Breast cancer is the most diagnosed cancer among women in the U.S. after skin cancer. In fact, there are currently more than four million women with a history of breast cancer in the U.S. Most, if not all of us know someone who has been greatly impacted by this disease.
Founded in 2011, Brakes for Breasts unites independent auto repair shops to support people affected by breast cancer and donate to ongoing research for a cure. You may have heard the saying, “prevention is better than cure.” Brakes for Breasts takes that to the next level through the belief that “prevention is the cure.” The organization offers participating shops a chance to raise money for the Cleveland Clinic Breast Cancer Vaccine Fund, supporting the creation of a vaccine that can prevent TNBC (triple negative breast cancer).
Today, Brakes for Breasts has expanded to work with hundreds of shops nation-wide, raising more than $2.1 million. Its founders, Leigh Ann Best and Laura Frank, are both powerhouses in the auto repair industry who established Brakes for Breasts to raise money for breast cancer research and provide a bigger voice to women in the auto repair industry.
In 2024, Tekmetric donated more than $16,000 to Brakes for Breasts. This year, our goal is to donate even more – and we need your help! There are multiple ways to participate:
Sign up with Tekmetric. During the month of October, Tekmetric will donate $50 to the Brakes for Breasts campaign for every new shop that signs up for Tekmetric.
Share the campaign with your customers. If you are a TechNet shop, make sure your customers know that when they come to you for a qualifying brake service between September 1 and October 31, you are offering a rebate on qualifying brake pads that they can choose to donate to the fund.
Donate with Tekmetric's fundraising link. If you want to go straight to Brakes for Breasts without any brakes, use this link to donate any dollar amount to Brakes for Breast. You can choose between a one-time donation or a monthly contribution.
Fundraise at your shop by joining the Tekmetric team. You can register your shop to fundraise for this cause in your community through Tekmetric’s campaign at this link. The shop that raises the most money during the campaign will win a trip to join Tekmetric at the check presentation ceremony in Cleveland in April 2026.
Participate directly. Participating independent repair shops can work directly with Brakes for Breasts by offering customers free brake pads on brake jobs in the month of October, then donating 10% of the labor from that brake service to the fund.
All proceeds will go towards The Cleveland Clinic Breast Cancer Vaccine Research Fund. The end goal is to create a vaccine that can create a world free of breast cancer.
Brakes for Breasts is a tremendous opportunity for your shop to partner with your local community to benefit people affected by breast cancer. Our customer Austin Blanton, owner of Import Auto Shop, experienced this phenomenon first-hand when his shop participated in previous years: “When you’re worried about money and busy dealing with operations stuff, you can lose sight of paying it forward. For example, one of the things we did last year was get involved with Brakes for Breasts.”
As we aim to focus on our customers, we are also happy to be part of initiatives that will transform lives for generations to come. For our customers who have been impacted by this disease, the month of October honors what you have overcome to be here. By promoting further research and support of your journey, we hope to support the creation of better cancer care for all who are impacted by this disease. Let’s hit the brakes on breast cancer and work towards a cure together!
Scaling your auto repair business requires moving beyond simple spreadsheets and paper repair orders. You need a robust shop management software that has enterprise-level features, centralized real-time reporting, and helps you provide a consistent customer experience across locations.
This guide breaks down the top enterprise software solutions for auto repair shops with 2+ locations.
Top 5 Enterprise Solutions for Shops With Multiple Locations
Finding the right software partner for your expanding shop is critical to your success. Below you will find our top overall picks for multi-shop operators (MSOs).
Multi-shop owners love Tekmetric because they can run their entire business, across all locations, from one platform. Featuring an all-in-one shop management solution with centralized real-time reporting, marketing, payments, and 70+ integrations, Tekmetric makes it easier for you to manage multiple locations. Why we picked Tekmetric:
Centralized reporting: Real-time dashboards enable you to see how each location is performing. You can track financials, employee performance, shop metrics, ARO, car count, and more.
All-in-one solution: Instead of switching between platforms, Tekmetric offers shop management, POS, and CRM in one place.
Company history: Built by a former shop owner, Tekmetric is often praised for ease of use, simple onboarding, reliable support, and listening to customer feedback.
Shop-Ware is designed to help you maintain consistency across multiple locations with unified customer history, reporting, and employee management features.
Why we picked Shop-Ware:
Reporting: Find the metrics that matter the most to your business.
Customer experience: Standardize your customer experience across locations.
Employee management: Easily compare employee productivity and manage permission levels.
Protractor is a popular shop management system for shops with multiple locations or franchises. Protractor offers advanced reporting features and shop management features so you can run your shop confidently.
Why we picked Protractor:
Reporting: Performance tracking, insights, and employee productivity monitoring.
Fullbay specializes in heavy-duty truck and trailer repair shops. Most standard shop software struggles with the complexity of fleet maintenance, but Fullbay was built for it.
Why we picked Fullbay:
Centralized inventory: Track parts and inventory across all locations.
Integrations: Fullbay has plenty of industry interrogations to keep your shop running.
If you are looking for a lighter software solution, Garage360 might be a good option for your shop. Supporting quick-lube, body/collision, and fleet, Garage360 can be used in a variety of shops.
Why we picked Garage360:
Versatile: Can be used in multiple shop types.
Permission control: Manage your employee permissions across locations.
Reporting: Pull the data you need to make informed decisions.
Pricing: Starting at $79/mo (billed annually).
Which software features should I look for when I manage multiple shops?
If you are comparing software options for your chain operations, these are the modern features to look for:
Centralized real-time reporting: Tired of trying to guess how each shop location is performing? Pick a software that can pull the data you need from any location or aggregate it across shop locations within a user-friendly dashboard.
Inventory/parts management: Tracking parts can be difficult as you expand. Find a solution that can track inventory levels and transfer parts as needed across locations.
Standardized workflows: Having standard workflows streamlines your shop operations. Select a software that can standardize your operations, prices, and procedures.
Employee permissions:Managing employee permissions is critical to ensuring the safety of your company data and holding employees accountable. Pick a software that keeps your business secure.
Single vs. Multi-Location Management: What are the differences?
Why can’t you just use a single-shop system? The difference lies in automation and control.
Standardization: In a multi-location setup, you need to ensure that technicians at every shop are following the same workflow and procedures so your customer experience is consistent.
Visibility: Single shop software may have reporting, but you need to be able to compare metrics between shops to make informed business decisions.
Security: Multi-shop software provides employee permission settings and typically comes with advanced data protection.
Pricing: Most single-shop software options will charge you per user or limit repair orders. Enterprise software will grow with you and charge based on the number of locations.
Final Thoughts
Choosing an enterprise-level auto repair shop software isn't just about features; it's about finding a partner that helps you maintain a consistent customer experience as you grow. Whether you prioritize inventory management, deep metrics, or standard procedures, ensure you find a solution that can grow with you.
When you started your shop, you probably had to get the word out there. Maybe you passed out cards at your gym or got your family to tell all their friends about your new business.
Today, you likely have a loyal customer base. Your regulars drop by whenever they need repairs, and they probably also recommend your shop to their friends and family. That word-of-mouth marketing is immensely valuable. After all, new folks can’t come to your shop if they don’t know about it!
But even with loyal customers who spread the good word about your shop, you’ll eventually hit a plateau. People don’t have an endless number of friends and family in the area that they can keep referring your shop to.
Role-based visibility means each person in your shop sees the numbers and screens their job actually requires, and not the ones it doesn’t. A technician sees their job queue, their assignments, and their hours. A service advisor sees the estimates, inspections, and customers in front of them today. A store manager sees one whole shop. An owner sees the whole portfolio.
Most multi-location operators get this half right. They are careful about what people can do and less careful about what people can see.
Visibility is not the same as permission
Permissions answer a question about authority: who can apply a discount, who can unpost a repair order, who can change a labor rate. That is worth getting right, and it gets harder with every location you add.
Visibility answers something different: whose attention is this number worth?
You can get every permission toggle exactly right and still hand all four roles the same crowded screen. Nobody's data is at risk in that setup, but everybody's attention and time is at stake.
One test that sorts almost every case
Ask this about any number, report, or screen: can this person affect the outcome and improve the bottom line?
If yes, they should see it daily, and without having to ask anyone for it. If not, showing it does not create accountability. It creates noise, and eventually the habit of ignoring the screen altogether. A technician staring at portfolio gross profit is not empowered. They are distracted from the numbers they own.
Run that test role by role to discover whether your employees have the right information in front of them.
What each role needs to see
Technicians
Needs: their job queue and assignments, hours logged against each job compared with the labor guide, parts status on jobs they are about to start, and the inspection findings they documented.
Doesn't need: portfolio revenue, shop-level gross profit, and another technician's hours or pay.
A technician's ability to make an impact on the shop's bottom line is entirely on the car in front of them. Hours and parts availability are the two things they control, and parts is the one operators most often overlook — a technician who can't see whether a part is on the shelf starts jobs they can't finish.
"It's also great to be able to see approved work and hours, and it helps us keep track of our hours efficiently." -Anecia Lewis, Tekmetric G2 review
Service advisors
Needs: the full job board for today, inspection results the moment the technician finishes them, complete customer history including declined work, and their own close ratio.
Doesn't need: other locations' performance, portfolio-level financials, and payroll.
Close ratio is the one to sit with. It is the number advisors most directly control, and the one most of them have never been shown. An advisor who doesn't know their own close ratio has no way to tell a slow week from a presentation problem.
Advisors also need one view that reaches past their own role: the technician job board. Not to manage technicians, but to route work.
"Another feature I value is the ability to view the job board for technicians, which lets me plan more effectively and assign vehicles to technicians who could use additional hours." -Verified service advisor, Tekmetric G2 review
Store managers
Needs: their shop, completely, including car count, ARO, close ratio by advisor, technician efficiency, work-in-progress aging, discounts applied, and end-of-day reconciliation.
Doesn't need: the other locations, unless comparing locations is genuinely part of the job.
This is the one most operators get backwards. Portfolio visibility feels like a gesture of trust, and it quietly changes the conversation: a manager judged on one shop who can see five shops will start explaining their own numbers by pointing at somebody else's. Give a manager the shop they are accountable for, and the discussion stays on their side of the desk.
Multi-location owners and ops leaders
Needs: the spread. Every location side by side on the same metrics, with the ability to drill into one shop, one advisor, or one date range when something looks off.
Doesn't need: individual repair orders, most days.
The temptation at this level is to use full access to go back to running a shop. Owners should assess the gap between their best location and the worst one — a rising portfolio average can hide one store sliding backward.
Owners who have done this describe the payoff in ordinary terms:
"Everything is online — I can work from home or at any of the terminals at any shop. I am able to set up different levels of access depending on the employee's position." -Verified multi-shop owner, Tekmetric G2 review
Both ways to get it wrong
Too much visibility costs you attention and, at the edges, discretion. Picture a technician scrolling past their own approved hours to reach a portfolio gross profit figure they can't act on, next to payroll data they were never meant to see. A screen that should have taken four seconds to read took 40, and the habit of skimming past it starts that day.
Too little costs you speed, and it costs more than operators expect. Advisors wait on approvals for information they should already have. Managers can't make a call on their own shop without phoning the owner. And technicians start work they cannot finish:
"Technicians can simply see if all parts are now in inventory or if we are waiting on them, keeping them from wasting time starting a job we're not ready for." -George, verified user, Tekmetric G2 review
How Tekmetric scopes visibility by role
Tekmetric is an all-in-one auto repair platform, allowing multi-shop auto repair operators to configure role and visibility together rather than as two separate projects.
New employees start from a default role — owner, manager, service advisor, or technician — each with granular permissions you can adjust, set up once and applied consistently at every location. Technicians see their job queue, their assignments, and their hours. Advisors build estimates, communicate with customers in front of them, and take payment. Managers get what they need to run their shop without touching another location's data. Owners see the full portfolio in real time from a single login.
The Job Board is where the advisor's view lives, sorting active work into estimates, work-in-progress, and completed. The Tech Board gives advisors and managers a live read on every job by technician, with status and labor hours, while technicians update status from their own device instead of walking to the front desk.
At the portfolio level, one dashboard carries ARO, car count, close ratio, gross profit, and technician efficiency for every location, filterable by shop, advisor, and date range. That filtering is what makes the same dashboard work for two different jobs: the portfolio view for an owner, one store for the person running it.
"The amount of information that is available to the front desk, the service advisor, and the technician at a glance is very impressive, and the functionality of it together is great." -Moises M., guest service representative, Tekmetric G2 review
The takeaways
Getting this right is unglamorous configuration work that pays out as speed. Here are three things to do with it:
Run the test on every role you have. For each number on their screen, ask whether that person can change it.
Give each role their own scope by default. Don't overload roles with information or data. Provide what they need and can impact.
Show your advisors their close ratio and your technicians their hours. Those are the two role-level numbers with the most direct line to ARO, and they are the two most often left switched off.
Then get out of the way and let each person look at the thing they can actually fix.
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