With this latest update, we want to deep dive into one of the most beneficial features, buy now, pay later, so shop owners can see for themselves.
Tekmerchant was designed to help shop owners, like you, to build trust with customers, close out the day faster, and turbo charge shop’s payment processing by offering them a fully integrated payments solution, all managed by a trusted team. Building off your existing Tekmetric experience, Tekmerchant is another way to supercharge both your shop’s processes and your customer’s experience at the same time.
More specifically, we're really excited to tell you about our new buy now, pay later feature , making it easier for your guests to do business with your shop -- especially on those more expensive repair orders.
With just the inclusion of Tekmerchant alone, Silver Lake Auto’s shop performance continues to grow. At the organization’s flagship store, average repair order (ARO) has increased by more than $200a month!
And we’re excited to see how much those AROs grow with buy now, pay later.
What is Buy Now, Pay Later?
We all know the story: a customer walks in complaining about a loud grinding noise, hoping they can just get their beaks replaced and on their way.
After an inspection, it turns out they have caliper sticking and need not just pads and rotors, but possibly a new caliper, new brake lines, and all the fluid and parts that come along with it.
What they expected to be a quick in and out routine job turned out to be quite an expense. And now here’s where the tricky part comes in: the customer is hesitant to approve the entire repair order.
The sticker shock of such a big repair they weren’t expecting can generally lead to customers picking and choosing what they want to repair so it fits their budget. And in some cases, this means sometimes putting off important repairs that could end up dangerous if ignored.
That's exactly where buy now, pay later comes in.
With our industry first offering of buy now, pay later via Affirm or Klarna, we make it easy for shops to get those expensive repairs approved by providing customers with the option to pay for the repair over time, while you get paid the same day.
Close Bigger Repair Orders
Here's the best part, there's no extra risk to your shop. You’ll get paid like you normally do on your transactions, while your customers now have the option to split up their car repair payments with either Affirm or Klarna to meet their budget.
And you’ll still see a host of new benefits, like:
Get paid on time by allowing your customers to pay over time
Make more money by increasing your Average Repair Order value
Keep everything simple with one single trusted payment partner
Tekmerchant is all about consolidating your payment processing into one platform, simplifying the hassle of seeing all of your payments right in your shop management system.
And with buy now, pay later, shops can see a huge boost to their average repair order by meeting customers where they are, and giving them the option to pay at a schedule that fits their needs exactly.
Because they don't feel pressured to cover the cost upfront, customers are more likely to make those larger repairs with less hesitance.
In fact, according to Affirm, automotive businesses that leverage their buy now, pay later options see a +85% boost to average transaction size. Meaning, customers are spending up to 85% more.
So, not only do you make it easier for your shop to get paid, but you can boost your average ARO at the same time!
Customers Love Buy Now, Pay Later Options
Of course we have your customers covered, too. They’ll love the fact that:
Payment options make it easy to cover larger, costly repairs
There’s no credit checks and interest free payment options
Your shop provides a modern buying experience they expect
Not only do they gain the flexibility of a payment plan to meet their needs and fit into their budget, but the process is even easier than usual.
Without any credit checks, and with an option of interest-free payments, customers can take advantage without worrying about meeting requirements, or paying back interest like a typical loan.
They can work with your shop to build out a plan that works for them, and trust that their repair is in the right hands.
Providing A Modern Customer Experience
You're also meeting them where they are.
With so many other businesses outside of the auto repair space offering buy now, pay later options, your shop can offer customers the same experience that they’ve come to expect, offering a truly modern customer experience with your modern shop management platform.
After all, if you can pay for your ice cream or pizza over time, why not your car repairs?
Already a Tekmetric customer and you want to streamline your payments? Talk to us today!
Tekmetric just revealed two new tools to help shops win more customers and run a more efficient front desk. Get the full story. Watch the on-demand webinar now.
Generating new business in auto repair is hard. The industry is projected to grow just 2% over inflation annually over the next five years. The average American has 15 auto repair shops within 10 miles of their home, according to Tekmetric's internal data, meaning competition for every new customer is fierce. And across multiple industry surveys, roughly two-thirds of drivers say they don't fully trust their local repair shop — making it that much harder to win them over. The result: only one in 10 shops both grows and hits profit margins of 20% or higher.
"We know the competition to win new customers is fierce,” said Lauren Langston, president and COO, Tekmetric. “That means we need the right strategies and the right tools in order to do it."
Tekmetric's data shows that winning shops consistently focus on four outcomes: car count, average repair order (ARO), driver experience, and cycle time. Two new Tekmetric products — Tekmetric Digital Ads and Tekmetric Phones — are built to move the needle on all four.
Tekmetric Digital Ads
Winning new customers starts with being found. Tekmetric Digital Ads is an AI-powered add on that helps your shop show up where high-intent drivers are already searching for auto repair on Google Maps and Apple Maps. Because it connects directly to Tekmetric, you can see exactly how your ad spend translates into real revenue, not just clicks.
"It's really hard to see what's working. One of the superpowers of this product is that it's connected directly with Tekmetric," said Jared Haleck, chief product officer, Tekmetric.
Tekmetric Digital Ads is in early access now and rolling out to selected customers.
Tekmetric Phones
Every missed moment at the front desk has a cost. Tekmetric Phones gives your service advisors the customer context they need — instantly, the moment the phone rings — so they can spend less time looking things up and more time taking care of customers.
"Service advisors especially are loving it,” Haleck said. “It just saves them so much time. It creates so much convenience for them.”
Tekmetric Phones is in beta, available for customers on RingCentral.
Watch the On-Demand Webinar
Langston and Haleck walked through all of it — the industry data, live product demos, and what's coming next — in their webinar, "Building for the Results-Driven Repair Shop."
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, Motorwerks 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.
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