mtnmods
Forum Replies Created
-
I’m sure many, if not most shop owners and managers were at one time a technician and likely worked flat-rate. As a tech of many decades, Flat-rate was a love/hate situation. Seemed much of my success under that system was based on a combination of Service Adviser skills and management favoritism. For that reason, and much to the adamant disagreement of every shop-growth company out there, 20 years ago I began paying a base pay (usually hourly) that will keep the wolf away from the door with a flat-rate option that pays higher and calculates each two week pay period. This pay rate reflects the higher end of what each tech’s experience and skill level would typically garner. In the last five years, all share in a split of the shop gross profit bonus as well. That additional incentive bonus is a set percentage of overall shop GP for the month divided as 1/2 for the techs and 1/2 for the customer service staff (Advisors & CSR). If the techs earn the flat-rate, they collect the flat-rate. If not, they are paid hourly. That compensation plan requires 100% attendance and 80% production minimum. The latter monthly incentive is dispersed based on percentage of billed hours produced by each tech. This like any other pay structure, is not perfect and does require a bit of extra work a couple times a month, but has been well received and genuinely appreciated by most technicians who’ve spent any time under my employ.
I might add that this approach requires a close relationship with my employees and keeps me accountable to regular reviews. I always let them know that I don’t want or need to know what they do with their finances but it can help me work with them for needs vs goals which unfortunately is something very few learn in this age of instant gratification. As an added benefit, I often see a personal problem and can help them recognize and self-correct before one’s personal life choices begin the all too often downward spiral to work and life destruction we’ve all witnessed.
-
“Not for profit” in my opinion and experience creates two problems.
Since there exists no entity that is completely selfless – always underpinned by a desire to gain some advantage; money, authority, respect, or any combination therein. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it is in fact human nature, it establishes a breeding ground for corruption and affords the government more regulatory and elective control through so-called tax incentives and operational mandates.
I much prefer the “for profit” model as there is no question of its motivation and opens interactions up to free-market processes.
While either model’s greatest potential for errant practices is the fact that imperfect humans are at the core, the former has far more layers in which to avail impropriety.
-
Ours is only what we’ve edited. They did reach out and recommend we add this to our Yelp page:
COVID-19 Updates
Edit
“100% contactless service is available from drop off, to pickup and payment for your piece of mind. Just ask for “Contactless Service” when you schedule or call when you park. ”
Posted on November 24, 2020
Otherwise, I don’t see anything additional. Wouldn’t surprise me if they started something like this though. Yelp is a blessing and a curse. People are brutal when they want to be and I believe it’s because Yelp is nothing but an advertising front. They specify which reviews are legitimate by calling them “Recommended Reviews” and relegate most of our reviews to the “Other, not recommended reviews” category. There is no reason to list 24 reviews as legit and 34 as not when I can ID 30 of the 34 reviews in this category as actual customers/visits. What’s interesting is I had signed with them for a stint to run special ads and during that time, most of our reviews were listed as Recommended. After I cancelled we see 60% of our reviews are not recommended. -
Up 13%
-
I second that. If you’re going to grow and run a legitimate business, you will need some management software. I love Shop-Ware personally and have used 11 others over the years. Happy to discuss pros-cons of each if you’re interested. Most integrate with QB in some way, most track employee flatrate to some degree. A few have timeclocks built in as well.
If you’re very, very small and tight on budget, you’ll still need some kind of estimator and database and I’d recommend giving Realtime Labor Guide a look. They have an advanced version that is reasonable and will track your basic stats, build quotes and maintain a customer database. You will however, be doing double entry to QB I believe.
-
Huge leap. I’ve been through 11 software changes over the years. I am happy to say that Shop-Ware has been phenomenal in many ways. Not traditional, mind you, but amazing overall. You’re embarking on a huge move potentially, I encourage you to call many shops. You’ll never make a great decision based on forum comments or ratings. You may reach me at
ask for Dean RE: shop software and I’ll make sure you get to me. Please again, contact a lot of shops. All software is a compromise but many of those compromises are simply a change in approach to your end game. Hopefully I’m not crossing forum etiquette barriers here providing contact info. Again, please take your time and have many conversations.
-
I admire your tenacity, wanting to go big and think out of the box. Have a great team of lawyers to go through a non-compete clause, have lots of interviews with insurance companies that have insured that sort of venture, and make sure you can swing getting your guys bonded as well. Have you thought about how you might market to qualified techs with their own tools and vehicles to go out and do mobile work for less than the full boat? Most techs I know that are reliable and driven enough to work unsupervised are out doing their own thing. The others want a job they can come to and leave to go home with a steady paycheck or the ability to burn flatrate. Another thought that may or may not apply to you, here in Washington state, every locality you do business in has to have it’s own city/county license as well as collect its’ own sales tax rate and report each one individually. It’s an accounting nightmare. We have, I believe 76 different tax rates plus local business and occupation taxes in some areas that all must be reported. Lastly, its illegal for me to contract blue collar workers which automotive repair falls under. I don’t recall the exact terminology for it, but I know shops here can get in some pretty hot water for trying to subcontract out techs. They fall under the minimum wage, L&I and worker’s comp. laws.
Any thought as to how you might market your services? Who is your demographic? How will you handle the acquisition of parts as a mobile enterprise? How might your suppliers offer you parts and labor warranty coverage if you’re not in a fixed location? Just a couple more questions.
Not to discourage you, but have you built yourself a reputation among your community as a stand up guy, fair businessman, and rockstar technician? That’s probably the most important thing to do. Sometimes we all take a Field of Dreams approach with “Build it and they will come” which just doesn’t work out most of the time. Hate to see motivated guys get burned. Answer the aforementioned questions and you’ll be off to a fair start. Might I suggest joining a 20 group as was mentioned before? That is going to put you front and center with some of the best shops in your area, better equipped than most of us here to answer your questions regarding local legality and profitability.
All the best.
Dean Simmons
-
All great replies so far. Listen to them for sure! My two cents after 18 years in business starting from scratch, unless you’ve a chunk of change to live on personally, pay your bills, cover some payrolls, and take care of your vendors on time, start small and grow slowly. It doesn’t take long to build distrust with your suppliers if you’re late on payments. It makes for a tough run when you need grace, help with a price, delivery options, etc. The long-term payoff is worth it. Ditto on the 20 groups.
-
The story is critical. Sometimes however, the story isn’t about the parts, its about their family, experiences, vacation, history, people, or interests you have in common. The story connects and builds long-standing relationships. If a customer wants the back story on a part or why you do something some way, you can tell if you’re listening to them at the appointment and the drop. I think as Tom said, more and more people don’t want the part/service education, but want to know you recognize their situation. Our shop motto: It’s about people, cars bring us together. Every car repair or service represents a personal inconvenience or hardship for them. More often than not, the vehicle is a means for them to move forward with their lives. Some just want to get back to everything else they do that their car is simply a vehicle to that end.
-
I agree our pricing/profit model is a mess. To profit (as required) using a combination of labor and parts will likely need to change. So far, customer’s that come in insisting that they can get the part down the street at AZ or online through Amazon get the normal “steak in a restaurant” explanation. If they don’t come over, we send them away and there’s plenty of fish in the sea. However, with eBay motors and Amazon doing what obviously is only growing, we are going to see nothing but any increase in scope and intensity. It behoves us to to seriously consider revamped profit models. The problem we have, at least here in Washington State, is that if I install a part, whether it be provided by me, my customer, or a third party (i.e. extended warranty company), I own that part. The “You touched it last” rule applies every time according to my attorney. For this reason I refuse to install customer’s and 3rd party parts and purchase from affiliate venders that provide Nationwide parts and labor reimbursement regardless of their sometimes few percent higher initial cost.
I realize this won’t last forever, and I will have to eventually accept parts from outside sources if I’m to stay viable. What will need to change is the law. I have no issue charging $225/hour and zero margin on parts. I believe a small handling fee is appropriate and reasonable, but without tort reform we are all slitting our throats. It will be just a matter of time before the lawsuits are so huge that independent shops are dropping like flies.
I’m sure the dealerships/manufacturers would love this. Have we followed the money to see if/how they are involved? Not acting paranoid, but I’ve experienced a mass increase in volatility toward me from all the local dealerships over the last couple years.
-
We have been with RO Writer since 2008. It’s got a ton of features, unfortunately rarely does everything work properly. I’ve spent so much money on hardware, software, tech support, tech support for every third party application, hardware tech support to fix what the tech support screwed up, and countless hours each month on phone calls. They take sometimes a week to get back to you (if they do), then they’ll go through a season where they’re available or calling back but this has been the exception since ’08. Even with everything seemingly working ok, it’s slow, it crashes several times a day, and takes far too long to boot and quote. I’ve been told over the years that their issue (too much data on an antiquated Access Database causing mass corruption and system instability) was either: a. “my infrastructure” which I completely rebuilt/wired twice, b. “my hardware” which I’ve replaced in it’s entirety twice, c. “my other software” such as antivirus to which we’ve always moved to whatever they recommended, d. “I use too many of the features” seriously, they said this to me, and e. (love this one) “you type too fast.” Progressive Automotive Systems sold out not too long ago and while hoping for improvements in customer care, we’ve seen a rapid decline from nearly every angle. In case you were wondering, or any ROW folks are reading this, yes we have fresh Cat5e, gigabit routers, 80mb internet, 16gigs of ram on quad-core processor comuputers, use redundant stand alone windows servers running Server 2012. We’re set up.
My issue with RO Writer is the bait and switch, inconsistency, blaming the customer, the money on top of money, on top of money that you have to spend to get the next feature, and the fact that they offer no trial period, no satisfaction guarantee, and to those of us that purchased the program years ago when that was your only option, you have no right to sell any part of it. It remains their intellectual property.
My rating: 1 (lowest possible).
I understand they’re working on v. 2.0 in Sequel DB but that’s been in the works for years. I can’t hold my breath any longer and we are finally jumping ship and done trying to get something out of my years of effort and 10’s of thousands of dollars spent. You know that its been over a month that I’ve been leaving multiple messages and emails a week with ROW billing and they’ve not gotten back to me. Heading over to Shop-Ware. Looks promising and they have a fantastic crew eager to help and they are active in development and customer correspondence. Check with me after July and I’ll let you know how its working for us.
-
I’ve gotten my crew to all within 5 minutes of the hour over many years and tears. I don’t want to bust anyone’s chops for an occasional 5 minutes. However, I had the same two of my four guys consistently slightly late 1-2x per week and then 3-5 minutes late three days in a row and I was done. It shows an utter lack of respect for everyone’s time and efforts and is a slap in the face to my lead who is here 20 minutes early every day to open and prep for the day.
I did what Tom mentioned and sent them both home (It was signed, written policy which is critical). Next whole week, I let my lead leave right when he was finished and made the other techs pull all the cars in and close down. Everyone is now on time and aware that late is late is late and will be written up if they’re late twice in 30 days. If written up, they forfeit any team bonus for the month. Second write-up is an immediate day off without pay. Third in 90 days is termination. I’ve never had to terminate for tardiness. One tech was late a third time (so I thought), and he never came back in. Therefore he quit and I didn’t have to pay unemployment. Win/win.
Its tough love. On the flip side, I’ll shut down a 1/2 hour early on a nice day and/or take the crew to lunch after a couple weeks of stellar attendance and attitudes. It’s happy and upbeat because they have clear boundaries, clear consequences and clear rewards.
-
No to rehash what Tom said, but maybe a bit more info. I use a CRM company (I have used them all and personally prefer Kukui) to integrate our numbers, appointments, web presence and reviews. They send automatic appointment reminders, text and email followups per my preset criteria, i.e. new customers and not zero dollar RO’s. I know I could send my own followups but I find it well worth the money to hire someone else to handle and track that. Frees me up to run a business. I thank our customer’s as always when we close out the RO and let them know they will be receiving an email requesting a review of our service. That’s it. If I forget or get too busy to remind them, they’re still getting an email to followup and thank them with a review request attached. We are diligent about getting emails for ALL customers and responding to reviews good and bad. Some poeple don’t want to give you an email but I present an intake form at first visit and for an anual update, ask them again when writing up the RO if its not written, then explain that we don’t spam them or sell they’re info but it does allow us to get them quotes and a special a couple times a year. Finally, if no email, at close I ask again and explain my software will continue to hound me (I have it set up that way) if I don’t have something put in. Most people will provide it after the third request. It has let to over 500 Google certified 5-star reviews for my business in just over 6 years. Good luck
-
Yes, we require an inspection of every car, with a regular form. I pay .3/hr toward this free inspection. (I am generous) but I am a stickler on giving every customer his own ability to make an educated decision on his service based on a full knowledge of his/her cars condition regardless of my opinion of his/her ability or willingness to pay.
I like the idea of holding the RO until the inspection is in, however I can see how if the Service Adviser is busy, the techs will often be standing around waiting on a regular basis. I also know that the busiest job in a shop often is the front desk. They definitely don’t need any non-customer service related busy work added to their repertoire. While not a perfect scenario, I give out the RO with the inspection form but if a quality inspection is not completed and turned in to the front within the first 12-20 minutes, the tech does not get the .3 and I back-flag them an additional -.3. Haven’t had a problem with inspections in years. -
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.
-
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
