alfredauto

I completely agree with Anderson Auto. I use a combination of Mitchell Manager and my bank & credit card statements to fill in my excel spreadsheet. I don't use quick books but I'm not opposed to it. I just like my system better. I'm somewhat of a control freak so I need to keep track of all the numbers. I can tell you what it costs per minute once I open the front door. It all boils down to what you input. Every part we buy goes on a repair order. I have ro's for the shop truck and my personal vehicles. Every part goes into inventory or on a RO. Simple. Some business owners don't mind handing it all over to the accountant, that's really not a bad thing if your not good at it. You don't need to be an accountant to run a successful business. Plus if you're the type of owner to just pocket as much cash as you can you are better off with an accountant handling your books.

We call the same company for all our tows and pay them on time no matter what. In return they give me a discount. The cost to the customer is the same. It's a win/win/win for everyone. In the end everything you do for your customers needs to be billed. Even charities take a cut.

I just finished my taxes. My top tech took home 8% of our gross sales. I made 6%. Who's using who? To be fair those numbers are after taxes and depreciation.

We use Mitchell but the canned jobs are the same. We only use it for alignments, diagnosis, oil change, and inspections. I do use it for brakes but modify the prices to suit the vehicle. It saves time typing the same thing over and over "clean, inspect, and lubricate caliper slide pins with premium synthetic brake lubricant.,," the same with the other canned jobs it just saves a lot of typing.

When I started out I leased a shop with lifts and compressor already there. 1st month was free, the 1st year was cheap, then I bought the place at the end of the 2nd year. I can tell you it took a few months to get all the permits and stuff in order, and maybe one customer every other day. Save your money you will need it the first year!

We are a full time dealer, it keeps things moving all the time. Plan on more time and money than you think and you'll be ok.

The oil quarts fill up our dumpster fast. It's a negative. We offer too many choices of oil so we just buy cases of quarts.

I would simply market yourself to Subaru drivers with your advertising but don't reject the general repair work. Once the scooby circle learns you can do head gaskets cheaper than the dealer your bays will be full forever. I've thought about hiring a guy to just do Subaru head gaskets and that's it. We don't do them because our business is based on 10 cars a day in and out, we don't have time to spend all day on one car.

might be too late if you started a claim but in a case like this it might be easiest to offer them $1500 or whatever and just buy the thing.

Just FYI in some states it is required to post the labor rate. It doesn't need to be lit up and blinking just in a prominent place like next to your license and tax id where the inspector can easily see it when he comes to check. Good customers don't care to look. When you take your special someone out for dinner do you care how much everything on the menu costs? Is that the deciding factor on where to go or what to order? If your wife wants to order a side plate of olives to go with her salad do you care that for $10 you could have bought the whole jar? Of course not. My point is if the restaurant charged you $2 or $12 for ten cents worth of olives it makes no difference. $30? Sure that's probably too much. But if the waiter fails to bring them or presents them sloppily then any amount is too much.

I've found that oil suppliers that offer free tanks and pumps get greedy real quick when they know they can count on me for 2000 gallons a year of their product. Not terrible but they are charging me rent on that stuff indirectly. I own my equipment now so I can shop around when the tank gets empty.

The basics they should have learned at tech school, so assuming that identifix is our best teacher. Have the guys scan the code, then go on identifix. Identifix will show them what pids to look at and what's good or bad. That's proven the best for us, and I've been to a ton of seminars. As a rule I offer training every year, we go to whatever the parts stores offer. Most offer something.

The #1 way to prevent junk in the first place is to prominently post a sign stating "STORAGE $75/DAY" after the customer takes more than a couple days "thinking" call them and say "your storage bill is getting to be more than the repair what would YOU like to do?" We never charge storage for cars we are working on, but it promotes people to get moving. Abandoned cars with liens get repo'd by the bank, they usually call me. Junk we trade storage for titles and then we just sell the cat and the car to the scrappers. I have OCD when it comes to junk I can't stand looking at garbage in my lot that I have to plow around. It's ugly, attracts the wrong crowd, and serves no benefit. NO JUNK is my motto. Some folks really like the idea of free storage space.

MERRY cHRISTMAS and Happy holidays to everyone. Take a minute to remember what it's all about.

I totally agree with your point Harry, none of us should compete in the race to the bottom as Joe describes it. "If the competition around you is too stupid to figure it out, tie up their bays with oil changes, send them all the cheap oil change work to them, pull the gravy work off the vehicle and send it up the road to get the oil change done, see how fast they learn." see how fast you need to attract new customers is more like it. Most people don't like going to two mechanics, that guy that did your unwanted work will get the next batch of gravy. We give away free flat repairs and tire rotations with a tire purchase. I offer free fluid top offs between oil changes. I do a lot of checks for free (not diagnosis) It eats time doing free work, but overall we gain much more than we lose. "You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want." - Zig Ziglar

All excellent posts. I might add that I refuse to even entertain price objections after the estimate was approved. The customer had the opportunity to shop around and say no before you did the work. Buyers remorse a week later? Sounds like a personal problem. They forgot their car was broken and needed you to fix it.

How much does it cost to say "No" to all the customers that want an oil change at market price? It'll never be a money maker but a good service to my customers. Same as inspections, free air, go for a ride real quick what's that noise type stuff. I'll never try to attract customers with $14.99 coupons but even at $32.99 or whatever it isn't a profit center on it's own.

I'm at 50% cogs, 15% payroll incl taxes, 30% operating expenses. I sold a lot of tires and used cars last year and that brought the cogs way up. 5% net profit isn't my idea of perfect but we did a huge gross sales # to compensate.

I'm in suspense. The last chain I worked for wanted $1200 per bay per day gross parts/labor. Techs were given 2 bays to make it happen. In my shop I'm more concerned with the profit. Anyone can discount their way to huge numbers but if there's nothing left someone starves.

I just finished my p/l for 2016 (minus the remaining week) and the credit card fees amounted to 1.2% of gross sales. That being said I'm pretty happy and will focus 99% of my energy on reducing other expenses.

The employees never take a loss. They are guaranteed a paycheck for hours worked plus overtime pay. They have the comfort of unemployment insurance , workers comp, and insulation from litigation and most importantly they can clock out and go home. As shop owners we don't get these benefits, we risk it all every day. I expect a higher compensation commensurate with higher risk. That's capitalism. Looking at my p/l statements there are some months where I made less than my tech, a lot less. Add up all my hours worked and my salary and I slot in somewhere between minimum wage and seasonal migrant worker, some months I make less than an inmate. The few months I actually earn executive pay balances it all out.

I've been happy with Mitchell manager, no real problems in seven years. They do come out with updates which require a frustrating relearning curve and price hikes but it works. I export Mitchell data to an excel spreadsheet, my homemade version of quick books and it's good enough.

most of the slush gets absorbed into my head as it drips on it, the rest evaporates leaving a nice sandbox for us to work in. I love winter.

Opposite problem here. All the college kids needed to go home this month in the snow. Non stop tires brakes batteries and wipers. I'm not complaining. Sad part of the story is I'm in a ghost town now until the end of January.

I won't be surprised if Mitchell or identifix get in on the remote programming wagon. The drewtech idea is awesome.