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Home Forums Auto and Truck Shop Management Software Software Survey – 3 Questions

  • Jerry Kezhaya

    Member
    February 12, 2014 at 3:43 pm

    We’ve been using ShopPro since 1990. It has gone through many, many updates and revisions based on input that we (and other shops) gave them. They have always been very responsive to our requests.
    It is a solid 9 on a scale of 1 to 10.

  • SpencersAuto

    Member
    February 12, 2014 at 5:51 pm

    We are using Autoshop for windows also known as WinWorks since 1999

    I would rate is a 4
  • Unknown Member

    Deleted User
    February 12, 2014 at 9:03 pm

    1: Which ones have your tried?

    Alldata Manage, Mitchell, Pace software

    2: Which one do you use now?Pace

    3: On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), how happy are you with it? 9 overall. Good software, and most times the customer service is very responsive. Like that they will customize many things to your needs. Recommend it highly.

  • njfenger

    Member
    February 13, 2014 at 4:59 am

    1: Which ones have your tried?

    Pace software, Admiral, C5

    2: Which one do you use now?

    Admiral but we have just decided to convert to Pace

    3: On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), how happy are you with it? 

    Current system 3 but we have high expectations to Pace

  • garystrans

    Member
    February 13, 2014 at 7:22 am

    I have tried invomax shop controller, quick books & motor ware and maxxtrax.

    using maxxtrax now

    10 for maxxtrax wished I had started with them 10 yrs ago most helpful group of people I have ever dealt with

  • red

    Member
    February 13, 2014 at 8:23 am

    1: Which ones have your tried? Protractor Auto Repair Shop Software

    2: Which one do you use now? Protractor Auto Repair Shop Software

    3: On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), how happy are you with it

    Very happy with it (10). We’ve used it for the past 9 years and its functionality is great. Integrated Mitchell labor times, access to online supplier catalogs, customer email reminder system. There’s also an accounting portion of it, however we have never used it over an external program. Fantastic customer support system. 

  • Andrew Tobias

    Member
    February 13, 2014 at 9:23 am

    1: Which ones have your tried?  Mitchell 1 and Protractor (Mitchell Enterprise), Mitchell1

    2: Which one do you use now?  Mitchell1

    3: On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), how happy are you with it?  8.  I wish Mitchell were more responsive to the needs of its clients.  We never know what they’re thinking or working on.

    We were using Mitchell since the late 90’s.  Then we opened another store and wanted to use software that was more compatible with multi store environment, enhanced security, and we also wanted integrated accounting.  We chose Enterprise.  Worked with it for a year.  Accounting is archaic, service advisor interface is horrible, and the parts catalogs are different for each supplier.  Needless to say, my staff threw me a party when we went back to Mitchell.  It was a very costly mistake.

  • bilmac

    Member
    February 13, 2014 at 9:54 am

    I have tried Invomax and Lankar.

    We presently use Lankar.

    Satisfaction is at the 8.5 level.

  • decannh

    Member
    February 13, 2014 at 1:11 pm

    1: Which ones have your tried? ROWriter, AllData, WinWorks.

    2: Which one do you use now? ROWriter

    3: On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), how happy are you with it? About a 5.

    ROWriter is too expensive for what you get. They don’t tell you about the tech support  and EPICOR subscription you have to have to get a lot of the features to work the way they show them.

  • Chester Bulat

    Member
    February 13, 2014 at 3:39 pm

    Tried, Invomax, Bay master, would rate them 3.

    Using ShopPro since 1992. Give it a 9.

    Accouting is great.

    Wish it would integrate on line parts and labor to RO.

    Staff is great.

  • nctransmission

    Member
    February 17, 2014 at 12:49 pm

    1.  RO Writer, Mitchell, WinWorks, Quickbooks, several others.

    2.  RO Writer “pro”lite edition.
    3.  RO Writer is one expensive, outdated, bloated, glitchy piece of machinery.  They complain that people only use a fraction of the capabilities of the program, but the places who can afford the $2000 add-on modules and take advantage of the capabilities of the entire thing propbaly aren’t as put-off by the design (windows 3.1 based system) as cumbersome and slow the thing is, and how hard it is to get help with a specific “off item”.  I want it to track transmission information and generate a report for me based upon MY criteria for how many of what type of transmission.  They claim it will cost too much to generate a report like that.
    I like my RO writer, but i would NOT buy it again.  Just the $65 per month every month fee for “support subscription” seems shitty when I spent $4500 on it to begin with.    Add in the other fees, and that EVERY module is the cost of the program all over again, and there’s just no way.
    Every month  the owner sends an email with “updates” about what is going on, and it’s ALWAYS selling the classes to learn how to use the program.  The last 6 months have said NOTHING about the forthcoming big release of the program that is supposedly NOT 3.1 based…. 
    Yes, I’m a little cranky.
  • Alan Ollie

    Member
    February 17, 2014 at 1:01 pm

    Mitchell since 1998 .To lazy to try any other program. Mitchell needs better access to reminders export data and  time clock to track techs .

    I am sure it needs more than that but mixing it with demandforce i would say it works ok for me.
    ( as far as crm’s that interrate i have tried customer link ,Mitchell MPG ,EautoClub, and Demandforce. No company i have seen has been able to post reviews directly to google places like Demandforce. 
  • mtnmods

    Member
    January 9, 2015 at 5:20 pm

    We have used several POS/Shop management systems over the years. Currently we operate with RO Writer. Huge investment, sort of a bait-and-switch approach to sales with no personal demo available. You pretty much have to pull the trigger to get to use it yourself. Customer service is better now than it has been over the last 8 years but still 5 or 6 out of 10. Overall program features are pretty in-depth as it is extremely rich, more so than most anything else out there. In order to get everything working correctly, (granted you now own it but have no rights to sell it later) you must subscribe to any number of salesman’s personal businesses for one-on-one support, custom forms, on-site training, or personal network setup/problems. The native quickbooks integration is junk so you must subscribe to The Back Office support for their programs to manage cash drawer and accounting link. These by the way are superb and their service is fantastic. Finally there is the Epicor subscription to make Smart-Ecat work. That feature is really cool but you’ve really got to plan ahead to set it up correctly. Lastly the integrated credit card processing through PPI is the best we’ve used period. They are also a quality company with good customer service and rates. My overall veiw of RO Writer is less than adequate for the price. I have $12,000 into it initially, new computers and networks twice over 8 years at their requirement for $7000 more, and an ongoing $250/month. Were they $1000 setup and training followed by month to month, I’d say worth while for the features. Problem is they are over-running an extremely dated Access Database protocol that is highly prone to crashes, corruption and data-loss. If they every complete the Sequel Database version they say is about ready to launch, (not holding my breath) it could potentially run away from the competition in function, features and reliability. My concern is that even if they do pull a rabbit out of the hat, they’ll come knocking on my door for another $2000-4000 upgrade, or simply discontinue service of the old system a couple years following.
    We own Winworks Autoshop Pro and have used during ROW down times. Very solid company, program, great people, limited but some neat features. They are extremely slow but meticulous to update so there are never any real bugs. The reliable simplicity of the program and common-sense approach to inventory is fantastic. I would still be there if it weren’t for the absence of any way to accurately track and maintain accounts payable. We used Scott Systems MaxxTraxx for the better part of a year. They too are exceptional people with great customer service. The program is not as feature rich as ROW but quite detailed and has built in accounting available. We were using it for months when they first launched it as MaxxTraxx and had a few algorithms to work out so we had to stop. We are now looking at going back to them as they were top notch professionals even through our discontinuation of their services which speaks volumes for their integrity, including refunding me my last month of service for my trouble without even my request. I am aware that they’ve made numerous updates and corrections and worked out the bugs so I am quite interested to hear how things have progressed. We have also used ShopKey (Mitchell) in which I love the sub-estimates feature more than almost anything else on any other system but, they own you. You are stuck using Mitchell repair so if your techs like Alldata, too bad or you can run with no integration. I finally couldn’t stand the fact that the management and profit reports were never accurate; to the point that I could run the same report for a time period a month later and get a different result (still wrong). I’m not sure what brand abacus they used but its broken. Also if you EVER decide to drop them you will lose access to your entire database, history, etc. That business practice is pure theft and deception and they have lost my consideration forever because of it. I even offered to buy a standing copy to access my history to no avail. Things may have changed with them since but I am burned.
    Now of all the programs, my one non-auto technician front office person has found RO Writer the easiest to operate of all stated programs. This is partiall due though to the insane amount of hours (300+) I’ve put into building jobs, statements, protocol into the system. But Smart Ecat is the only thing I’ve found that actually can sort of suggest parts for a job helping out the less than experienced service writer.
    To summarize: RO Writer 6, Winworks Autoshop (Motor Shop Director) 7, MaxxTraxx 8, Mitchell (Shopkey) 2

  • tdrisdale

    Member
    January 13, 2015 at 6:51 pm

    One thing I think needs to be mentioned is that Mitchell can be learned in a week, and I still have not learned all there is to learn in RO Writer. Mitchell also has good training videos. I use ROW because of the Smarte Cat feature, nobody else has that. But I also used to have Mitchell in a small Honda shop and it worked great because we set up all the canned jobs and with World Pac we did not need the Smarte Cat. I need to say that if you are not a real computer and program type of guy then Mitchell is your choice. Mitchell also has some nice features that ROW does not have. One I like is the search history feature, I can look back and find a job I did on a similar vehicle in a matter of seconds and give a very accurate quote. Also I can copy and paste the job onto the new RO, parts and everything. Also Mitchell lets you and keep multiple jobs in folders attached to each vehicle. Mitchell is easy and ROW is complicated.

  • mtnmods

    Member
    January 16, 2015 at 4:23 pm

    One thing I think needs to be mentioned is that Mitchell can be learned in a week, and I still have not learned all there is to learn in RO Writer. Mitchell also has good training videos. I use ROW because of the Smarte Cat feature, nobody else has that. But I also used to have Mitchell in a small Honda shop and it worked great because we set up all the canned jobs and with World Pac we did not need the Smarte Cat. I need to say that if you are not a real computer and program type of guy then Mitchell is your choice. Mitchell also has some nice features that ROW does not have. One I like is the search history feature, I can look back and find a job I did on a similar vehicle in a matter of seconds and give a very accurate quote. Also I can copy and paste the job onto the new RO, parts and everything. Also Mitchell lets you and keep multiple jobs in folders attached to each vehicle. Mitchell is easy and ROW is complicated.

    To followup on this comment, I agree that Mitchell, as do many other programs, work just fine if you are specialized, i.e. Honda, and only use one primary supplier. Smart Ecat is just not necessary in that case. To address your other comment, about search history feature in Mitchell. RO Writer can do that as well with a different approach: From within an open RO or Estimate, click Kits, Estimate search, and from there you can select year, make, model, engine, trans, or any combination therein, select a category from the dropdown menu, and you can see ALL parts/labor from any RO or Estimate in your database meeting your selection criteria and double click it to drop it on your open RO or estimate. Yes, RO Writer is highly technically involved with a larger than normal learning curve, but there is little it won’t do, some things better than other. History search and Sub-estimates is definitely a strong suit of Mitchell however.

  • Tom

    Member
    January 17, 2015 at 10:26 am

    How about these as goals for software providers?

    Lots of features
    User friendly
    Easy to learn
  • joesauto870

    Member
    January 19, 2015 at 1:17 pm

    I have had Winworks (auto shop for windows) which was a complete waste of my money and a nightmare. In the last twenty years I have looked at and demoed just about every program out there including Alldata, Mitchell, and RO Writer. In my opinion Hands down Pace Computer (YES) is by far the best software out there. Over the years we kept out growing other software. I have had “Pace” going on 8 years now and it has been rock solid. It has no problem handling multiple stores, has very robust reporting, time clock, etc. On top of that their tech. support is awesome. The second best software in my opinion is RO writer.

  • shelbygt65

    Member
    January 20, 2015 at 10:40 am

    Omnique is a great system. They just announced their new Advanced QuickBooks integration, it pushes all data and can link to an existing QB file by mapping everything to your chart of accounts. Also they can link in with all aftermarket suppliers and also resell AllData or Mitchell1 repair.  Take a look at http://www.Omnique.com

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