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]

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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.

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Tekmetric Welcomes New Vice President of Marketing

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We get that looking for a new shop management system can be overwhelming. There are a lot of options to wade through, and a lot of features you need to learn about. But most are probably of you are probably thinking “can this tool do what I need it to?”

To help you wade through all the options out there, the best way to find the right tool for the job is to look for information from the people using those tools every day. That means shop owners, general managers, service advisors, and technicians.

Of course, word of mouth is great, and it's always awesome to get the chance to talk to shop owners and workers in person at industry events, but you don't have to wait. With so many resources at their disposal, we wanted to help shop owners looking for a new shop management system leverage the wealth of information out here like online reviews, user groups, and case studies to help them make the best decision for their team.