The automotive parts and service business can be tricky, as it's comprised of two different types of business in one. In some cases, you will be dealing with selling inventory over the counter, and at other times, dealing with repairs on your customer's vehicles, open work orders and mechanics. While Windward System Five has many features that make it an exceptional program, the following are some of the special points that would be used by an automotive parts and repair shop:

Not only can System Five track all the work done for a given customer, vehicle-specific details can be recorded on the invoice, allowing a detailed repair history for one vehicle within a fleet. Customer vehicles can be tracked by vehicle or rego number. System Five will also allow you to record any serial numbers, make and model, year, mileage and more.

System Five knows tyres too. A module designed especially for tyres is part of the system, allowing you to enter the tyre size, aspect ratio, and rim size into separate fields on the inventory record, and also search on those parameters.

In several states the government now levies flat taxes or fees for tyres and/or batteries. Instead of having to "sell" a tax item, the items can be flagged with additional fees or taxes, and these environment taxes will appear on a separate line below the sub-total on the invoice and be included in the total.

Quotations/Estimates are entered in exactly the same way as regular invoices and work orders, reducing the learning time for staff. These special invoices are controlled just like other invoice types, but have no offect on inventory or financial components of the system. If the customer accepts the price and authorises the work, an estimate can be one-clicked into a work order, and the into a final sale when complete.

When labour is added to an invoice, you can specify the mechanic that performed the work, the number of hours worked, and the number of hours (or mins) billed. Often, the time spent and the time billed might be different, and by recording this information you can satisfy your customer and produce mechanic productivity reports.

System Five has several different types of comments which appear where you need them to. The most common type is a labour comment, detailing to the customer the work that was done or problems found that should be addressed in the future. You can also use private comments on the invoice that will not print on the customer's copy, but will give you some additional information about the job or service. You can add comments to invoices, customers, specific items, labour, vehicles, and more.

System Five won't clutter your inventory system with hundreds of thousands of parts you don't use or need - if your supplier or manufacturer gives you an electronic list of parts and their details this information can be added into our virtual warehouse database. These will not be shown in searches of your regular inventory, but will still be available for you to search when you need to. If you find the part you need, it can be easily brought into the regular parts list without having to enter its details again.

System Five supports many different types of kits, also known as bill of materials, assemblies, or jobs. You could, for example, create a minor tune-up kit that when placed on the invoice will "explode" to show the oil, oil filter, air filter, spark plugs, and mechanics labour, complete with a comment.

After more than 25 years working with many automotive service businesses, we know that no two businesses are exactly alike, and the software that works for one shop might not work for another. We're happy to tell you when our software is a good fit for you, and when it's not. Let us customize our software for your specific business.

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