Where a repair shop loses money
In a repair shop, margin is rarely lost to one large cause. It is lost in small, repeated places: parts ordered twice, labour carried out and never recorded, estimates approved verbally and disputed at the till, cars occupying a bay while waiting for a part.
When all of that lives on paper and in people's memories, nobody can say at month end which job was profitable and which was not.
What the application tracks
- A record per vehicle, tied to the VIN, with the full history of work done
- An estimate sent to the customer, with the approval recorded
- Parts orders to suppliers, each with its own status
- Job allocation per mechanic and per bay, with an estimated duration
- Real consumption of parts and labour on every job
- Margin per job, not just total revenue
A customer who can see the status stops calling
A busy repair shop takes dozens of calls a day asking the same question: is the car ready? Every call interrupts someone at work.
A page where the customer sees the state of the repair, the estimate and what is being waited on removes most of those calls. On top of that, approval for extra work is given in writing, with a timestamp — which ends the arguments at the counter.