Drivers can sometimes see repairs as frivolous or not important.
Reasons for their skepticism can stem from many things: the customer can’t see what the service advisor is seeing on their end; they might not have a way to gauge the importance of the issue at hand; maybe a service advisor doesn’t communicate the problem correctly or forgets to ask the customer if they’re following along.
Tekmetric’s features empower auto repair shops to improve customer transparency, streamline communication, provide flexible payment options, and simplify the payment process.
These promote customer trust, enhance satisfaction, and ultimately help your shop close more repair orders. And that's what matters most.
Because at the end of the day, if customers feel they can trust your shop, they'll be more likely to return the next time they need something repaired.
Show Your Customers the Problem with Digital Vehicle Inspections
First and foremost is perhaps the most obvious, but digital vehicle inspections are so powerful they're always worth mentioning.
Implementing digital vehicle inspections into your day-to-day shop regimen will help you show customers the severity of specific repairs. During the inspection, service advisors can send videos and photos to the customer to show them any maintenance issues, build trust, and either sell that work or capture it as a declined job.
As we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words. With digital vehicle inspections, you can write a story for the customer using pictures and explanations of any vehicle issues your technicians found. We've seen Tekmetric users on average include 5 images within their DVIs, and up to 20 and more images for really large repair orders.
Instantly Text Message Your Customers
Modern features help your shop provide a modern experience, and that starts with communication. You don't have to waste valuable time dealing with scattered, inconsistent customer communication when we have modern tools available.
Cloud-based shop management systems let managers and service writers easily communicate with customers without missing a beat with real-time texting directly from your shop's landline phone number. It all happens on your end within Tekmetric, along-side crucial customer information, inspection findings, parts availability, and so much more.
Not to mention shops can even let their customers pay for their repairs through a text message, no matter where they are. We've even seen shops setup a contact-less drop-off and pick-up process with an old-school key-drop system, and modern shop management systems that let service writers text and receive payments anywhere, anytime.
Offer Consistent Service Customers Can Trust with Canned jobs
Shops that can simplify workflows and standardize their processes will get cars in and out quicker, free up their time to provide a better customer experience, and can focus on keeping operations flowing smoothly.
Canned jobs are pre-saved jobs that include labor and parts associated with common repair work done. We recommend you build canned jobs for services you provide frequently in your shop to save your service writers time when generating repair orders.
Tekmetric’s BG Canned Jobs gives your repair shop the ability to provide customers with high-quality maintenance service backed by BG’s industry-leading products.
Tekmetric already empowers your team to assemble ROs in minutes with integrated labor guides, canned jobs, and customizable parts orders. But with BG products, you can ensure that your customer will be getting safe, reliable, and high quality products every time a power steering, transmission, and brake RO is created.
Transform Your Shop with Tekmetric
Tekmetric’s features empower auto repair shops to improve customer transparency, streamline communication, provide flexible payment options, and simplify the payment process.
And this helps build customer trust, enhance satisfaction, and drive more repair orders. By utilizing Tekmetric's comprehensive features, auto shops optimize operations, deliver exceptional service, and cultivate long-term customer relationships.
The most important features in auto repair shop management software are the ones that connect your business end-to-end: repair orders and estimates, digital vehicle inspections, parts ordering and inventory, integrated payments, and real-time reporting. If a system does those five things well, and keeps them in one place instead of five, it will vastly improve how your shop runs.
The hard part isn't finding software with a long feature list. It's telling the difference between features that move the needle in your bays and features that just look good in a sales demo. This guide breaks down the categories that matter, what each one actually does for your shop, and what to look for when you compare options.
1. Repair Orders and Estimates That Flow Together
What it is: The digital repair order (RO) is the backbone of the shop management system. Estimates should build fast — pulling in labor times and parts — and flow directly into the RO without rekeying anything.
Why it matters: This is where most of your team's wasted time hides. When an estimate becomes an RO in one click, and job templates drop in common parts and labor automatically, a service advisor can build a ticket in a fraction of the time. Over a full day of ROs, that adds up.
What to look for: Pre-built job templates, labor guide integration, and a clean estimate-to-authorization path. In Tekmetric, Smart Jobs allow advisers to build ROs from templates with parts and labor already attached, and estimates flow straight into the repair order.
Why it matters: Customers approve work they can see. A photo of a worn brake pad does more to earn trust — and a yes — than a line item on a paper estimate. That trust is what lifts approval rates and average repair order value, and it's why DVIs are one of the few features worth treating as non-negotiable.
What to look for: Photo and video capture, quick send-to-customer, and digital authorization built into the same flow. Tekmetric shops have reported meaningful ARO gains from strong DVI use, with ARO value rising from a $612 baseline to $741 for shops that use DVIs consistently.
3. Parts Ordering and Inventory
What it is: Parts management covers two things: knowing what's on your shelf, and ordering what isn't — ideally without leaving the repair order.
Why it matters: Parts are where margin quietly leaks out of a shop. Wrong parts, duplicate orders, and time lost bouncing among supplier tabs all cost money. When ordering is built into the RO and inventory updates as parts are used, your team stays in one screen and your margins stay protected.
What to look for: Integrated ordering through the supplier networks you already use, real-time stock visibility, and a parts matrix to keep pricing consistent. Tekmetric connects to parts suppliers so technicians can order parts as they diagnose issues.
4. Integrated Payments
What it is: Payments that live inside the shop management system, so checkout, reconciliation, and reporting all run off the same data.
Why it matters: A faster checkout is a better customer experience, and integrated payments mean you're not hand-matching a separate processor's statements at the end of the day. Options like text-to-pay and financing also help customers say yes to bigger jobs.
What to look for: Card and digital wallet acceptance, Text-to-Pay, built-in reconciliation, and financing options — all reporting into one place. In Tekmetric, payments are a built-in add-on rather than bolted on. There is no separate terminal, no third-party login, and no support ticket when something does not sync. Refunds, disputes, and deposits are handled in the same platform shops use to run repair orders.
Tekmetric customers have access to all of this: Buy Now, Pay Later partners like Affirm, Klarna, and Sunbit make bigger repairs affordable for customers, and shops offering flexible consumer financing can increase average repair order value by up to three times. Add same-day setup, next-day funding, and fraud protection through Stripe Radar, and payments stop being a separate system to manage. They become one more step in a workflow shops already know.
5. Real-Time Reporting
What it is: Live visibility into the numbers that tell you how the shop is running — average repair order, car count, gross profit, technician productivity — without waiting for month-end.
Why it matters: You can't fix what you can't see. Real-time reporting is what turns a platform from a digital filing cabinet into a tool you actually run the business with. It's also the feature owners underrate at buying time and rely on most six months in.
What to look for: Key metrics on a dashboard, the ability to drill into a technician or a location, and reporting you can trust without exporting to a spreadsheet. Tekmetric surfaces these metrics in real time from the shop counter or from home.
The Features That Tie It All Together
Cloud-based access and a real mobile app
If the platform only lives on the computer at the front counter, half its value is stuck there. Cloud-based access means you can check the shop from home, and a real mobile app keeps technicians moving without walking back and forth to a terminal.
Integrations with the tools you already use
No platform does everything, so the ones that connect cleanly to accounting, parts suppliers, and marketing tools win. Tekmetric offers more than 70 integrations so you can build the workflow around your shop instead of the other way around.
How to Evaluate an Auto Repair Platform
A quick lens when you're comparing options:
Is it connected? The point of a platform is that repair orders, parts, payments, and reporting talk to each other.
Will your team actually use it? The best feature set loses to the one your advisors and technicians will adopt in a week, not a quarter.
Does it show you the numbers? If you can't see ARO, car count, and gross profit in real time, you're flying blind.
Can it grow with you? Your platform should grow with your business, especially for multi-shop operators.
Get those four right and the feature checklist mostly takes care of itself. The categories above — repair orders, DVI, parts and inventory, payments, and reporting — are the ones that decide whether your shop runs faster and more profitably or just runs the same way with a nicer screen.
HOUSTON – October 18, 2023 – Tekmetric, the leading automotive repair software company, has announced the appointment of Clare Corriveau as the company's new Vice President of Marketing. With an extensive background in the software industry, Corriveau brings a wealth of experience and strategic vision to the Tekmetric team.
“Clare's depth of experience and strategic acumen in the technology sector will be instrumental in driving our marketing efforts and advancing our position in the market,” said Sunil Patel, CEO of Tekmetric. “With her leadership, we look forward to reaching new milestones in our top-tier customer service and innovative solutions.”
Corriveau's professional journey spans 17 years across a variety of brands and products in B2B technology. Her proven track record in demand generation, marketing strategy, product positioning and brand development underscores her significant role in Tekmetric’s continued growth. In her new position, Clare will be instrumental in guiding Tekmetric’s marketing initiatives and brand development. Her responsibilities encompass enhancing brand visibility, devising and implementing marketing strategies and bolstering the company's foothold in the automotive repair software market.
Before joining Tekmetric, Corriveau was the Senior Director, Growth Marketing at cybersecurity startup Cobalt, where she led the demand generation team to drive revenue growth along every stage of the buyer and customer journeys. Prior to Cobalt, Corriveau served in several director- and manager-level roles with OneTouchPoint, Gotransverse, Blackbaud and more.
“I am thrilled to join Tekmetric, a pioneering force in automotive shop management solutions. Their commitment to revolutionizing the industry and empowering automotive professionals aligns perfectly with my own passion for innovation and customer-centricity,” said Corriveau. “I look forward to contributing to Tekmetric’s journey of empowering auto repair shop owners to increase efficiency in their operations and ultimately grow their business.”
About Tekmetric
Tekmetric, a Houston-based auto repair technology company, offers a cloud-based platform that enables auto repair shop owners to enhance productivity and increase profitability through its streamlined workflow management processes.
Designed by a former shop owner, Tekmetric’s platform drives shop efficiency through real-time data, a customizable user interface and customer-centric communication tools. Since its launch in 2016, Tekmetric has disrupted the industry with its robust fully-integrated system, developed with an emphasis on customer transparency and user collaboration. For more information, visit www.tekmetric.com.
With so many different aspects of running an independent auto repair shop, the teams that keeps cars moving through your bays and repair orders flowing through your workflow function best when they run like a cohesive unit.
Just think about your favorite sports team. The players share a common goal, whether it be scoring a touchdown or hitting a home run, and they encourage each other to always perform at their best.
But there’s usually one person on the team who everyone looks to for guidance and inspiration: the team captain. Every player in the auto repair industry is important—from the technicians to the parts managers. But service writers are like the team captain. They keep everyone on track.
If you’re ready to learn about a challenging but rewarding career where no two days are the same, you’re in the right place.
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
