On busy days, it can feel like there are a million things happening at your shop. Technicians are hard at work getting repairs knocked out and service advisors are helping customers. Even on slow days, there’s work to be done. You might decide to tackle that new marketing plan or personally call customers to remind them of service work they’d previously put off.
No matter the circumstances, it’s important to have a way of juggling and managing it all. However, keeping track of everything with pen and paper, a whiteboard, or just by playing it by ear can quickly turn into a headache. After all, those methods are unreliable and complicated. Information can easily get lost in the mix, and all it takes is for one misunderstanding to knock things off track.
Repairs management software can keep you and your team on track and free up your time as a shop owner so you can focus on the high-level aspects of growing your business. Service advisors can use Tekmetric’s Job Board to see the status of repairs, appropriately delegate tasks to technicians, and give customers updates every step of the way.
Get a Bird’s Eye View of Different Stages in the Repair Process
When you access Tekmetric’s Job Board, you and your team can decide if you want to view jobs that are “Active,” “Saved for Later,” in “Accounts Receivable,” “Paid,” or even “Deleted.” On a day-to-day basis, your service advisors will likely manage repair work from the “Active” view.
Tekmetric’s Job Board categorizes “Active” repairs into three buckets: “Estimates,” “Work-in-Progress,” and “Completed.”
Column 1: Estimates
Every new repair order that a service advisor creates will first appear as a card in the “Estimates” column. The repair order will stay in that column as the technician conducts an initial digital vehicle inspection (DVI) and the service advisor prepares a repair estimate for the customer.
Service advisors can see the status of each repair order on the top left corner of each individual card. Statuses will indicate where in the estimate process a repair is: “Not Started,” “Requires Authorization,” “Pending Authorization,” or “Declined All.” In the “Estimates,” column, these statuses automatically change as each repair moves through the estimate process.
On the bottom right-hand corner, service advisors will see either a paper airplane icon that indicates when an estimate was sent to a customer, or an eye icon that indicates when a customer viewed the estimate.
On each card, the service advisor will see three dots on the upper right corner. When they click on the dots, they’ll see three options: “Authorize,” “Save for Later,” and “Delete.” When a customer declines all jobs in a repair order, the service advisor will see an additional option after clicking on those three dots: “Post as Declined.”
If you want to get the most accurate close-ratio metrics possible, you can go into the user permissions settings and remove the “Delete” option. By doing so, the service advisor must mark repair orders with all declined jobs as “Post as Declined.”
Column 2: Work-in-Progress
If a customer declines all jobs in a repair order, then that card will remain in the “Estimates” column with the status “Declined All.” However, if the customer approves at least one job in the repair order, that repair order card will then automatically move to the “Work-in-Progress” column and automatically get tagged as “Not Started.”
Note: the service advisor will still be able to view the declined jobs by clicking into the repair order.
When a card is moved to the “Work-in-Progress” column, the options under the three dots in the upper right-hand corner will change to: “Complete Work,” “Set Status,” and “Delete.” However, as the shop owner, you can take away the “Delete” option by configuring the user permissions.
The service advisor can manually add status updates by selecting “Set Status.” From there, they can choose the right status from the dropdown menu that will show up on their screen. For example, they can mark that a repair order is “In Progress,” “Waiting on Parts,” or “Waiting on Sublet.” The resulting designation will show up on the top left corner of each repair order card.
The service advisor will also see a timeline on the bottom of each repair order card indicating how far along a technician is in their repair. Service writers, shop owners, and shop foremen don’t have to go into individual repair orders to get this information. With one glance at the Job Board, they can know exactly where a repair is (for instance, 3 hours out of 4 completed, so 75% of the way there), and update the customer by sending them a message via true two-way texting.
Note: technicians will also see the work-in-progress line in their workspace, the Tekmetric Tech Board.
Column 3: Completed
Once the technician has finished a job, the service advisor can return to the three dots on the top right-hand corner of a repair order and select “Complete Work.” Doing so will move the repair order into the “Completed” column.
Note: repair orders will automatically hit Tekmetric’s Tech Board once the customer has given approval. You can configure user permissions to enable your technicians to mark repair orders as complete. However, to minimize confusion, we recommend keeping this capability of marking repair orders as complete to service advisors.
Once a job is complete, the service advisor can jump into the repair order and select the payment tab on the top bar. In the payment tab, the service advisor can collect payment in a number of ways, including cash, check, and credit or debit card. The service advisor can click the green “View & Share Invoice” button to send the customer an invoice. If your shop has Tekmerchant text-to-pay set up, the service advisor can send the invoice directly to the customer’s phone.
When the service advisor clicks on the three dots on the upper right corner of the repair order card after the customer pays in full, they’ll see the option: “Post as Paid.” We recommend that the service advisor doesn’t click this option until after the customer has picked up their vehicle, because clicking “Post as Paid” results in the card getting categorized as “Paid” in the Job Board. If a service advisor needs to move the repair order back to the Job Board, they can click on the dropdown menu right next to where it says “Job Board” in the top bar, and click on “Paid.” Then, they can find the repair order they want to move back, click the three dots in the right-hand column, and click “Unpost.”
If a customer hasn’t paid yet, the service advisor will see these options after they click on the three dots on the upper right corner of the card: “Post to A/R” and “Reopen RO.” Selecting “Post to A/R” is for sending a repair order to the accounts receivable department. This option is for charge accounts, or for customers who want to pay in installments rather than in full.
The “Reopen RO” option is for situations where something needs to be updated in the repair order at the last minute, like adding a charge for a missing part.
Once a ticket has been paid in full, the service advisor can view it later by clicking on the dropdown menu right next to where it says “Job Board” in the top bar, and clicking “Paid.” If the ticket gets sent to the accounts receivable department, the service advisor can click on that same drop-down menu and select “Accounts Receivable” to view it.
Customize Views for Maximum Speed
Sometimes, service advisors will want to change up their view of the Job Board to access different types of information faster. With Tekmetric’s Job Board, they can quickly sort and organize current jobs.
Service advisors can navigate to the top bar of the Job Board and select whether they want to populate the information on the Job Board by:
RO Status, whichwill give the service advisor a snapshot of which stage each repair order is in. For instance, they can choose to see every repair order that’s labeled “In-Progress.”
Employee, which will give the service advisor a precise picture of exactly what each technician is working on at any given time, so they can appropriately assign new repair orders.
Appointment Type, which will enable the service advisor to see which customers are waiting at the shop, and which have opted to drop off their vehicles and return later.
Service advisors can also use the Job Board’s search bar to their advantage and immediately find specific jobs. For example, they can search for a vehicle year or customer name, and the relevant repair order will appear on their screen. With the search bar, the service advisor will spend even less time hunting down a specific repair order!
Repairs Management Software: Manage Your Shop Without Micromanaging
With Tekmetric, you’ll have access to the same information as your service advisors and technicians. You can use the Job Board to keep an eye on repairs without disrupting your team.
As your team becomes more and more confident using Tekmetric’s Job Board, they’ll be able to self-manage. In turn, you’ll have more time to focus on the high-level aspects of building your business, such as using Tekmetric’s realtime reports to forecast sales. Or, you might decide to use your newfound time and flexibility to take a much-needed vacation—all while still being able to see what’s going on at your shop. As long as you have a device and an internet connection, it’ll be like you never left!
Parts management is a critical function of any auto repair shop business. The only way to guarantee that you’re making a profit on the parts you sell on repair orders is by having an air-tight system for managing and tracking those parts from purchase to sale to reconciliation. The final step of making sure that each and every parts transaction is accounted for is probably the most important step—and the most misunderstood.
Some of the issues your auto repair shop will run into if you don’t carefully manage parts include:
Un-billed parts (forgetting to collect payment on parts)
Inconsistencies between your cost of goods sold and accounts payable
Inability to track and receive return credits
Inability to detect theft before it gets out of hand
Many of these issues can be avoided by using purchase orders to reconcile the parts you sell on repair orders.
But many auto repair shop business owners still wonder what some of the best practices are when it comes to parts management. How often should you be reconciling parts payments? Who should take on this task: you, your service advisors, or a dedicated parts manager? How do you make sure you’re getting the best value for the parts you buy and sell? How do you ensure that each and every part is being billed?
Let’s answer some of these questions, and unpack the best practices for parts management.
Service advisors serve as the major touchpoint between customers and your shop. While they ultimately need to build repair orders for technicians, they need to get that information from the customer.
And vice versa, when technicians provide inspection findings, service advisors explain those findings to the customer to figure out the best path forward.
That's why service advisors need to make customer service a focal point of their role, to build that trusting relationship between the customer and your shop.
Because when customers feel like they can trust that your shop is giving them the right recommendations, they'll feel more comfortable approving repair orders for the work their vehicles need to keep running safely and reliably.
When customers walk into your auto repair shop, they’re trusting you and your team with the health of their vehicle, one of their most expensive assets.
They’re coming in with a problem or set of problems and expect your team to effectively fix those problems in a reasonable time frame.
And modern expectations for customer service have shifted as our technology has evolved. Customers don't want to have to find time for a phone call when they can just get texted updates about their repairs, and digital tools make it easier for shops to build transparency in their process.
Modern auto repair shop software not only makes it easy but lays the foundation for a modern customer experience at every step.
Offering a Modern Auto Repair Shop Customer Experience Starts with a Modern Shop Management System
We're big advocates of modernizing your auto repair shop, and we don't necessarily mean replacing all your racks, updating all your compressors, and swapping out your alignment rack. Sure those might help, but we get those can be really big investments.
That's why we're focused on the behind-the-scenes operations of your shop, the overall management and flow of repair orders. Modern shop management software enables owners, managers, service advisors, and technicians to gain visibility into, and control over, their individual part of the process with specific functions:
Cloud-based shop management
Real-time control
Digital Vehicle Inspections
Built-In Payment Processing
Digital Shop Communications
Efficient Parts and Inventory Management
While all of these directly work to modernize your shop operations, they also work to modernize your shop experience for customers.
When your shop is using Digital Vehicle Inspections instead of paper printouts, you're not only making it easier for your technicians and service advisors to communicate and collaborate, but you're also modernizing how your shop interacts with customers, by emailing or texting results and approval requests.
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