Auto repair shops might bulk order carbon copies, or you might find a template online and print as many copies as your shop needs. Or, if your shop uses digital templates, you might have to deal with time-consuming digital file management.
Filling out the forms over and over, be it by handwriting or typing, can become tedious. And both options are less than ideal for record-keeping.
Paper can get lost, and digital files can become overwritten or corrupted. Both approaches are inconvenient and ultimately slow things down at your shop. And the impression you give during the payment process can determine whether those customers return or not.
Here are four reasons why a shop management system is better than an auto repair invoice template approach for your business.
Reason 1: The Invoicing Process Will Become Faster
Think about how much time the auto repair invoice template approach requires. From filling out forms by hand to only being able to collect payment in person, using paper or digital invoice templates usually means a backlog of customers waiting on service advisors.
And if you use integrated payment options like Text-to-Pay, customers will be able to pay directly from their smartphones. Service advisors will spend less time processing customers who are checking out, and customers can pay quickly instead of having to stand in line at your shop.
But, best of all, you'll give your customers an opportunity to budget large expenses they may not have otherwise expected.
We've seen shops help customers cover the cost of a $2000 or more repair they might have otherwise pushed off.
With the flexibility of buy now, pay later options, they can take care of those repairs before they get even worse, and potentially lead to even more expensive damage.
Reason 2: More Convenient for Everyone Involved
Another benefit of a shop management system over an auto repair invoice template approach is that it offers greater convenience for everyone involved.
Your service advisors can continue providing excellent service to incoming guests with minimal disruptions. They can quickly generate and send invoices, which takes significantly less time and effort than filling out estimates and always needing to hand them off in person.
Your service advisors can keep flowing through the process of checking in customers, building estimates, and selling repair work.
Reason 3: Better Tracking and Record-Keeping for Your Shop
Sometimes your team will need to pull up a prior invoice. Maybe a customer calls your shop wanting to remember what they paid for and when, or maybe someone is disputing a charge that they forgot about.
Using a paper or digital auto repair invoice template approach makes it tough to keep track of invoice histories at your shop.
With a shop management system, record-keeping becomes a simple, stress-free endeavor so you can better safeguard your shop. If a service advisor wants to find a particular invoice, they can quickly search inside of the shop management system and pull it up within seconds. No more spending extra time digging through files, physical or virtual.
With a good shop management system, you should be able to search for documents, too. And for multi-shop organizations, you should be able to link customer history across all your locations.
If a service advisor sends part of a payment to your accounts receivable department, they should be able to later search and see how much a customer owes on their balances.
If down the line, a service advisor wants to sell work that a customer previously declined, the service advisor can access that customer’s profile, see what they declined and when, and call up that customer to remind them that it’s time for another visit.
Reason 4: Generate More Business and More Profits
Consider which customer is more likely to be super impressed and return to your shop?
Charlie, who had to rush back to your shop before closing to wait in line to pay
Janet, who paid from their smartphone at their own convenience
Customer B likely drove away from the shop impressed that the check-out process was so simple.
So much of the modern customer experience revolves around the speed and convenience of digital options. The customer who has an easier time paying for their repair will be more likely to sing praises about your shop to their friends and family, getting new customers through your doors.
To make the best impression possible on your customers, and make life as easy as possible for your team members, you should look for a shop management system that covers you throughout different stages of the repair process, including inspections and estimates, inventory management, and reporting on metrics so you can see how well your shop is performing.
As you research different options on the market, be sure to ask the right questions, demo each system, and get your team’s input. Additionally, be sure to get a good sense of the team behind every solution you’re considering.
A solid onboarding and customer success team can guide you through the switch, answer your questions, and teach you all the tips and tricks you need to get your new estimate and invoice process rolling.
Tekmetric: Stand Out for the Right Reasons
Tekmetric helps you give your customers a modern, fast, convenient check-out experience. Schedule a demo to see Tekmetric in action!
Hello Shop Owners, Sunil Patel, Co-Founder of Tekmetric here.
I’m writing this blog because I believe it’s both an honor and a duty to be a leader in business.
Recently, I was awarded by Houston Business Journal as a Most Admired CEO of 2020, and this got me thinking about the leadership principles that have helped me along the way and made Tekmetric what it is today.
Not only do I lead a team of great talent, but I also speak with and have the pleasure of doing business with many strong leaders, whether it be shop owners, other entrepreneurs, or even other leaders within the company.
The fact of the matter is that I wouldn’t have been able to build a robust shop management software without my team. Watching them succeed and set each other up for success is hands down the most rewarding part of my job.
It’s a privilege to work with talented and innovative individuals that make me proud each and every day.
Playing a part in helping them grow and flourish makes me feel like I have served a purpose larger than simply building a product or making money.
Inspired by the HBJ honor, I took the time to sit down and outline a few of the leadership principles that I have always relied on.
They focus on listening, learning, and recognizing everyone as an individual. I hope they help you and your team grow as people and as a unit.
1. Listen to Your Team
Good leadership relies on a strong feedback process.
Listen to your team, whether it’s an idea or how they’re feeling so that they know you care not only about their contributions but also about them as people.
Once a week, I sit down with the leaders of different departments and simply listen to how things are going. What are the current challenges they’re facing? What are some successes they’re proud of?
What do they feel they could use more support with? Giving them the room to voice their concerns, their desires, and their victories provide them with a model for being the best leader they can for the people they lead.
Even when we’re hiring new team members, we like to get input from our current team to make sure we’re considering all voices in the process.
No idea is a bad idea. Even the ideas that you never end up using still have value because they can spark other ideas, show your team a new perspective, or simply show the person who voiced them that they were included as part of the team or project.
When researching digital vehicle inspection software solutions, you should look for these seven core features that benefit your team and your customers:
A searchable DVI history
The ability for technicians to attach photos and videos to inspections
A color-coded system that indicates the severity of inspection findings
A direct tie-in to parts and labor data when building estimates
The ability to add canned jobs when building estimates
Digital authorization
Automatic saving and tracking of declined jobs
1. Searchable DVI History
When shopping for digital vehicle inspection software, make sure that you can easily look back on past inspection findings. When service advisors are able to quickly find out what was uncovered during previous inspections, they’re less likely to miss a repair opportunity and leave money on the table. They can simply pick up where they left off, helping your shop sell more repair work.
2. The ability for technicians to attach photos and videos to inspections
It’s one thing to tell a customer, “Hey, your car has really bad engine corrosion.” It’s another thing to show the customer a photo of the orange, brittle-looking rust all over their engine. When customers can see what’s really going on with their vehicles, they’re more likely to trust your team’s word and authorize repairs right then and there. They’ll be less inclined to shop around for a second opinion or tell you, “Oh, I’ll sleep on it and come back tomorrow.”
A digital vehicle inspection software that enables technicians to quickly attach photos and videos will help your team keep repairs moving along and build customer trust.
3. A color-coded system that indicates the severity of inspection findings
When explaining repairs to customers, the best route is often the simplest one. Instead of spending time speaking or writing about the intricacies of each inspection finding, service advisors can leverage digital vehicle inspection software that uses a simple, color-coded system to instantly give customers an idea of how urgent each inspection finding is. For instance, an inspection finding marked in green would indicate that everything is good to go, one marked in yellow would indicate something that might need attention down the line, and red would indicate the need for immediate action.
4. A direct tie-in to parts and labor data when building estimates
It’s vital for service advisors to weave in the right parts and labor data when building estimates. But doing so manually is a tedious process. With everything going on, service advisors might accidentally scribble down the wrong piece of information, resulting in the customer getting the wrong parts and labor pricing, or inaccurate parts availability.
Digital vehicle inspection software with a direct tie-in to parts and labor data helps service advisors create accurate estimates from the get-go, so there are no unpleasant surprises for anyone at the shop come estimate-review time.
5. The ability to add canned jobs when building estimates
On a daily basis, service advisors may find themselves writing the same types of findings on estimates over and over.
Digital vehicle inspection software with a canned jobs feature will eliminate a lot of this repetition by enabling service advisors to add pre-saved jobs to estimates in a matter of seconds. That way they can complete inspections faster and get estimates in customers’ hands as soon as possible.
6. Digital authorization
The easier you make it for your customers to authorize repair work, the more likely they’ll quickly do so. That’s where digital vehicle inspection software with digital job authorization steps in. Service advisors won’t have to track down customers to get their verbal or written approval to start repair work. Instead, customers can approve or decline individual jobs from the moment they get their estimate.
7. Automatic saving and tracking of declined jobs
Some repair work is going to get declined for various reasons. But don’t worry. Declined jobs show that your shop is thorough with inspections and estimates; your team caught every budding and existing issue with each vehicle. Think of declined jobs as future business opportunities for your shop.
However, remembering and keeping track of declined jobs can get tricky with a pen and paper method. Service advisors might totally forget about these opportunities, or if they remember, they’ll have to dig through stacks of paper or navigate folder after folder on a computer just to find the right estimate.
Digital vehicle inspection software that has a “declined jobs” feature enables your service advisors to pick up right where they left off the next time a particular customer walks into your shop. They’ll be able to search which jobs the customer declined last time, and recommend taking care of those issues. The results? You’ll get more business and impress your customers with your great customer service.
Remember spring and summer of 2020? A lot of us are probably trying to forget and move forward, and we feel you. It was a scary time period for everyone, including the automotive repair industry.
Last April, auto shop owners were wondering, are my customers going to come into the shop? If people stay inside, are they going to drive less? If they drive less, are they still going to come into the shop as frequently? What if other industries are affected, and people have less money for repairs?
We were nervous like everyone else. But anyone who knows Tekmetric knows that we’re committed to driving the auto repair industry forward; we wanted to answer these questions and put Auto Repair Professionals’ minds at ease.
We also wanted to enable shops to not only endure the pandemic but also grow and come out stronger than ever before.
Strength in Numbers
If there’s one thing that makes us feel confident, empowered, and like we know what’s going on, it’s numbers. (Tracking shop performance and providing insights is kind of our thing).
We’ve seen the power of metrics in shops across America, and we know that customers, service advisors, technicians, and the entire auto repair industry benefit when auto shop owners can make informed decisions.
So we launched the TM-500 Index. The TM-500 tracks the Average Repair Order and Car Count of five hundred auto repair shops located across the United States. But data don’t mean squat if it ain’t easy to read. The TM-500 let’s users sort data by time and region so they can quickly explore trends.
Want to know the ARO and Car Count between the months of June and November of 2020? Simply set the time period “by month,” and the TM-500 will generate an easy-to-read graph.
Want to know if shops in midwest states had a higher or lower Car Count than southwest states last summer? Simply set the time period you want to observe, and hover over different regions on a map of the United States to learn how they performed.
Just as the Tekmetric system for auto repair shop management gives shop owners better insights into their shops, the TM-500 gives Auto Repair Professionals better insights into their industry.
But knowing is only half the battle.
A Catalyst for Digital Transformation
The auto repair industry has lagged behind almost every other service industry in how we utilize technology. Almost anyone with a smartphone can order a pizza, sushi, enchiladas, or any other food they want and track it while it’s being delivered to their door.
Meanwhile, someone paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a new transmission still has to go in-person and deal with a half-legible piece of paper that feels greasier than the pizza and enchiladas put together!
But we get it. People are sometimes reluctant to change. For many auto shop owners, however, the COVID-19 pandemic was the “now or never” moment to fully digitize their shops.
In 2020, Tekmetric prioritized the rollout of several features we had been working on to help shops provide their customers with the experience they’ve come to expect in almost every other part of their lives. In April of 2020, we rolled out Text-to-Pay, allowing shops to invoice and collect payment via text message.
In November of 2020, we rolled out True Two-Way Texting to make it easy for service advisors and customers to communicate throughout the entire repair process.
Combined, these two features enabled Tekmetric users to provide a completely touchless experience to their customers without sacrificing the quality of their work or customer service.
Much like in other industries, customers who bring their cars in for repairs appreciate the extra service and transparency of a more enhanced, digitally assisted customer experience.
As we watched many shops grow by using Tekmessage and Tekmerchant, we kept an eye on the overall performance of the TM-500. We were able to see when shops began to bounce back in summer after an early slump, and developed other understandings about where the industry was headed.
Over time, we have added new metrics to the TM-500 such as state-by-state Labor Margin, Parts Margin, Effective Labor Rate, and Car Count to gain a more complete picture of these high-performing shops.
What Have We Learned Since the Onset of the Pandemic?
When making conclusions about where the industry is going, we like to be informed by both quantitative and qualitative data.
The numbers give us a factual look at what’s gone up or down, and talking to people in the industry helps us make correlations between how certain behaviors, processes, and principles affect these trends.
Between the data we gathered from the TM-500 and the feedback we were able to gather from talking to auto shop owners, here’s what we have learned.
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