Modern auto repair shops face a customer base that expects the same digital convenience from their local mechanic that they get from Amazon or Uber. If your shop is still relying on phone calls to schedule service appointments, you're likely leaving revenue on the table.
Choosing the right automotive scheduling software isn’t just about putting a date on a calendar; it’s about choosing a management system that makes your shop more efficient, provides a better customer experience, and maximizes your revenue.
With automotive repair scheduling software, you and your team gain more control over your shop’s time. Instead of slow updates from around the shop, all employees can check the status of each repair at the same time.
Another advantage of appointment booking software is that your auto shop will make fewer mistakes when it comes to giving customers status updates about their vehicles. Before contacting a customer, a team member can check the system to have a more accurate estimate of how much time is left on a repair.
Going a step further, can your customers book appointments after hours and over the weekend? If not, appointment scheduling software can allow them to book online without having to talk to your employees first. This leads to more customers, fuller bays, and a better customer experience.
Tekmetric is our top pick because it offers an all-in-one solution with a full scheduling software solution. Offering online scheduling, marketing, payments, and shop management all under one hood, Tekmetric is hard to beat.
AutoOps is a specialized tool designed to sit on top of your existing shop management system. While it does not offer an all-in-one solution, it can be a powerful integration into your workflow.
EZauto Scheduler is a cost-effective, cloud-based way to handle your shop scheduling. Similar to AutoOps, EZauto is a dedicated scheduling software with modern features.
Setmore is a general-purpose booking tool used by everyone from barbers to automotive shops. Setmore is not an all-in-one solution, but it is one of the lowest-priced options on the market.
Owned by Squarespace, Acuity is a modern scheduling tool used in a variety of industries. You will need to integrate with a shop management system to run your shop, but Acuity can handle your scheduling.
When it comes to auto repair scheduling software, there are a lot of options on the market, which can make it tricky to find the right one for your shop. However, these are the modern features you should look for in a scheduling software:
Say you need to take the day off to take your child to the doctor. Or perhaps your shop is expanding to a second location, and you’re in back-to-back meetings to iron out the details.
Managing your shop with cloud-based service scheduling software, you can do all of those things without losing sight of what’s happening at your shop!
Tekmetric user Andrew Minkler of Bavarian Motor Repairs loves that flexibility. As he puts it, “As we expand, it’s critical that we have a cloud-based system that seamlessly grows with us. I can attend a twenty-group, meet with my business coach, spend time with my family, and still have access to my shop from my phone. Anywhere access gives me the confidence to let my staff grow into their roles.”
You likely use a variety of tools to propel your shop forward. If your automotive scheduling software integrates with these other types of solutions, you’ll be able to manage everything from one place, creating a streamlined process for juggling all of these various tools.
It’s important to reach your customers how they want to be reached. When researching any automotive scheduling software, check for the following features so you can streamline customer communication:
These features build trust with customers by keeping them in the loop throughout the repair process. They’ll see that your shop cares about making sure they’re informed every step of the way.
Every customer is unique. For example, one customer might always prefer dropping off their car in the morning whenever they need routine maintenance.
Another customer might be busy during the middle of the day and doesn’t appreciate being called on the phone during that time. By tracking these preferences in your system, you can ensure that you’re providing excellent customer service to each customer.
A strong support and customer success team can:
Once you have your automotive scheduling software and basic appointment scheduling process in place, you can make additional adjustments to enhance your shop’s efficiency and reach new heights.
As you navigate through scheduling cycles, you might find that business is rolling—and to meet those higher demands, you’ll likely need to make adjustments to your staff and resources.
You might even decide to extend your shop’s working hours to accommodate the uptick in business. An additional hour of being open can go a long way for customers.
It’s no surprise that the majority of your customers are in a rush. Squeezing in a repair can be tough on their schedule, as they need their car to get to work, make it to that parent-teacher conference, and more. That’s why it’s essential that your shop has streamlined ways of communicating with customers via true two-way texting, text-to-pay, automated follow-ups, and digital vehicle inspections.
Customer feedback can help you address people’s pain points with your shop, and as a result, take your shop to new heights. For instance, most of your customers could be annoyed that your shop is taking a bit longer than promised on each repair, and this could soon create a negative perception of your shop.
Unless you survey customers on a regular basis, you’d have no way of knowing this. Don’t leave your shop’s reputation and growth to chance. Be proactive, not reactive, by creating a customer feedback system and fixing gaps in the customer experience.
The shift to digital automotive scheduling software is no longer optional for shops that want to thrive in the modern automotive industry. Shop customers are expecting more and more, and these solutions are here to help you stay relevant. Whichever option you choose, focus on providing the best customer experience and making it easier for customers to book with you.
The holiday season is now in full swing, and as a shop owner, you’re probably thinking about how to best lead your team during this time.
Between the hot chocolate and the carols, there will be a lot you’ll have to navigate, including holiday pay and time-off requests.
By preparing and leveraging auto repair shop management software, all of this can be a piece of cake (or pie, if that’s your holiday dessert of choice).
Highlights from November include the refresh of Tekmetric Payments, launch of our Booking Tool in beta mode, and your #1 ask for the mobile app: a time clock!
Learn more about what we’ve been up to below.
We’re excited to introduce our refreshed payments solution, Tekmetric Payments (formerly known as Tekmerchant).
This refresh comes with some exciting new features including:
These enhancements are included on top of existing Payments features, at no additional cost for current Tekmetric Payments customers. This is just the beginning - expect more features and financial partners to be added in the coming months.
Who’s this for?: Tekmetric Payments Customers. Interested in adding this to your subscription? Contact us.
Your techs asked, and we delivered! The Tekmetric Mobile App now includes time clock functionality you've been waiting for, letting techs clock in, out, and take a break – all from their mobile device. We've also enhanced the camera experience with tap-to-focus capabilities and added a convenient "trash can" feature to image markup functionality for easy editing. No more switching between desktop and mobile for inspections – just perform seamless, efficient DVIs right from your phone.
Who’s this for?: All customers using version 1.7.0
Check what version you’re on the bottom of the left sidebar - Easily update your app via your app store
Ever wish that you could manage your scheduling process right from your Tekmetric account? Your wish is our command. Configure your appointment settings and embed directly onto your website in minutes. No more splitting windows or managing between two different systems.
We’ve eliminated the complexity of the traditional multi-step integration processes when connecting Tekmetric with PartsTech. Say goodbye to hunting down API keys or navigating complex vendor setups – now you can connect to PartsTech's extensive parts network directly within Tekmetric Integrations with just a few clicks. This enhancement was built to help make your parts setup experience effortless, allowing you to order them quickly on the estimate. This allows you to focus on what truly matters: getting vehicles back on the road faster.
Who’s this for?: All customers - Primarily those without PartsTech enabled
When you build a Smart Canned Job for oil changes, we put you in complete control of your pricing strategy. Now you can present service specials with clean, professional pricing that builds trust with your customers – perfect for advertising those competitive oil change specials while managing surplus charges effortlessly.
Who’s this for?: All Customers
Video for enhanced presentation
Hide discount for package oil change
We know for some shops, fleet work is imperative to helping grow your business. Now you can add the PO# directly on repair orders, having it display automatically across estimates, invoices, and A/R statements for your fleet customers. This enhancement brings professional-grade accountability to your workflow, making it effortless to track approvals and maintain precise documentation. Just input the PO number once in the RO sidebar, and Tekmetric handles the rest – ensuring every fleet repair has a clear, traceable approval record.
Who’s this for?: All customers
Take control of your inventory management with our new shop-level inventory feed located on the shop dashboard which puts vital inventory edits at your fingertips. This view helps how you monitor inventory changes across your shop, making it easier than ever to spot trends, prevent shrinkage, and ensure you have the parts you need when you need them.
Who’s this for?: All customers.
Prasanth Chilukuri understands the challenges that shop owners face each day with gaps in their efficiency and margins, which is why he co-founded Tekmetric with Sunil Patel in 2016.
Vehicle Service Pros published some of Prasanth’s tips for strategically growing an auto repair business with a shop management system like Tekmetric.
You can access his full piece here, or check out some of the highlights below.
Shop owners make countless daily decisions that affect their customers, their team, and their business.
Making good business decisions is essential to keeping everyone happy and keeping the lights on in the shop, but how do you know what the right decision is?
According to Prasanth, the key to any successful business is finding the right balance between soft skills like intuition or relationship-building and hard skills like data analysis.
Both types of skills are important, but knowing when to employ each one is the trick to making better-informed decisions and growing your business.
Intuition is useful when shop owners have to make split-second decisions and often goes hand in hand with interpersonal skills. The auto repair industry isn’t just about cars, after all; it’s about people, too.
By learning how to pick up on cues and anticipate the needs of customers, employees, and vendors, shop owners can foster long-lasting relationships that grow alongside their business.
Of course, there’s only one way to know whether your shop is truly turning a profit: look at the numbers and analyze the results. Data can support any hunches you have about the health of your business, for better or for worse, so you can plan accordingly.
But if your shop is still tied to manual methods, gathering key information about parts usage and labor costs is probably not easy or convenient.
A shop management system might not be able to make business decisions for you, but it can help shop owners make sense of their key metrics and data. According to Prasanth, looking at the cold, hard facts is essential to boost the efficiency and profitability of the shop.
The science of data might seem contrary to the art of intuition at first, but they’re more related than you might think. As Prasanth describes, data can add support to a shop owner’s intuition or observations and reveal key information that can’t necessarily be gathered from conversations with customers and employees.
Unfortunately, trying to sort through the shop’s data by hand can be exhausting and often means missing family dinners to crunch the numbers after hours. And manually calculating daily, weekly, or monthly metrics can quickly become a headache with much larger room for human error.
Without real-time reporting tools, inventory counts and gross profit can’t necessarily be trusted and will always provide an out-of-date view of your business at best.
Being tied to manual processes for data collection also means being tied to the shop and losing out on valuable face-to-face time with the customers supporting the business.
As a result, shop owners are often left making the difficult decision between nurturing their intuition and building relationships, or focusing on the data and shop profitability when both are essential to the long-term success of the business. With Tekmetric, you can do both.
Tekmetric is a shop management system that comes fully equipped with business reporting tools within a repair orders software suite.
Tekmetric tracks key performance indicators like employee efficiency, parts usage, and profitability ‘round the clock so shop owners can focus on the more high-level aspects of their business.
Real-time reports are always available with numbers that are already calculated and organized.
A bird’s eye view of the shop gives shop owners the power to tailor their business plan and strategy by:
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