Save Time With a Modern Auto Repair Receipt System

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May 22, 2023

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Read time: 3 min

Abruptly shifting from task-to-task a handful of times throughout the day can disrupt your workflow and distract you from spending time with customers. And let’s face it: we’re all prone to tunnel vision when we’re focused on mundane tasks that can probably be automated for us.

For the shop owners and service advisors who have been in the game for a while now, it’s likely you already have your shop’s tedious functions down, but you may still have a major opportunity to save time. And for those of you who are new to the game—whether you just started your shop or are in the process of getting things up and running—you might have clicked on this blog to find your solution to your shop’s auto repair receipts. There are many auto repair receipt options out there. You could get a template or use a basic PDF. But the modern customer experience can be met with a shop management system that has a receipt process built into it.

Changing even a small procedure in your shop can have a big impact. Streamlining your auto repair receipts, for example, can save your shop time, enhance your shop’s customer experience, and even boost transparency within your shop. Let’s say your shop takes about five minutes to fill out one receipt manually. So if you have about 25 repairs in a day, that five minutes adds up to around two hours a day—simply filling out receipts. You shouldn’t have to spend time rewriting the same information over and over. The same information that you’ve already plugged in during the estimate process should automatically go into the receipt for you.

But when it comes to receipts, you can’t just cut corners to save on time. You need to make sure you include all requirements on an auto repair receipt—at minimum. Let’s take a look.

What’s On An Auto Repair Receipt and Why?

Each item included on an auto repair receipt is not just crucial, but required. Auto repair shops are legally required to provide customers with an auto repair receipt, but what are you required, by law, to include on it? An auto repair receipt should have an itemized, legible statement including all diagnostic and repair work completed, including:

  • A general description of the problem reported by your customer
  • A diagnosis or identification of the defect or condition
  • An itemization of parts replaced
  • A description and accounting of labor
  • Date of repair
  • Odometer reading at time of repair
  • Date vehicle was returned to your customer

Educating yourself on the laws behind auto repair receipts will help keep your shop protected. To easily understand what needs to be included on your shop’s auto repair receipt, we’ve split the elements up into three sections: the header, the customer’s information, and completed work.

1. The Receipt’s Header

Each auto repair receipt will need to include the date the receipt was generated and the identifying receipt number. Service advisors should always include a receipt number on auto repair receipts to help easily sift through any receipt databases established in your shop. Additionally, your company’s information will need to be in the receipt’s header, including your company’s address, phone number, email, and website.

2. The Customer’s Information

Each auto repair receipt will need to include the customer’s information: their name, address, phone number, and their vehicle’s information. Including information such as the license plate number and the year, make, and model of the vehicle will help your service advisors know which receipt corresponds with each customer. If the repair work was assigned through an insurance company, you’ll need to include their insurance provider’s name as well as the claim number.

3. The Completed Work

Along with the above two elements, the repair order portion of the auto repair receipt is essential. The service advisor will include the authorized services completed, including the price of the job, the parts needed for said job, and the total. Once each RO is clearly defined, you can go into the subtotals, tax rate, and the overall total. It’s important to include all costs on your receipt so your customers know what they’re being charged for.

Adding in each of these three sections manually takes time. Like we discussed above, taking about two hours to fill out auto repair receipts will take away time you could be spending with customers. If you want to build better relationships with your customers, modernizing day-to-day processes by switching to a shop management system with a built-in auto repair receipt system is an easy way to get started.

Streamline Your Shop’s Auto Repair Receipt System

Tekmetric makes it easy for service advisors to create, send, and save auto repair receipts. Each job your technician’s finish up—from the estimates to the work-in-progress to the payment collection—will be tracked and stored within Tekmetric.

From there, your service advisors are able to easily see any work that is complete so they can send over the auto repair receipt to the corresponding customer.

All service advisors need to do is open up Tekmetric, navigate to a job that is waiting on payment, open it up, and click “view and share invoice.” In total, your service advisors can generate customers’ receipts in less than 5 clicks.

So your previous manual process that took five minutes to fill out? Cut that down to 10 seconds. Instead of two hours a day spent filling out auto repair receipts, you’re looking at a mere two minutes and fifty seconds.  

Everything you’ve already plugged into Tekmetric is already there. The information is pulled from the repair order that the service advisors began building when they greeted the customer and created an estimate.

What Tekmetric Auto Populates On Auto Repair Receipts

Tekmetric not only includes the information above but also generates that information for you into the auto repair receipt.

We’re always looking for ways we can save your shop time. With the Tekmetric’s Shop Management system, you can go beyond auto-generated receipts and speed up how you process payments and use metrics to grow your business.

1. Take Payments Faster

Straight from the invoice, service advisors can select “make payment” and enter the customer’s payment details right then and there, whether the customer is in the shop or talking to you over the phone.

Service advisors also have the option to select “pay the balance in full” or type in a custom amount due if your shop creates a payment plan for a customer.

Tek-Tip: Tekmetric’s Account Receivable Report allows you to easily track partial payments. Straight from the report, you can print and send the new invoice, and payments are automatically updated in the report.

2. Make Paying Even Easier With Tekmerchant Text-to-Pay

If your shop has both a seamless auto repair receipt process and a seamless payment processing solution, your team and customers will thank you. By giving customers more payment options, your shop will become their go-to shop.

All your customers have to do is open the auto repair receipt your shop texted their way and pay the balance due straight from their smartphone. By implementing a text-to-pay system in your shop, you will receive payments faster and reduce the wait time for people to pay.

Give your customers the ability to pay anywhere, anytime and make life easier for everyone.

3. Store and Track All Auto Repair Receipt Information

With Tekmetric, you can store and track all of your shop’s information. Gone are the endless-stacks-of-paper and clunky-filing-cabinet days. Let’s say a customer phones the shop to get clarification on a $13.20 fee.

Your service advisor can pull up the corresponding auto repair receipt by typing the customer’s name to the global search, pulling up the RO number, or typing in the vehicle information. From there, the service advisor can see that the $13.20 fee was for rubber gloves and hazard disposal.

With Tekmetric, any service advisor can quickly find and recall specific details to customers so they know exactly what they’ve paid for and why.  

“When I can measure how valuable my business is, I have more opportunities to pass that value on to our customers.” - Andrew Minkler, Bavarian Motor Repairs


Tekmetric not only stores information but also tracks your shop’s key performance metrics. Tekmetric’s real-time reports make it easy for you to track your shop’s profitability, employee performance, inventory, and customer retention.

Here are just a few of the financial reports you can use to grow your business:

  • End-of-Day: With Tekmetric’s End-of-Day Report, you can see what your metrics look like over a week, a month, year-to-date, or any other time range to find trends and adjust your strategy.
  • Accounts Receivable: With Tekmetric’s Accounts Receivable Report, you can see all outstanding invoices, manage fleet accounts, and easily track partial payments. If you’re collecting partial payment, you can print and send the new invoice, and payments are automatically updated in the report.
  • Accounts Payable: With Tekmetric’s Accounts Payable Report, you can see what you owe parts vendors and sublet vendors, and how many days your debt has been outstanding.

Create a Seamless Auto Repair Receipt Process

Simplifying processes saves time. Make the auto repair receipt process easy for your service advisors, customers, and for yourself.

Your service advisors can seamlessly pull up, edit, and monitor customers’ receipts without having to worry about reentering the same information over and over.

Your customers can have peace of mind knowing what their money was spent on, while paying where and how they want to. And you can save time as you build your shop.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Tekmetric handles those minute details for you so you can swiftly get customers’ back on the road.

👉 Ready to grow your automotive business? [Book a personalized Tekmetric Demo Here]

FAQ

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The automotive shop industry has grown tremendously between 2018 and 2023. It reached $59.1 billion in revenue, the result of a compound annual growth rate of .5%. Vehicle ownership drives a considerable amount of this growth, and it will increase through 2028.

This exciting, growing field offers tremendous potential for new auto repair shop owners. However, competition is fierce. Nurturing successful business growth comes down to running it optimally. In this guide, you’ll discover what you need to know about building an auto shop and how to thrive in this industry. 

How Do You Run an Auto Repair Shop?

Running a profitable auto repair shop long-term revolves around establishing solid relationships with your customers. Over 60% of customers say that they like to get their work done at the same shop, and 96% go to three or fewer locations when they need to get work done on their car. Gaining customer satisfaction through expertise and communication plays an important role in keeping your customers happy so that they return.

Proper auto shop management and best practices, such as improving productivity and rewarding loyal customers, keep your business competitive. Many strategies that strengthen your business will also incentivize customers and encourage them to return. Since customers do not want to go to numerous auto repair businesses, proving that your business is one they can rely on encourages this loyalty which strengthens your ROI.

To build a quality business, a business plan that emphasizes customer service and retention will take you far. You can incorporate a few central strategies into your plan to keep your customers happy.

Tips for Running a Successful Auto Repair Shop

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Your auto parts inventory management system should match the operational pace of your shop, and the system shouldn’t be so complex or time-consuming that it takes time away from hours better spent repairing cars.

Running a more efficient shop will lead to a better experience for customers, more clarity in the repair process, and ultimately more approved repairs. That means more money for your shop!

Still using pen and paper to keep track of your shop's parts inventory? Let's help you find a better way with a modern, cloud-based shop management system.

Were you looking for a vendor to reorder carbon copy auto repair receipt templates when you found this blog? Maybe you’ve already spent a few hours at your computer, searching for the right auto repair receipt template. But none of the templates you’ve seen looks right for your shop. It’s hard to find a perfect fit. You need a template that is fast to fill, inexpensive, flexible enough to work for any sale, and easy for you and your customers to understand. That’s a tall order.

But all too often, standalone templates fail to meet the complex business needs of modern auto repair shops.

You have already made positive changes toward getting organized by searching for and maybe even trying out a variety of new templates. But what if you could save time and improve accuracy with a system that did all the work of writing and tracking receipts for you?

Think about how you currently find the information you need for your receipts and fill them out. Maybe you use carbon copies. Maybe you type the receipts out. But you’re probably getting the information from your invoices, which themselves reflect estimates. That’s three documents to write per customer, which can quickly add up to a lot of time spent on paperwork.

Auto repair shop management systems are capable of populating receipts with payment information and prices from estimates and invoices in seconds to create consistent receipts and a more positive customer experience.

We know that change can be hard, but it’s worth it.

Let’s analyze some of the ways your current auto repair receipt templates might be holding you back and how an auto repair shop management system can improve your customer experience, simplify work at the shop, and lead to more business growth for you and your team.

Go Beyond an Auto Repair Receipt Template with Tekmetric

July 18, 2023

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