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.
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