Need Input – Bodyshop Management System Idea

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  • Anonymous
    June 13, 2010 at 7:11 pm #21850

    I have been kicking around the idea of building an online bodyshop management system for a while and figured it would be a good idea to get some input on the idea. It would be something similar to Mitchel’s ABS if anyones used it before. Something to let you keep a customer database, track workorders, costing, print off basic estimates…etc.

    The thought is to gear it towards smaller shops who don’t want to pay the high monthly costs of the other systems. It would be ad supported (so all free to the end user). I don’t know if anything like this exists already so if anybody knows please point me in that direction. I would not be able to have it import estimates from mitchell or anything (unless it became large scale) so all the entries would be keyed in. It would be a fast, lightweight site.

    I’ve been thinking of doing this for a while now but before I invest hundreds of programming hours I thought it would be best to get some input from the bodyshop world. Thanks.

    June 13, 2010 at 10:10 pm #21851

    Sounds like a good idea Jimmo, and would be a great benefit to many smaller end shops, and who knows where it might lead.

    I use a programme called GA3

    You can
    electronic appointments for each bay
    Invoice’s
    Create estimates
    job cards for techs
    Stock Control / Inventory Management
    Order Management
    Employee Database
    Customer Management
    SMS Vehicle ready for Collection txt’s
    Powerful Searching, Find information fast ( search by customer name, vehicle make model, etc)

    Funnily enough this programme is always advertised on this site “garage Assistant” it’s a big orange box

    I am a beta tester and moderator for the forum of their product

    You could download the trial version it may give you some ideas

    http://www.sws-solutions.co.uk/software_products.php

    June 13, 2010 at 10:39 pm #21852

    hmmm that sounds interesting nick

    June 13, 2010 at 11:11 pm #21853

    [b]bondomerchant wrote:[/b]
    [quote]hmmm that sounds interesting nick[/quote]

    I know he has sold previous versions to guys in the U.S. as far as i am aware currency symbols can be changed for overseas buyers and post code changed to Zip code etc.

    The latest version now has an expense manager this allows you to create your own expense categories and add the relevant expenditure invoices as they arrive, you can also have them marked as paid or unpaid.

    What i like is the reports section you can see your sales for any particular period in time

    week to week

    month to month

    year to year

    And it is fully broken down into Labour sales, parts sales, Paint and materials sales.

    Sorry if i am going of topic here this is supposed to be about jimmo’s creation but this may give him some idea’s

    Anonymous
    June 16, 2010 at 11:23 pm #21912

    Ya that looks like the general idea of what I want to do just an online version. That looks like a neat program.

    June 23, 2010 at 3:55 am #22038

    I am familiar with ABS which is a great program…but as you know it is expensive and time consuming to set up. I also know that there is similar software for ADP.

    Sounds like what you have would fill in that void for small shops. Maybe consider having a Beta version for free (a version with limited features) and having the full version available for a reasonable price. You need to make money too. I am sure some small shops would be happy just having tracking software for free and others would gladly pay a small price to have other benefits such as invoicing

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