How Much Does a Car Lift Cost + Installation Prices

Your auto repair labor revenue and parts margins are critical for enhancing your shop’s profitability. Adjusting your pricing on parts to make a profit is pretty straightforward.

But when it comes to labor times for auto repair shops…that’s where things can get a bit tricky. 

Yes, you need competitive labor rates, but you also need to keep those rates reasonable so you don’t scare off your customers with sky-high prices. 

3 ways your shop can make more money on labor: 

1. By using a labor matrix 
2. By creating custom labor rates 
3. By applying a labor guide markup 

Before we dive into the differences between these three methods for setting the best labor times at your shop, here’s a quick refresher on the one thing these methods have in common: the labor guide. 

What is a Labor Guide? 

A labor guide is like the gospel of labor times for auto repair shops. It tells you how long, on average, it takes to complete different types of repair work.

Remember that the times listed in auto repair labor guides are averages, so it’s best to treat them as a starting point.

Tekmetric has remained committed to 2024 as a year filled with product innovation, providing updates that included feedback from our customers to demonstrate our commitment to a customer-centric approach as we continue to grow. From product updates and attending industry events to elevating our approach to data security, the second quarter has built on the first quarter’s momentum, leading to a vibrant first half of 2024.

Supporting Shops by Enhancing Efficiency

Tekmetric is systematically seeking opportunities to better understand the needs of shop owners and how our product can help shops run more efficiently. Building on our commitment to enhancing shop effectiveness, we focused Q2 on implementing updates that significantly bolster operational efficiency across the board.

Having the right technical team is essential, and with our latest update, shops can now assign multiple technicians to a single job, ensuring greater collaboration and efficiency. This update allows more experienced technicians to supervise staff technicians regarding more complex jobs, giving staff technicians an opportunity to experience hands-on learning. Overall, having multiple technicians on a single job improves efficiency by allowing you to align and prioritize your technician resources.

In addition to the multiple technician updates, we also released the Inventory Activity Feed. To ensure smooth operations and profitability, it's crucial to understand the flow of money. Inventory plays a necessary role in this process and with this update, shop owners now have an extra eye to spot inconsistencies in pricing and quantity. This new feature allows shops to monitor key changes made to parts inventory, identify and rectify errors and enhance operational efficiency and employee training initiatives.

As we move into Q3, we continue to strive for further updates that increase productivity within internal operations or streamline the customer experience from the first touchpoint until repair completion and beyond.

Commitment to Education and Learning Opportunities in the Industry

In an industry as complex as auto repair, there is no shortage of learning opportunities to improve your shop or learn how to incorporate customer feedback into our ongoing improvements.

At Tekmetric, we value a commitment to growing our knowledge base and sharing that with our peers at various events, whether it be in-person conferences or through webinars. Our dynamic duo John Phelps and P.J. Leslie attended WorldPac STX in Nashville, Tennessee in late April to share with repair shops key strategies to boost profits through enhanced customer experiences. Their presentation included leveraging digital tools and enhancing the digital buying experience, transforming buyer trends into revenue drivers and customer retention through excellent experiences.

From there, P.J. had two additional speaking opportunities at Thoroughbred Diesel in Winchester, Kentucky and AASPA Tools in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in the month of May where he presented on How Customer Experience Can Change An Industry. At both events, he shared his expertise regarding digital purchasing experiences, leveraging trends for revenue growth, mastering customer retention strategies, and surpassing expectations of the CX generation. Additionally, John Phelps, made an appearance on the Changing the Industry podcast where he discussed Career Shifts and Setting Industry Standards. At Tekmetric, we believe that the desire to give and improve the lives of our customers is ultimately what will drive your business to reach its full potential.

We participated in the ASI & ASTA Summer Social in Apex, North Carolina which provided an opportunity to network and connect with shop owners and tire dealers from the area. Our participation at these events helps us better understand your needs, fueling our commitment to product innovation and excellence in customer experience.

Tekmetric also aims to support our shop owners in sharing their own insights and lessons about measuring up in today’s industry through the webinars that we host. This quarter, we hosted a webinar entitled “Confessions of A Shop Owner,” which included Travis Troy, owner of Honest Wrenches, along with Ward Myers, VP of Training and eServices at Advance Auto Parts, Gregg Rainville, SVP at Steer, and Ian Miller, Partner Manager at Tekmetric. The key points were all about defining and developing shop culture and leveraging technology to be more efficient in the auto repair space.

Prioritizing Data Security

We recently increased our benchmark in data security by earning SOC 2 Type II compliance. Tekmetric meets the five principles that are required which include: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy. With SOC 2 Type II compliance, we are able to keep any information that you put into Tekmetric secure, from your shop’s data to your customers’ information. This gives us more confidence that as we continue to improve the quality of Tekmetric, we are also ensuring the security of everything that is entrusted to us.

Keeping Our Foot on the Gas

As we close out the first half of the year, Tekmetric aims to use our customer-centric approach as the fuel that ignites our product innovation. Through our commitment to attending industry events and listening to customer feedback, Tekmetric meets its customers where they are, with constant plans to keep innovating and improving. We head into Q3 with our customer-obsessed mentality to continue improving and streamlining shop operations with Tekmetric.

Tekmetric standardizes how every auto repair shop operates

Running multiple shops should mean more revenue, more repair orders, and more momentum. For most MSOs, it also means more complexity, inconsistency, and time spent putting out fires instead of building the business.

The problem isn't growth. It's that most shop management systems weren't built for it. Separate logins for each location. No unified view of revenue or performance. Processes that drift from shop to shop until every location is running differently and nobody can figure out why the numbers don't match. Tekmetric fixes that at the root — one platform, every location, standardized from day one.

Tekmetric shops see measurable revenue growth as they adopt platform features. Shops average $612 per repair order (ARO), but that number climbs to $741 when they use Digital Vehicle Inspections and reaches around $800 when they add MotoVisuals videos. The lift isn't about charging customers more; it's about transparency, showing them what their vehicle needs so they can make confident, informed decisions. It also builds trust.

The operators running on Tekmetric show what that looks like in practice. Main Street Auto, a nationwide network of community-rooted shops, grew from six locations to more than 115 with Tekmetric at the core of every one. Rush Automotive, in Austin, Texas, saw $9,000 in new revenue in the first month across five locations. CarTech Auto Center, operating across multiple locations in Puerto Rico, grew monthly revenue 48% in nine months. The platform didn't change their ambition. It gave them the infrastructure to act on it.

Customer Experience

Customers Don't Know Which Location Is Your Best. Tekmetric Ensures They Can't Tell the Difference.

Inconsistencies across locations cost you. Skipped DVI photos, estimate delays, and declined jobs that nobody follows up on quickly add up, decreasing your revenue, and negatively affecting customer experience.

The shops that grow their ARO, earn repeat business, and generate the kind of reviews that actually drive traffic all share the same foundation: customers trust them. And trust isn't built in a single interaction — it's built through consistent, transparent communication every single time a vehicle comes in.

Tekmetric gives you the tools to make that consistency automatic. Inspections follow the same template at every location, with photos and video built into the estimate. Customers get their quote by text, approve the work from their phone, and can pay before pickup with Tekmetric Payments built in. Text-to-Pay, card-on-file, and Buy Now, Pay Later options make checkout faster and remove friction from bigger approvals. Their vehicle history travels with them, so when a customer visits a different one of your locations, whoever's at the desk already knows their vehicle history.

With Tekmetric Marketing running in the background, customers get automated appointment reminders, follow-ups on declined services, and service reminders based on real vehicle data. Online booking lets them schedule service 24/7 without picking up the phone. Google Review requests go out automatically after every completed service, turning great work into lasting reputation.

When shops share eight or more inspection photos with customers, ARO goes up because customers can see the repairs their vehicle needs. Euro Car Doctors, in Orange County, Calif., used that approach and grew their average ARO to more than $900. Garagisti, in Houston, Texas, built a practice around transparent, DVI-driven customer communication from day one and has averaged a $1,600 ARO since opening.

What This Looks Like in Practice

• Standardized DVIs, streamlined customer communication, and shared vehicle history across every location so every customer gets the same experience regardless of which shop they walk into
• Text-to-Pay and Buy Now, Pay Later built into checkout to speed up payments and boost approval on bigger repairs
• Automated follow-up on declined services and service reminders that run from real vehicle data, not generic time intervals
• Online booking available 24/7 so customers can schedule service without waiting for business hours
• Google Review requests sent automatically after every completed service — no manual steps required

Permissions & Access Roles

Tekmetric Puts the Right Data in Front of the Right People Across Every Location

When you add a location, you're not just adding bays, you're adding staff, risk, and the need for accountability at a distance. The right access structure makes all three manageable.

Most MSOs hit a wall when they try to manage growing teams without the right controls in place. Too much access creates risk such as errors in repair orders, incorrect discounts, and sensitive financial data visible to people who don't need it. Too little creates friction, leaving advisors waiting on approvals, technicians without job visibility, and managers unable to make calls on their own.

Tekmetric gives you granular, role-based controls across every location. Technicians see their job queue, their assignments, and their hours. Managers have what they need to run their shop without touching another location's data. Advisors can build estimates, communicate with in-store customers, and process payments. Owners see the full portfolio in real time from a single login.

Before switching to Tekmetric, Will Rivera, owner of CarTech Auto Center in Puerto Rico, had to log into each of his five stores separately just to check sales or inventory. There was no unified view of the business, no way to enforce consistency, and no clean data to make decisions from. Within nine months of switching, CarTech had grown monthly revenue by 48%. Once CarTech had the structure to run five locations cleanly, expansion became the goal instead of survival.

What This Looks Like in Practice

• Owner, manager, service advisor, and technician roles with granular, customizable permissions that are set up once and applied consistently at every location
• Cross-location visibility for owners and ops leaders, with shop-level access for everyone else. Accountability is built into the platform and not enforced manually.
• Controlled access to sensitive actions like unposting ROs, giving the right people the ability to correct errors without opening the door to bigger ones

Change Management

Switching Shop Software Doesn't Have to Disrupt Your Business. Here's How MSOs Make It Work.

Adopting new software across multiple locations is a real operational challenge. Tekmetric is built for it, from contract to live in a few days.

Christian Brothers Automotive migrated about 200 stores to Tekmetric in three months. Main Street Auto onboards 20 to 25 new locations a year and keeps growing. These aren't small transitions executed by large IT teams — they're operational rollouts managed by auto repair shop employees, built around Tekmetric's onboarding process.

Every new Tekmetric customer gets a dedicated onboarding manager who builds a rollout plan around your schedule, not a generic timeline. Data migrates. Workflows get configured. And most teams are fully operational within a week of going live, with results measurable within 30 days. That's not a promise. It's a framework Tekmetric has built and refined across thousands of shop launches.

The platform itself is designed to be learned fast. SJ Automotive cut estimate creation time from 40 minutes to about 10 minutes after switching. That's not a team that spent weeks in training. That's a team that picked up an intuitive tool and immediately got more done. When the platform is easy to use, adoption isn't a change management project. It's what happens when the tool earns buy-in on its own.

What This Looks Like in Practice

• A dedicated onboarding manager, data migration support, and a go-live timeline built around your shops, not a one-size-fits-all playbook
• An intuitive platform with a training hub, knowledge base, and U.S.-based support, so your team gets productive fast and stays that way
• Access to the Tekmetric User Group, a community sharing what works, so you grow alongside operators who have already been where you are

Inventory & Parts Sharing

Stop Paying for Parts You Already Own. Tekmetric Gives Every Location Real-Time Visibility Into Stock.

When parts data is fragmented across locations, technicians wait, repairs get delayed, and margin slips through the cracks. Tekmetric centralizes inventory across every shop so your team always knows what's in stock, what's on order, and where to find it.

Multi-location inventory has a way of quietly breaking down. Parts get ordered twice because one location didn't know another had them. Technicians start jobs they can't finish. Reconciliation eats hours at the end of every month. The fix is straightforward: one centralized view of what's in stock across every location, updated in real time.

With Tekmetric, every authorized user sees real-time parts availability across every location. Orders happen directly inside the repair order — no supplier portal, no manual entry, no switching systems. When a technician picks up a job, they can see immediately whether parts are in stock or on order, so they're never starting work they can't complete. And when inventory hits a minimum threshold, reorder alerts surface automatically.

What This Looks Like in Practice

• Real-time parts visibility across every location, connected directly to the repair order workflow so technicians, advisors, and managers always know what’s in stock
• Parts ordering through PartsTech and others, directly from inside the RO. No portal toggling, no duplicate entries.
• Automatic reorder alerts, purchase order tracking, and parts usage reports that give ops leaders a clean view of inventory performance across the portfolio

Profitability & Reporting

The Gap Between Your Best Auto Repair Shop and the Rest Isn't a Mystery. It's a Data Issue.

You know which locations perform. Tekmetric shows you exactly why, in real time, so you can act before the day is done.

Most MSOs are managing with last week's numbers at best. Reports get built manually. Data gets pulled from separate systems. By the time you know there's a problem at a location, the opportunity to act quickly and solve it is gone. That lag doesn't just slow down your decisions, it costs you money in real time.

Tekmetric's portfolio dashboard puts every location's data in one live view. ARO, car count, close ratio, gross profit, and technician efficiency are all filterable by shop, advisor, and date range, giving you a complete picture of what's working and where the gaps are. Seeing your top performer and your underperformer side by side makes it clear exactly what the best shop is doing that the others aren't.

The operators who use this visibility don't just track results — they act on them. Branch Automotive used Tekmetric's real-time data to build nine straight month-over-month increases in ARO, driven by stronger inspections, clearer recommendations, and the kind of customer trust that leads to consistently higher-value work. These aren't outliers; they're what happens when operators finally have the data to make better calls.

What This Looks Like in Practice

• A portfoliowide dashboard showing ARO, car count, close ratio, and gross profit across every location in real time with shop-level filtering so you can see the full picture or drill into one location
• Built-in reporting on technician productivity, DVI impact on ARO, end-of-day reconciliation, and discount and fee analysis — no exports, no spreadsheets, no five-hour Friday afternoon
• Labor and parts matrices that lock in consistent pricing across locations, protecting margins and making every shop’s numbers comparable