about staying late; shop owners don’t have to worry about paying a service writer overtime, and your guests don’t have to feel rushed to make it back to the repair shop before closing time.
Turbo-charge Your Payments Processing
The Integrated Payment text-to-pay feature makes life easy for your guests and service advisors, and can potentially save you time, money, and headaches.
Almost 1,000 shop owners, service advisors, and technicians gathered in Houston for Tektonic 2026, Tekmetric's first industry conference. Over two days at the Marriott Marquis, attendees packed breakout rooms, traded hard-earned lessons, and heard from operators, coaches, and industry leaders who have built and scaled shops of their own.
The Question That Started It All
Tekmetric CEO and Founder Sunil Patel opened Tektonic 2026 with a question he has been asking since he was writing service tickets and mopping floors at his former Houston shop, Motorworks of Houston: "Why does it have to be so hard? Why does it have to feel like we're fighting a war on 12 fronts?"
That question, he told the room, is the reason Tekmetric exists.
Standing in front of shop owners, service advisors, and technicians who understand that question on a cellular level, Patel walked through how much harder running a repair shop has become. Vehicles are packed with software, sensors, and calibration systems that require entirely new toolsets. Customer expectations have been shaped by on-demand everything. Technician shortages continue to press on shops across the country. And OEM data restrictions are making it harder for independent shops to do the work they were built to do.
But Patel didn't stop at the challenge. He laid out four pillars he believes the industry needs to move forward: stop celebrating burnout as a badge of honor, build genuine trust with customers and teams, invest in an ecosystem of great partners and vendors, and embrace technology that serves shops rather than extracts from them.
He closed with a simple ask for everyone in the room: be curious, be open, be generous with what you know, and be present.
"I want you to take something away from here," he said. "Something that will get you to be 1% better than you were."
That set the tone for everything that followed.
Top Takeaways
Process Consistency Wins on the Hard Days
Busy days don't create problems. They expose them. The best shops build their standard operating process before the chaos starts.
Call the day before. A preappointment call to review service history and flag overdue maintenance turns intake from reactive to planned and primes customers to say yes before they walk in the door.
Speed is your biggest sales tool. Every hour between drop-off and delivering an estimate costs roughly 10% in approval rates. Get findings to customers fast.
Set the next promise, not the finish line. Never promise a completion time you can't guarantee. Promise the next specific update and deliver it on time, every time.
The in-store customer is the highest-priority repair order in the building. Every other car can wait. The person sitting in your lobby cannot.
Improve one thing at a time. Pick one process to fix, measure it, and build accountability before moving to the next. Trying to fix everything at once fixes nothing.
Speed Closes More Jobs Than Salesmanship
Closing rates drop sharply with every hour that passes between drop-off and the customer call. A customer who has been waiting since 8 a.m. has had time to read every one-star review and talk themselves out of approving the work.
Get inspection results to customers within 30 minutes of dispatch. That's the speed zone. Everything else in the shop is secondary until that call is made.
In-store customers get findings in 15 minutes or less. The customer is sitting right there. Use it.
Relative priority is your daily compass. At any moment, the most important thing is moving the car that's furthest behind in the process. Not the loudest customer. Not the most expensive ticket. The earliest step.
Two daily goals. Full stop. Every technician runs at least eight billable hours. The shop hits its gross profit target. Nail both and everything else follows.
You Don't Have a Technician Shortage. You Have a Culture Problem.
The technician pipeline isn't as broken as it seems. What's broken is how many shops make it hard to stay.
Rethink flat rate. Hybrid pay models that combine a solid base with performance incentives align your team's goals with the shop's goals and they're far more attractive to the next generation coming into the trade.
Answer two questions before you do anything else. Why would a technician work here? Why would a customer come back? If you hesitate on either, start there.
Recognition is the highest-ROI leadership move you have. Research cited at the conference found that team members become disengaged because they don't feel seen. Fix that before you invest in anything else.
AI won't replace hospitality. Technology can handle administrative weight, but the trust a service advisor builds with a customer at the counter is irreplaceable. Invest in that skill set.
P.J. Leslie, Tekmetric's head of mid-market and enterprise sales, moderates a panel during Tektonic 2026 in which multishop owners break down the real strategies behind expansion: buying shops, building shops, systemizing operations, integrating teams, protecting culture, and planning for eventual exit or partnership.
Growing to Multiple Locations Takes More Than Money
Every multishop operator on the stage agreed: you're never fully ready, and that's fine. What matters is being profitable, having the right people, and expecting the unexpected.
Profitable and cash-positive before you move. When you make a mistake at location two—and you will—you need a healthy location to cover it.
You're ready when your shop doesn't need you. Build your bench before you open the next door. The manager for location two should already be in your building today.
Start your exit plan on day one. Almost no one in the room at one of Tektonic’s breakout sessions had a clear exit strategy. Don't leave money on the table because you never thought through how the story ends—whether that means selling, transitioning, or building for long-term cash flow.
Leadership Is the Ceiling on Everything Else
Your shop will never outperform your leadership. What you tolerate becomes your standard. How you show up on Monday morning sets the emotional temperature for everyone around you.
Know your triggers before they know you. Name what sets you off. Once you can spot it, you can stop it before it damages a relationship.
Pause for three seconds. Before you respond to anything that's gotten under your skin, stop. Three seconds is the difference between a reaction and a response.
Hear less. Listen more. After someone finishes speaking, let the silence sit. People almost always have more to say and the second thing is usually the real thing.
Walk into hard conversations knowing how you want them to end. Start with the outcome in mind, not the grievance.
Tekmetric Chief Product Officer Jared Haleck breaks down Tekmetric's new products at Tektonic 2026. The new products include Tekmetric digital ads, Smart DVI, and Tekmetric phones.
Product Announcements at Tektonic 2026
The closing session belonged to the Tekmetric product team. Drawing on data from more than 15,000 shops on the platform, Tekmetric President and COO Lauren Langston and Chief Product Officer Jared Haleck built the roadmap around key areas where winning shops consistently outperform the rest: car count, average repair order (ARO), driver experience, and cycle time.
Here's a look at what’s coming:
Tekmetric Digital Ads: AI-powered advertising on Google Maps and Search, built for the moment a driver has a problem and is ready to act. It connects directly to Tekmetric so you can see the gross profit behind every dollar of ad spend, not just clicks.
Smart DVI: Technicians walk the vehicle, narrate what they see, and Smart DVI builds the customer-ready inspection report automatically—findings organized, images annotated, and jobs pre-suggested for the estimate. Less time typing. More time turning wrenches.
Tekmetric Phones: Customer details, open repair orders, and communication history surface the moment an inbound call rings. No more looking it up while someone's waiting. A future capability in development will transcribe calls in real time and auto-populate appointment notes.
See You in 2027
Tektonic 2026 was Tekmetric's first industry conference, and it delivered on the promise Sunil Patel made from the stage: a room full of shop owners, service advisors, and technicians who showed up to get better.
The through-line across every session was the same. The shops that win are the ones that build systems, invest in their people, and keep getting 1% better. Not all at once. One thing at a time.
The Tekmetric Mobile App now does more than fast digital vehicle inspections.
The newest update introduces Mobile Check-In, giving you or your service advisors the ability to greet customers in the parking lot, scan a VIN or license plate, and instantly start or pull up a repair order, all from a phone. It’s a faster, easier way to begin every job and keep things moving.
Speed Starts at the Curb
Check-in is one of the most visible — and often most frustrating — parts of a shop’s day. Whether it’s a walk-in with a flat tire or a scheduled customer with missing info, time is lost bouncing between the lot and the desk, retyping data, and waiting to begin.
Mobile Check-In simplifies all of that. Now, you can confirm arrivals, start new ROs, and begin helping customers the second they pull into the lot — without delays or extra steps.
A Mobile App That Does More Than You Might Think
The Tekmetric Mobile App isn’t just a tool for inspections — and it’s not just for technicians.
Technicians can use the app to:
Find their assigned repair orders
Complete DVIs with photos, videos, and markups
Track time and stay on top of work in progress
Service advisors can use it to:
Greet customers in the parking lot
Scan VINs or plates
Start repair orders right from their phone
All without logging into a desktop.
A Real Mobile App — Not Just a Website Shrunk Down
Tekmetric Mobile is a fully native app, designed from the ground up for iOS and Android. It’s fast, reliable, and optimized for real-world use in the shop — whether you’re in the bay or out in the lot.
While it doesn’t include every desktop feature, it makes the most important ones faster and easier when you’re on the go — like:
Starting repair orders
Performing inspections
Reducing back-and-forth between workstations and customers
And this is just the beginning. Future updates will continue to bring more mobile workflows into the palm of your hand.
At Tekmetric, we understand that data security is more than just a priority—it's a responsibility. That’s why we are excited to announce that Tekmetric is now ISO/IEC 27001 certified! Combined with our SOC 2 Type II certification, this achievement underscores our commitment to keeping customer and partner data safe and maintaining systems that operate at the highest standards.
What is ISO/IEC 27001?
ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally recognized standard for Information Security Management Systems (ISMS). It represents a comprehensive framework for managing and protecting an organization’s information assets, ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.
To obtain this certification, Tekmetric went through rigorous audits and a thorough examination of security protocols, risk management practices, and data protection measures.
As we continue to innovate shop management solutions to best support our customers, achieving this certification reinforces that our platform and internal workflows protect the highly sensitive data customers and partners trust us with.
What This Means for Tekmetric Customers
For Tekmetric customers, achieving ISO/IEC 27001 certification means you can trust that we adhere to the highest standards for information security.
Enhanced Data Security & Trust: Our certification guarantees that Tekmetric has stringent security measures in place to safeguard sensitive data, including customer information, financial records, and business data.
Reduced Risk of Data Breaches & Security Incidents: By adopting a proactive approach to risk management, Tekmetric minimizes the likelihood of security breaches and disruptions
Compliance & Regulatory Alignment: Our ISO/IEC 27001 certification helps customers demonstrate compliance with data protection regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA.
This certification reinforces our commitment to safeguarding your data, providing you with peace of mind and confidence in our Shop Management platform. To learn more about all our certifications and our commitment to security, visit our Trust Center.
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