Three phone calls for one set of brake pads
It is half past eight. Six cars are booked in, two of them need brakes, one needs a clutch and one has a warning light nobody has diagnosed yet. Your service advisor has the phone wedged against a shoulder, on hold to the first factor, while a customer waits at the counter with a key.
The pads are in stock at one branch but the discs are coming from the hub on the afternoon run. The second factor has both but at a different price, and the third has a different brand the technician does not like. The advisor writes the chosen supplier on the back of the job card, or on a sticky note, or nowhere at all because the next call has already started.
By eleven o'clock a van turns up with a bag of parts and nobody is quite sure which job two of them belong to. One part ordered for the clutch job has not come, and the technician finds out when the gearbox is already on the jack.
Why the phone keeps winning
Most motor factors now offer an online ordering portal, and many garage management systems can link to one or two of them. So why is the phone still the main tool? Usually because each portal only shows its own stock and its own price, and the advisor needs to compare. Opening three websites, typing the registration into each, picking the right variant and comparing takes as long as ringing, and ringing gets you a person who can say when the van is due.
The second reason is that the order lives outside the job. The portal records what you bought, your management system records what you invoice, and nothing connects the two until someone keys the parts onto the invoice at the end of the day. That gap is where parts go missing, get invoiced at the wrong price or never get invoiced at all.
The cost you do not see on the invoice
None of this shows up as a line on the profit and loss account, which is why it lasts so long. It shows up as a busy advisor who cannot answer the phone to new customers, a technician standing at a stripped-down car waiting for the afternoon delivery, and a ramp that is occupied but not earning.
| Where it hurts | What it looks like on the day |
|---|---|
| Advisor time | Calls and holds that block the counter and the booking line |
| Ramp time | A car stripped and parked on a lift while a part is chased |
| Wrong parts | The variant for the wrong engine code arrives and goes back |
| Price drift | The part is invoiced at a price that no longer matches cost |
| Orphan parts | Bags on the parts shelf that nobody can match to a job |
It also makes it hard to know whether you are getting fair terms. If nobody records which factor supplied what at what price, you cannot tell whether the account you give most work to is still the best one.
One parts request, raised from the job
What we build sits alongside your garage management system rather than replacing it. The job stays where it is. We add a parts step that the advisor or technician uses instead of the phone.
- The request is raised from the job, so the registration, vehicle details and job number come across automatically.
- Where your factors offer an online portal or trade data feed, we query each one you use for price, stock at your local branch and the next delivery run. Where a factor has no feed, the request can go by email or you keep ringing that one.
- The advisor sees the options side by side and picks one. The choice, cost price, supplier and expected run are stored against the job line.
- When the delivery arrives, whoever unpacks it scans or ticks the parts against open requests, so each bag is matched to a job and a car.
- Anything due on a run that has passed without arriving goes onto a short exceptions list, so the chase happens before the car is stripped rather than after.
- Parts and cost prices are pushed onto the job so they reach the invoice, rather than being keyed in at the end of the day.
We check what your management system and factors actually expose before promising any of the links above. Some offer good trade integrations, some offer very little, and we tell you which is which.
A normal morning afterwards
The advisor raises the brake job parts in a couple of clicks while the customer is still at the counter, sees that the discs come on the afternoon run, and books the car onto the ramp after lunch instead of first thing. The clutch parts are ordered the night before because the job was booked a week ago and the request was raised at booking.
When the van arrives, the parts are checked off against the jobs. The technician looks at the job screen and knows everything is on the shelf. At the end of the week you can see how much you bought from each factor and how often each one was late.
- Fewer calls blocking the counter and the booking line
- Every part tied to a job and an invoice line
- Late deliveries flagged before the car is stripped
- A record of price and reliability by factor
Does this sound like your parts desk?
- Your advisor rings more than one factor for most jobs.
- Parts arrive that nobody can match to a car.
- Technicians stop work because a part has not come.
- Parts are sometimes fitted but missing from the invoice.
- You could not say which factor was late most often last month.