As an auto repair shop owner, financial planning for the year is essential to maintaining a profitable and smoothly running business. Setting clear goals, creating a solid financial plan, and preparing for tax season early can help you avoid surprises, reduce stress, and maximize your shop’s growth. Now is the perfect time to lay the…
Most collision shops have experienced short pay, where you charge more than a client’s insurance covers. When this happens, you usually have two choices: Bill the client for the difference or eat the cost and suffer the consequences. The good news is that you don’t always have to bend to the insurance company’s whims and…
Discover five areas where you may be losing money on estimates and how to address them proactively to avoid problems.
“I can’t raise my labor rate to that!” This is a common phrase ATI’s coaches hear from members after calculating where the labor rate needs to be relative to labor costs. The disconnect is that we’re already committed to our labor COG (cost of goods) because we already incurred labor expenses like technician wages, benefit…
In November I wrote a post on how to avoid the slow slump season during the winter months. Now, we’re at the time of year when car count starts to ramp up regardless of what geographical area we’re in. This will be due to college kids coming back home, winterized classic and sports cars coming out of…
Giving discounts properly in your auto shop is essential for attracting and retaining customers, building a positive reputation, and managing finances. Every shop management software system has a procedure to reduce customer repair order totals or, in other words, apply discounts. How we discount in those SMS systems can give us much-needed data or mask…
Often, there can be a disconnect between the techs and service advisors, also considered the front and the back of shops. Service advisors and techs, at times, do not speak the same language and may have differing ideas on what their roles are in providing an outstanding customer experience. They tend to work in silos…
“I don’t have enough cars.” I frequently hear this from shop owners when they start working with me. On rare occasions, it is true; when this happens, we identify what is causing the problem and get more cars in the door within a few weeks. Most of the time, however, it is not true. If…
A few months ago, I wrote a blog concerning marketing that would help make an impact on keeping customer visit count consistent regardless of weather, holidays, or any other type of pattern. However, since some of us didn’t market right, we’re in the aftermath — the car count slowed down, and we’re fretting about how…
It’s the start of a new year which naturally makes us reflect back on how the previous year went. As easy, difficult, surprisingly sane, or crazy as we may think 2022 went, let’s see what made it work and what made it fail. Hopefully, the wins outnumber the losses, but in either case, we need…