People ask me all the time how the price of an auto repair is determined, usually phrased something like, “Why does my car repair cost so much?” This is a question worth asking, especially if you’ve been given a repair quote that runs into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
When it comes to shop management systems, so many options are available it can be mind- boggling. Knowing what you need your auto repair software to do, what features you need and how it benefits your auto repair shop are just a few of the things that should be considered.There are three main criteria used in pricing any given auto repair. The first is the labor rate, or what the shop charges for the time and expertise that goes into repairing your vehicle. The second is for the parts themselves, and whatever other shop support materials are used in the process of the repair. The third area to consider are the fixed costs or overhead that the Car repair software has to cover, but that doesn’t get reflected on your bill.
Auto mechanics have a lot of information to keep track of, including customer records, emergency and recurring inspection appointments, inventory, billing, quotes and estimates, and more. Paper-and-pencil record keeping and multiple Excel spreadsheets are not efficient methods for running a repair shop these days, especially for auto mechanics who want to streamline their shop management systems and become more profitable.
While the auto repair industry may be unsexy, Furniss tells us, it’s also probably likely that the town or city you live in has at least one auto repair shop. In fact, there are about 45,000 in the U.S. today, the co-founder says, and most of them are using the same tools for inventory, interfacing with insurance companies and data entry they have for years
By helping collision repair shops automate the data entry process, among other things, Furniss claims that the company’s SaaS product can save these businesses up to two hours on every estimate they process — something repair shops have traditionally done manually. The startup recently emerged from limited beta, and had been testing the product with a handful of early customers, so it doesn’t have many paying customers yet
