service shop software

[Mars Amp Repair]

does anyone have a 4 or more tech shop & have used any software to run the shop, keep track of inventory, as well as tech commission tracking & such...were looking for a decent solution. thanx, glen

[Bill Moore]

I'm now curious, I am in the auto repair business, and have been using "Mitchell" based software for a while. The estimating/management program integrates with the repair information program. I also have to ability to order parts,(from 1 store only), and have them listed in the repair order, and marked up the amount that is predetermined. Surely someone has done something similar for the electronics repair business.

[jrfrond]

We have seven techs, a parts department (which does parts sales as well as supplying bench techs) and a shipping department. I call the shots and have very specific methods, rules and regulations concerning our busy and complex traffic flow. In addtion, we must track warranty and non-warranty work, piece work and salaried techs..... no off-the-shelf software will track all of this the way we need to, and the whole thing needs to be open-sourced so that I can modify something at a moments notice, without paying some IT or software monkey to do it. Hence, I have built our own custom application using Filemaker Pro database software. Of course, it didn't happen overnight. I started it in '96, and now that I am somewhat of an expert, I would rewrite about 30% of it, but hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

My friend Rich Bruyn, formerly of EPR Electronics in NY, then Tampa, FL had a very good system that he co-wrote with someone. I forgot the name of it offhand, but perhaps our own Ronsonic, who used to work with Rich, will chime in and enlighten us a bit. The only reason we didn't switcch over to it was because we use Macs, and was compiled in Visual Basic (or perhaps FoxPro) for PC.

[Enzo]

I don't use such, but I have to think the consumer electronics field has something. I don;t know what the organizations are anymore, but used to be groups like NESDA, NARDA, etc. Well those two still exist, add .com to the name.

Stuff "electronic service software" into google and a bunch of stuff comes up.

[Mars Amp Repair]

Well interesting,
We were considering switching to Mac for our primary 2 computers (with PC's for the preripheral stations) & the guy who we interviewed to do the swap suggested he could manipulate 'Filemaker' to be customized just as you are using.

I, as you john have very specific workflow including warranty claims & all that you mentioned as well as a tracking system (albeit manual). Only problem now is I'm doing it on separate Excel spreadsheets & now that we have grown in moslty in the last 6 mos, reeeeallly need a program to track and manage it all.

Unfortunatley to have this guy design something is going to be astronomically expensive. We have to make a decision here.

I've heard that 'Quickbooks' can be manipulated to play the part of a service program...unfortunately, I can't find anyone who really knows how to do that for this specific application. Most of them just know how to set it up for accounting & very basic workflow for the service biz.

I thought about the parallels to the auto industry & how all of those guys have some form of software that could be modified...unfortunately as John said, I want it to be very specific to my needs & not just try to fit into a cookie cutter model. I'm also going to have my techs do the estimate calling and need a system that they can enter the progress as they go. We did this when I worked for Soundtrack back in the 80's and it actually worked out much better than having a 3rd party do it...there would always be questions the cust would ask that the 3rd party could not answer...and that was just with VCRs & camcorders.

Enzo, the idea of Narda or some such org is a good idea. I'll have to look into that. the other problem you can run into is that these software providers want to charge you per month for each computer appearance of this software....by the time you're done with 3 or 4 computers, it can be ridiculous per month....

Sooooo, doing the extravagant initial outlay for a customized program might not be so bad in the long-run. any addl ideas appreiciated. g

[Mars Amp Repair]

And don't call me 'Surley'...BAH-DUMP...CHING! g

[Enzo]

Quick Books is amazingly simple to use. It can create invoices, sort by many parameters and present a pie chart in glowing color. I quit using it because I didn't want to have to consistently enter all the various data. Unlike you guys, I am not managing a bunch of techs and various workflows. I think you want something a bit more specific though.

I have seen some basic shop management software, but can;t recall where. APparently not at MCM. But a google of shop management software comes up with things like this:
Repair Shop Software - Service Management Software

Request a demo of E2 Shop Management Software

ERP Shop Management and Accounting Software - Henning Software

And many others

[Ronsonic]

I have indeed worked with Rich Bruyn's Tekserve system. He had that coded for him in VB some years ago. It was a pretty good system that incorporated pretty well all phases of the business including parts inventory, tech pay, invoicing, work order tracking, purchase orders pretty much the whole enchilada. In the back of the house it worked well. It was unwieldy at the counter, requiring exports to and from Quickbooks and had a data entry overhead that made it impractical for small quick transactions. Forget selling a cable. But then Richard has no interest in selling a cable. So it works. Like all things there are trade-offs. The biggest strength was that it paralleled and documented the work flow in a natural way. It does show its age in some ways and has some biases that take knowledge of the business and the system to use effectively. It would automate the creation of purchase orders, but if e.g. I needed tubes for an Ampeg B-15, the software would assume that the parts should be ordered from SLME and create a PO accordingly. So someone knowledgeable would have to review the POs and reassign purchases pretty much defeating the purpose of the automation. But mostly, that is the way parts are ordered, from the manufacturer of the unit.

Since Richard and Mike Jay split, we've been using a system that Mike wrote in Filemaker Pro that is not yet as comprehensive, but more friendly and flexible. It does have the advantage that it doesn't take a software pro to edit it. At the moment a neighboring speaker reconing shop is also using Mike's software and he is all the time expanding and recoding it. I'll ask if he's interested in making it more generally available. I really, really like the ability to search in Filemaker. That takes a lot of pressure off the design of the system in that you don't need to predict what people will need to know down the road. You can always create a report based on any criteria you need at the moment. As it has evolved this system prompts for and documents the dates, amounts and times of each step of necessary communications like estimates generated, approved, warranty status confirmed, completed repairs billed to the client and such. Very easy to see what has and hasn't been done.

The Filemaker system locks the user out of a record that is hot on another computer, Tekserve would let whoever saved last win. So either way everybody has to work together on these.

As just a guy on the bench both work. ATMO, the important thing is that the software parallel the work flow and support the system of bringing a repair into the shop, getting parts for it, documenting the work performed and getting a bill to the client and everyone paid with as little overhead of its own as possible.

[jrfrond]

It is worthwhile to note that Rich Bruyn's goal was to create a paperless shop. That was back in the late 90's. As most of us know by now, the effort to eliminate paper is futile. You can reduce it, but never eliminate it.

A Filemaker solution makes the most economic sense. There are tons of Filemaker solutions available, and I am SURE that there is something prewritten available. I have never made our solution available because it is tailored to our specific needs, and while I have made it as simple as possible, it is not "slick". It is a tool to do a job. I should also mention that we are still on Filemaker 3.05 (!), a VERY old version of the software, and still use older Macs on OS9 and even OS8, with Apple Imagewriter impact printers for our preprinted, pin-feed service forms. Archaic? You bet, but it works well and is pretty crash-proof. Sure, I would love to upgrade it all, but well, I just make the suggestions, I don't actually pay for them!

[Ronsonic]

I remember the paperless office. That was right about the time that 17ppm laser printers appeared.

[jrfrond]

LOL!!! Life is full of irony, isn't it???

[Enzo]

I often find myself with a paperless wallet. Does that count for anything?