4 Ways Heavy-Duty Truck Estimating Software Makes Your Life Easier

Sometimes, the generic option is precisely what you’re looking for—just ask any savvy grocery shopper who’s saved money by buying Marshmallow Mateys instead of Lucky Charms. But like many pieces of advice, you shouldn’t apply this principle to everything in your life. Custom-built solutions can offer features and benefits that off-the-shelf products don’t.

As you might expect, this is definitely the case for your heavy-duty shop’s estimating software. Even if generic software solutions are suitable for most businesses, they tend to omit features that diesel repair shop owners could benefit from on a daily basis.

Here’s a quick overview of how heavy-duty truck estimating software can make life easier for you and your technicians.

1. Improved Accuracy

When you’re creating estimates, you’ll need to have at least a rough idea of how long it will take to provide your services to a customer. If you don’t get your labor times right, you could find yourself accidentally under- or overshooting your estimates.

While your clients might not complain too much about the former scenario, it certainly isn’t something you’d want to deal with. On the other hand, customers won’t be happy paying more than expected for repairs—and as a result, they might even look elsewhere for service the next time their truck needs work.

Fullbay’s software can all but eliminate labor time-related guesswork from your shop’s everyday operations. We can help you look up labor times from MOTOR—the industry-standard source for this information. That should make it trivial for your techs to determine how long their work will take!

2. Faster Authorization

No one really likes dealing with authorization requests, but they’re still an essential part of the truck repair process. If your authorization process is outdated or complicated, your customers could inadvertently miss a request for authorization or get stuck playing “phone tag”—easily the least fun form of tag.

With Fullbay, you can instantly send digital authorization requests along with your estimates via text or email. For an even quicker repair process, you’ll have the option of working with your customers to set up pre-authorization for their next job. Either way, you’ll get answers from your clients quicker than ever before!

3. Enhanced Customer Trust

No matter how ethical you are and how hard you work to treat everyone fairly, your shop will still need to gain the trust of new customers.

Unfortunately, this might be more of an uphill battle than you’d think. According to AAA, a whopping two-thirds of drivers in the United States actively distrust auto repair shops. And don’t kid yourself—the fact that you’re running a heavy-duty repair shop instead of an auto shop doesn’t make you immune to this negative public perception.

With Fullbay, you’ll have the opportunity to attach videos and photos to your customer estimates. When people can see exactly what issues their trucks are dealing with, they’ll be much more willing to trust you to fix them, even when that means paying for unanticipated expenses.

Needless to say, this isn’t the type of feature you can expect to see from estimating software designed with any other industry in mind.

4. Opportunities to Save Time

Once you’re past the estimate stage, you should be in the clear as far as documentation is concerned, right? Well, yes—except that you’ll still need to convert your estimates to work orders. And then convert these work orders to invoices.

So, really, you’re not in the clear at all. If you’re still stuck using a “traditional” workflow, that equates to a lot of typing.

The best way to avoid these inconveniences is to find heavy-duty truck estimating software like Fullbay that can automate the entire conversion process. And if that wasn’t enough, Fullbay offers integrated accounting features and can work with your existing accounting software. You’ll be done with this process before you can say “streamlined documentation procedures” (or another, shorter phrase)!

Keep Your Bays Full—And Your Life Easy

There’s no denying that running a heavy-duty shop can get complicated—even before you bring bookkeeping, authorization, and document conversion into the discussion. If you’re trying to take care of these tasks along with your other duties as a business owner, it’s time to give yourself a break.

Instead of sticking with the traditional (and inefficient and time-consuming) way of doing things, choose Fullbay to simplify your shop’s operations. We were made for this—and we offer countless custom-made features to improve efficiency and profitability at your shop.

(Okay, yes, you could sit down and count the features we offer. But this is supposed to be a blog about making your life easier, right?)

The point is, our software is built specifically to help heavy-duty shop owners in ways other estimating programs can’t. To learn more about how Fullbay can help your shop run as smoothly as possible, set up a demo today!