Transparency within the auto repair invoice process goes a long way. Most customer will feel uncertain about approving expensive repairs if they don't truly understand the need for them. That's why it's up to your shop to foster a trusting relationship by clearly showing customers the issue, and the need for a repair.
The right invoicing system will improve your shop’s workflow, save your team time, enhance your customers’ experience, and provide you with peace of mind.
Here’s how Tekmetric’s Cloud-Based Shop Management System provides seamless shop management that leads to frictionless payment processing:
A service advisor can create a repair order and dispatch it to a technician to run a digital vehicles inspection (DVI).
The technician conducts the inspection.
The service advisor sends the customer a DVI report, which will outline all the findings.
The customer can approve or decline individual line items on the repair order directly from their smartphone.
Once the customer finishes scrolling through the estimate, designating the jobs they approve and decline, your shop has the go-ahead to begin the repair(s).
Once repairs are complete, there’s a digital record of exactly what the customer approved. That way, when it’s time to pay, there are no surprises.
Once the customer pays with their preferred method, they can look back over the receipt—from their computer or smartphone—and feel confident that your shop did exactly what you said you’d do.
After a job is completed and payment is received, all the details from the invoice and repair order become part of your reports and customer history in Tekmetric.
Tekmetric’s cloud-based automotive invoice software has designed the entire process to reduce bottlenecks, build trust, and ensure that customers know exactly what to expect.
By moving smoothly from one step to the next, your team will be able to boost their efficiency, manage their workflow, and spend the extra time building rapport with customers and getting their cars back to good working order.
How Tekmetric’s Built-In Mechanic Shop Invoice Software Saves Your Team Time
With Tekmetric’s automotive invoice software, your team can easily pull up an invoice straight from the repair order.
When a job is approved, it moves from estimate to work-in-progress. When a payment is collected, all the information is stored into the appropriate real-time reports. So as soon as a customer pays, it’s added to Tekmetric’s End-Of-Day Report, and is reflected on your final Car Count and ARO.
Tekmetric’s ability to automatically track payments and repair activity will ensure that your records are always accurate, organized, and up-to-date. And the estimate tools and markup matrices will feed directly into your shop’s invoices.
You can adjust parts and labor markups in your shop settings and create multiple parts markups. If you check “auto-apply,” any markup adjustments created in your shop settings will automatically be applied to your shop’s estimates and invoices, saving your service advisors time.
And if a service advisor needs to make any adjustments for specific customers or situations, they can always toggle the auto applied markups “off” for individual line items.
Another perk to Tekmetric’s built-in automotive invoice software is that you don’t have to punch a bunch of buttons to implement discounts. If your shop wants to apply a discount to a customer’s invoice, all your service advisor will need to do is select “Apply Discount.”
If the discount was already created in the system, they just have to select it from the list. If not, they can create a discount directly from the pop up window, and the changes will automatically reflect in the invoice.
Go Beyond the Status Quo For Your Team and Your Customers
Investing in a cloud-based shop management system with built-in invoicing features will help you reach your shop’s goals. When your team can efficiently build reliable invoices, everyone benefits from the timesaving advantages.
If you want to provide your customers a consistently smooth invoice process—better yet, a smooth RO process from start to finish—now’s your time to switch out traditional methods for modern day solutions.
Features like Tekmerchant can revolutionize the way you do business.
Invest in Frictionless Invoicing to Enhance Experiences In Your Shop
Whether or not customers choose to return to your shop relies heavily on their experience.
With a good shop management system and invoice process, providing customers a better experience doesn't have to mean adding more time to your daily operations.
In fact, with better systems in place, you should be able to save time while boosting shop profitability.
The truth is that estimates tie into professionalism. When the first oral surgeon gave you an estimate for your wisdom tooth removal surgery, they helped you:
Manage your expectations: You knew what kind of procedure to expect, and how much you could expect to pay for it.
See that the office cared about your wellbeing: The oral surgeon and their staff wanted you to make the best choice possible and gave you a resource to accomplish that.
Have a reference point for the future if any issues come up: For example, if you got charged a couple of hundred dollars more after your procedure, you’d have documentation to show that the extra cost wasn’t part of the plan.
Wisdom tooth removal surgery isn’t cheap. Neither is auto repair work.
Just like a professional oral surgeon’s office explains to patients what their options are and how much they should expect to pay for procedures, a professional auto repair shop shows drivers what their repair work options are and how much they should expect to pay for repairs.
That professionalism is what helps you win over and retain more customers. If your customers are deciding between different auto repair shops, they’ll likely stick with the business that shows the most professionalism.
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.
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