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One multi-shop operator switched to Tekmetric and doubled monthly revenue in two years. He shared how in a recent Tekmetric and PartsTech webinar.

Auto repair shops are under more pressure than ever. Tighter margins. A technician shortage that isn't going away. Customers who expect speed, transparency, and a frictionless experience every time they walk through your door.

Yet many shops are still running on disconnected systems, manual workarounds, and processes that haven't changed in a decade. The result? Bottlenecks that bleed time, stall revenue, and cap growth — often without the shop owner even realizing it.

This is the problem a recent ShopOwner webinar, sponsored by Tekmetric, tackled head-on. The conversation centered on one deceptively simple idea: the connected shop.

In this article, you'll learn what a connected shop workflow looks like in practice, how one multi-shop operator doubled monthly revenue after switching to Tekmetric, where the most common operational bottlenecks are hiding in your estimating process, and how features like SmartJobs, parts and labor matrices, and good/better/best estimates can raise your average repair order (ARO) — the average dollar amount collected per repair order — without adding headcount.

What a Connected Shop Actually Means

A connected shop isn't just about having software. It's about having the right systems talking to each other — and having your team actually use them.

John Phelps, director of channel partnerships at Tekmetric, put it plainly: "Just because you have an oven, that doesn't make you a chef. You can have the technology, but if you're not leveraging it properly, what good is it doing?"

That distinction matters. Technology for its own sake is another bill. Technology deployed with intention — one that connects estimates, parts ordering, inspections, payments, and customer communication into a single workflow — is a growth engine.

Tekmetric is built to be exactly that. With 70-plus integrations, built-in digital vehicle inspections (DVIs — digital inspection forms that capture photos, videos, and findings shared directly with customers), real-time reporting, and a native mobile app for technicians and service advisors, it's designed so every step of the repair order (RO) flows into the next without friction, duplication, or lost data.

One Shop Owner Doubled Monthly Revenue After Switching to Tekmetric

Tim Lanier knows what a revenue ceiling feels like. As president and CEO of Lanier Auto Group — which today operates four rooftops in the northern Atlanta suburbs — he spent years running a single shop that simply could not break through a certain monthly revenue level.

"We were stuck," Lanier said during the webinar. "We had our ways of doing things. A lot of copy-paste out of catalogs into the shop management system."

In March 2020, he made the switch to Tekmetric.

"As soon as we made that change, it opened the door to a lot of new possibilities — some of which we just didn't anticipate." He added: "We probably doubled our sales in about two years once we made the switch."

At the time of switching, Lanier's single rooftop was generating roughly $200,000 per month. Two years later, that number had climbed to approximately $400,000 — a structural shift in what the business was capable of, not just an incremental gain.

What unlocked it? A connected workflow that brought parts ordering, DVIs, payments, accounting, marketing, and inventory into one platform. The glass ceiling, as Phelps framed it, became a paper ceiling. And Lanier's team broke right through it.

The Estimating Bottleneck Is Costing Your Shop More Than You Think

When Phelps asked Lanier to name the single biggest operational bottleneck he's had to overcome, the answer was immediate: the estimating process.

"If you don't come up with systems to streamline things, that person becomes the bottleneck in the shop," Lanier said. "Some tickets can take 30 minutes to an hour to find all the parts and pieces you need for big jobs."

His solution? Get technicians directly involved — and give them the tools to act on that involvement.

"We've empowered the technicians by giving them a computer at their bay and a dual monitor setup so they can go straight into Tekmetric, pull up PartsTech, use diagrams and photos to quickly identify the exact part they need, and put the part on the ticket," he explained.

The result: estimates arrive at the service advisor roughly 90% complete. Advisors clean up grammar, add photos, and present. That's it. No back-and-forth. No shouting across the shop floor.

This is the connected shop in practice. Tekmetric's integration with PartsTech means technicians can search multiple suppliers in one lookup, confirm part specifications, and add items to ROs without leaving the platform. What once took an hour can be compressed into minutes — with fewer errors and fewer return trips.

Pricing Consistency Drives ARO Growth

One of the most overlooked drivers of ARO growth isn't sales technique — it's consistency.

Phelps highlighted this during the webinar: if a customer calls back a week later asking for a brake quote and gets a number $50 different from what they were told before, trust breaks down. Inconsistency in how estimates are built — varying labor rates, different parts markups, or service advisors quoting from memory — costs shops money and customers.

Tekmetric addresses this directly. Parts matrices and labor matrices create a consistent pricing foundation so every estimate reflects the shop's actual margins, regardless of which advisor builds the ticket or when. SmartJobs — Tekmetric's proprietary canned job system that automatically pre-populates parts, labor, and job notes for common services — takes this further by ensuring the right components populate every time, on every RO.

"If you're not using SmartJobs, powered by PartsTech, in Tekmetric, reach out to support, get your SmartJobs set up, and you'll be taking a massive step forward,” Jake Benson, director of strategic accounts at PartsTech, said during the webinar.

How to Present Good, Better, Best Estimates Without Starting From Scratch

Economic uncertainty means customers are making tighter decisions. Giving them options isn't just good customer service — it's good business.

In Tekmetric, shops can build a good/better/best estimate structure without starting from scratch three times. Build the base estimate, duplicate it, add parts or labor for each tier, and text all three options to the customer. A built-in checkbox at the job level keeps declined or unchecked options out of close ratio reporting, so advisors aren't penalized for presenting choices.

The same system works for tires, fluid services, brake packages, or any job where tiered pricing makes sense. Shops that present options consistently report higher approval rates and stronger customer relationships — because customers feel informed rather than pressured.

Tekmetric Is Built to Scale With Your Shop

Lanier's growth from one rooftop to four over the last four years didn't happen by accident. He credits systems and processes — and the ability to replicate them — as the core of that expansion.

"Once you figure out your systems and processes, things begin to click," he said. "It all becomes a lot easier."

Tekmetric is built to scale with that ambition. Whether you're running a single shop or managing multiple rooftops, the platform gives ownership real-time visibility into performance across every location — ARO, technician efficiency, close ratio, and more — without requiring an extra step to pull the data.

The connected shop isn't a future state. For shops like Lanier Auto Group, it's already the standard. The question is whether yours is built the same way.

Watch the full on-demand webinar from Tekmetric and PartsTech — How to Simplify Shop Operations and Increase Your Average Repair Order — and hear directly from shop owners and industry experts on the strategies and tools driving real results in 2026. 

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Whereas traditional methods of payment require dipping a card in the same terminal as other customers or the hand to hand exchange of cash or check, the ability to pay by text message through SMS mobile payments takes the complexity and headaches out of the payment process for owners, service writers, and guests alike.

For auto repair shops in particular, giving guests the ability to pay by text not only streamlines the guest experience but also frees up service advisors from having to do a bunch of data entry, giving them more time to help other guests.

Here’s how text-to-pay works on our Integrated Payments, Tekmerchant. As you’ll see, we’ve built in opportunities to enhance efficiency while strengthening the relationship you have with your guests at each step of the process.

Step 1: Complete the Repair Order & Send the Invoice

By connecting Tekmerchant to Tekmetric, service advisors can quickly review the invoices of completed work and simply click a button to text the invoice to the guest.

Since the invoice is automatically generated from the repair order and is easy to edit within Tekmetric, the service advisor can reduce the time they would usually spend writing invoices.

Step 2: Collect Payment

Once the invoice is sent, the guest will receive a link that takes them directly to their invoice and pay screen. From there, they can review the work that was completed and make their payment, prompting them to input their billing information.

The customer inputs their card information, including their billing address, making it a verified payment.

At this point, all the service writer has to do is make sure that the payment has been approved and that everything checks out.

Pro Tip: Enhance Guest Service with a Call or Personal Text

Because service advisors and guests both have access to a digital invoice, it gives service advisors the opportunity to add a human touch to the payment process without the guest coming into the shop.

Consider having service advisors give guests a call or send a personal text message at this part of the process.

While this may seem like an extra step, it gives service advisors a chance to check-in with the guest to ensure all approved work was completed, which is a big step towards avoiding chargebacks.

Calling the guest is also a good chance to remind them of any maintenance that may need to be taken care of in the future and any upcoming deals or events. If the guest is too busy to take a call, Integrated Payments has a Text-to-Pay feature giving them the freedom to pay when they have time.

If everything looks good on the invoice, the guest can easily pay and move on with their day. You get paid fast and the guest is able to pay at their convenience.

Step 3: Return Vehicle to Customer

Once the payment has been processed, all that’s left to do is to return the vehicle.

Pro Tip: Add a Key Drop-Box for Convenience

Some auto repair shops use a key drop-box or locker to make vehicle returns more convenient for their guests and service advisors.

Most contactless drop boxes use programmable codes, so you can put the guest’s keys in a locker, send them the code, and let them pick up their car when they’re ready.

With a key drop-box, everyone wins: service advisors don’t have to worry about staying late; shop owners don’t have to worry about paying a service writer overtime, and your guests don’t have to feel rushed to make it back to the repair shop before closing time.

Turbo-charge Your Payments Processing

The Integrated Payment text-to-pay feature makes life easy for your guests and service advisors, and can potentially save you time, money, and headaches.

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.