Auto repair shops might bulk order carbon copies, or you might find a template online and print as many copies as your shop needs. Or, if your shop uses digital templates, you might have to deal with time-consuming digital file management.
Filling out the forms over and over, be it by handwriting or typing, can become tedious. And both options are less than ideal for record-keeping.
Paper can get lost, and digital files can become overwritten or corrupted. Both approaches are inconvenient and ultimately slow things down at your shop. And the impression you give during the payment process can determine whether those customers return or not.
Here are four reasons why a shop management system is better than an auto repair invoice template approach for your business.
Reason 1: The Invoicing Process Will Become Faster
Think about how much time the auto repair invoice template approach requires. From filling out forms by hand to only being able to collect payment in person, using paper or digital invoice templates usually means a backlog of customers waiting on service advisors.
And if you use integrated payment options like Text-to-Pay, customers will be able to pay directly from their smartphones. Service advisors will spend less time processing customers who are checking out, and customers can pay quickly instead of having to stand in line at your shop.
But, best of all, you'll give your customers an opportunity to budget large expenses they may not have otherwise expected.
We've seen shops help customers cover the cost of a $2000 or more repair they might have otherwise pushed off.
With the flexibility of buy now, pay later options, they can take care of those repairs before they get even worse, and potentially lead to even more expensive damage.
Reason 2: More Convenient for Everyone Involved
Another benefit of a shop management system over an auto repair invoice template approach is that it offers greater convenience for everyone involved.
Your service advisors can continue providing excellent service to incoming guests with minimal disruptions. They can quickly generate and send invoices, which takes significantly less time and effort than filling out estimates and always needing to hand them off in person.
Your service advisors can keep flowing through the process of checking in customers, building estimates, and selling repair work.
Reason 3: Better Tracking and Record-Keeping for Your Shop
Sometimes your team will need to pull up a prior invoice. Maybe a customer calls your shop wanting to remember what they paid for and when, or maybe someone is disputing a charge that they forgot about.
Using a paper or digital auto repair invoice template approach makes it tough to keep track of invoice histories at your shop.
With a shop management system, record-keeping becomes a simple, stress-free endeavor so you can better safeguard your shop. If a service advisor wants to find a particular invoice, they can quickly search inside of the shop management system and pull it up within seconds. No more spending extra time digging through files, physical or virtual.
With a good shop management system, you should be able to search for documents, too. And for multi-shop organizations, you should be able to link customer history across all your locations.
If a service advisor sends part of a payment to your accounts receivable department, they should be able to later search and see how much a customer owes on their balances.
If down the line, a service advisor wants to sell work that a customer previously declined, the service advisor can access that customer’s profile, see what they declined and when, and call up that customer to remind them that it’s time for another visit.
Reason 4: Generate More Business and More Profits
Consider which customer is more likely to be super impressed and return to your shop?
Charlie, who had to rush back to your shop before closing to wait in line to pay
Janet, who paid from their smartphone at their own convenience
Customer B likely drove away from the shop impressed that the check-out process was so simple.
So much of the modern customer experience revolves around the speed and convenience of digital options. The customer who has an easier time paying for their repair will be more likely to sing praises about your shop to their friends and family, getting new customers through your doors.
To make the best impression possible on your customers, and make life as easy as possible for your team members, you should look for a shop management system that covers you throughout different stages of the repair process, including inspections and estimates, inventory management, and reporting on metrics so you can see how well your shop is performing.
As you research different options on the market, be sure to ask the right questions, demo each system, and get your team’s input. Additionally, be sure to get a good sense of the team behind every solution you’re considering.
A solid onboarding and customer success team can guide you through the switch, answer your questions, and teach you all the tips and tricks you need to get your new estimate and invoice process rolling.
Tekmetric: Stand Out for the Right Reasons
Tekmetric helps you give your customers a modern, fast, convenient check-out experience. Schedule a demo to see Tekmetric in action!
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.
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.
Tekmerchant now includes the industry’sfirst “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.
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