Quickbooks Online

[SHW]

Hi everyone

I was doing some research on shop management systems and noticed some great threads but given my budget I want to see if I can use Quickbooks Online since it's great for invoicing and easy to set up plus cheap. Some questions I had for anyone who uses or has used Quickbooks Online:

1. How do I assign a vehicle to a customer?

2. How do you track any recommendations to the customer's vehicle - just in notes?

3. How do you manage estimates and inspections?

4. Do you use anything else to manage daily schedule?

5. Ultimately can you use Quickbooks Online to run your shop?

Thanks for the help

SHW

[alfredauto]

I would try Mitchell manager or something similar, your life will be much easier. I'm cheap and I can say Mitchell is the best $$$$ spent.

[mspecperformance]

Quickbooks solves a lot of your book keeping needs and if you are savvy you can track a lot of useful data and metrics through it HOWEVER even though a lot of shop management software is generally archaic in design to most everything out there it still is very industry specific. I have experience with 2 shop management softwares in particular. Mitchell and RO Writer. The Reporting that both programs have can be duplicated to a certain degree in quickbooks however it would really take you a lot of hours of thought into creating a system of logging all the correct information you need.

 

I would agree with alfredauto that a dedicated shop management software is probably your best bet. It makes life a lot easier.

[SHW]

Thank you for the replies and recommendations. Much appreciated.

[ncautoshop]

I used quick books for years. Looking back I don't know how we did it. Not well, that's for sure. It can be done but it can't be done correctly without extensive manual entry work. They could add some modules and it would work fairly well but the way the standard version works it doesn't fit automotive businesses in regards to billing and customer management. In the end it'd be cheaper just to go ahead with a management system. The matrix alone pays for the software!

 

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[bstewart]

Take a look at smotgo.com for a 100% free web-based shop management system.

The guy made it for his own shop, then released it for free for anyone to use, with no "catch" or anything.

[Pete K]

I will second the recommendation for SMOTGO as a shop management tool. It is excellent - web-based and totally free as bstewart mentioned. I also use quick books online but only to run my finances. I accept credit cards with the GoPayment option and it connects directly to my bank account to automatically pull in transactions. So SMOTGO to run the shop, QBO to handle the finances. Been working well for me so far.

[Phil_CA]

Hello everyone! I'm newbie here, but I've some exp in auto repair shop software. A month ago I decided to move from Excel for shop run and find lite software instead Well, I have to say there are plenty of them, I've read lots of reviews and watched tonnes of videos... Finally, I've settled on AutoRepair cloud (www.autorepaircloud.com) as the price was good for me. It is completely web based, so you don't need to install smth on your computer and it has integration with Quickbooks to run accounting. The next thing I like is mobile application for customers via I am chatting with my customers, sending them photos, updating repair progress, etc.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Phil_CA

[Hands On]

I see a lot of people here are using mitchell, I have been using alldata. I am paying about 250-260 per month for my repair info and the elite version of the management program which has the parts matrix ability. What are you folks paying for mitchell?

[PAPShop]

We use QuickBooks Pro currently. Does any of the other SMS allow for retail? We have a retail store for our performance side which is about 25-30% of our business. I have been slowing looking at a SMS, and want one that would integrate with QuickBooks. Computers....ugh!

[rjauto]

Check out Digital Wrench software it does everything you mentioned and the price is very reasonable compared to other RO programs. You would still Need finance software like quickbooks to track bills payroll etc.