Mover and other small engine repair business - what software to use?

Merlysys

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  • / Mover and other small engine repair business - what software to use?
I am setting up a small engine shop.

I want to issue customers bringing in equipment a receipt/tag, then issue invoice and whatever else.

Is there dedicated software for that? I am ok paying for it though a trial period would be good.
 

bertsmobile1

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  • / Mover and other small engine repair business - what software to use?
Organize a meeting with the reps from Oregon, Stens, Prime Line & Rotary.
These are the people you will be buying the bulk of your parts from and most have a workshop softwear package.
Naturally they all push you to their catalogue.
Down here my primary wholesaler is also the Oregon & Rotary agent so I don't know if their system belongs to Gripskie or they are using Oregons or Rotary's.
Stens use Bisolve which I presume they own as they offer it for free.

I use MYOB for billing & job tracking
Filemaker for inventory
Filemaker for customer records.
So there are 3 separate files, if any one is damaged (or gets Hyjacked ) I can still run quite happily.
The person I bought the business off used a plain diary, one page to an opening the wrote the invoices in a carbon book.
HE was doing about 200 jobs/ year.
The wholesale parts suppliers all do job tickets but I stopped using them a while back as I rarely have any more the 10 jobs in at any one time and if you can not remember who owns what you are not going last long
I have a friend who also uses a triplex indexed carbon ( numbered 1 -100 ). Writes the job in directly into the book, customer name machine details and "Work To Be Done".
The 2nd copy goes onto a clip board that stays with the machine, when finished the top copy becomes the bill. The bottom copy the tax record & if the customer wants a detailed parts break down he photocopies the workshop ( middle ) page.
HE files the middle pages in customer name order so he has a job record for future refference by name and the book becomes a file by date.

HE got a cheque listing book from his bank and writes every job down in it as it if was a cheque but writes the persons name & the date the job was booked in.
Thus the cheque listing book becomes his income ledger.
The other thing we both do is pay for everything by cheque, never ever use cash.
So all money goes into the cheque account and all payments come out of it.
Thus the cheque book statement becomes the cash ledger.

I tried this for a full year but found the 3rd carbons way too hard to read.

You want to spend most of your time in the workshop making money and as little time in the office doing bookwork.

Have a long chat to your accountant as to what records you are required by law to keep.

And a final note.
Detailed parts bills cause grief, the customers ( or their kids ) get on the web & find parts they think you should have used then give you grief about ripping off their parents.
The fact that the freight on the parts bought from 25 different vendors doubles what you charged for them sort of elludes them.
Then customers will question why this part was replaced. So avoid it. Put a strong plastic bag with each job & put all of the parts you replaced in it. when the customer comes in to collect their mower, offer them the old parts.
Finally use names, if they wanted to be a job number they could have gone to a big glass front, with a pretty big brested girley on the desk to perve at and lots of techs running around it uniforms.
People like to be treated as people so "Hi Fred your Toro is ready" will go down a lot better than "I need the ticket mate or I can't locate the job"
 
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