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Narrow Down Your Options When Reading Automotive Repair Shop Software Reviews

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February 8, 2024

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Read time: 3 min

Investing in an cloud-based auto repair shop management system is one of the best ways to refine your shop’s processes and get things under control. However, the decision to invest in a shop management system is a big one.

Before you begin researching different options on the market, you should ask yourself two key questions:

  • Am I at the stage where I need a new shop management system?
  • What do I want from a shop management system?

As you search for a suitable shop management system through automotive repair shop software reviews, it’s important that you diligently research any system you’re considering.

Is It Time to Upgrade Your Shop Management System?

If you roll out a new shop management system when your shop doesn’t yet have a use case for it, you risk sinking your money into a tool that your team might leave idle for a while. But if you wait until you’re 100% sure you need a shop management system, you can start benefiting from your investment immediately.

Here are some scenarios in which you might decide you need a new shop management system:

  • Your current system is crashing
  • You want your shop to grow
  • You feel tied to your shop
  • You want to get a better grasp of your shop’s metrics

Of course, these aren’t the only reasons why you might decide your shop is ready for a new shop management system.

After all, each shop is unique, and your reasons for getting a new solution might be different from that of the shop owner across the street.

What’s Important For Your Shop?

If you’ve decided that it’s time for your shop to get a new shop management system, assess what’s important to you in a solution, so you can conduct your research with those needs in mind.

Again, remember that your shop and your team are unique. Just because a fellow shop owner might deem that something is important to have in a shop management system doesn’t mean that it will carry the same weight for you.

Here are the top things shop owners want from a shop management system:

  • Achieve higher shop profitability
  • Simplify their shop operations and management
  • Work from anywhere they have an internet connection
  • Clarity into shop performance and financials
  • Modernize their shop experience to keep customer happy
  • Receive excellent customer support from their shop management solution provider

Ideally, you want a shop management system that covers all of your needs. It’s a major investment, and you don’t want a situation where you feel like something is missing in your software solution.

Narrow Down Your Auto Repair Shop Software Options

Once you’ve listed what you want to accomplish with a shop management system, you’re now ready to narrow down the solutions you want to look into when reading automotive repair shop software reviews.

First, build a list of all the solutions you’re considering.

Priority What To Look For
Achieve higher shop profitability
  • Detailed reports of shop metrics
Simplify their shop operations and management
  • Management dashboards for service advisors and technicians
  • Integrations within the software
Work from anywhere they have an internet connection
  • Cloud-based solution
Clarity into shop performance and financials
  • Automatic reporting tools
Modernize their shop experience to keep customer happy
  • Digital vehicle inspections and estimates
  • Text-to-pay
Receive excellent customer support from their shop management solution provider
  • Company culture centered on service and support

These could be solutions you’ve heard your peers in the industry use, solutions you’ve seen ads for, or solutions you’ve read about online. From there, you can begin the process of eliminating any solution that does not help with your priorities.

Prioritize Your Shop's Needs

As you go through your list, cross out the solutions that don’t have the features you need to accomplish your goals. For example, if your top priority is being able to work from anywhere, and one of the solutions you’re considering is not cloud-based, that makes that solution a no-go for your shop.

No matter what, you want everyone on your team to be happy with the shop management solution you roll out. When everyone benefits from your shop management solution, you maximize your chances of leveling up.

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

FAQ

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Tekmerchant now includes the industry’s first “buy now, pay later” feature, allowing customers to complete vehicle repairs and pay over time with no risk to your shop!

The Tekmerchant platform offers flexible, forward thinking solutions that allow shops to save time and effort when managing funds and customer payments.

Shop owners can share invoices and accept payments via text and email, enabling the customer to pay directly from their smartphone and pick up the vehicle when it is convenient for them.

Additionally, customers can leverage Tekmerchant’s “buy now, pay later” feature using Affirm and Klarna. This is an industry-first solution that is familiar to customers who use it in other industries. 

Concurrently, Tekmerchant improves shop owner accounting processes by automatically integrating all partial and complete payments into the point-of-sale.

This feature, added by popular request from shop owners, integrates with Tekmetric’s existing payments reports for real-time tracking and reporting. 

At Tekmetric, we’ve been busy creating the most requested feature by users: true two-way texting. We’re excited to announce that this November, you and your guests will be able to communicate with each other in a seamless, hassle-free way.

Send and Receive Texts Directly in Tekmetric

Once your shop sets up two-way texting within Tekmetric, your team and customers will be able to have instant, harmonious digital conversations.

On your end, the Tekmessage interface will have a similar look and feel to social media messaging services (such as Facebook Messenger).

Your customers, however, will see the conversations as regular text messages on their phones.

Tekmessage: True Two-Way Texting for the Auto Repair Industry

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To use Tekmessage, simply click the messaging icon in the top right corner of your shop’s header within Tekmetric. Doing so will open the Tekmessage sidebar, where you’ll be able to see a full list of conversations with guests, send and receive texts, and search conversations.

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

Read time: 3 min

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