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Unfortunately, I do not have a big income to worry about at the end of this year! However, if one is on cash accounting you can take deliver of extra products such as bulk oil, filters, other fluids, bottled goods, etc. One can also pay for advertising in advance.

I totally agree with you. We were considering becoming an AAA approved shop but why would one do that if AAA are going to own and run shops. One of the things you are suppose to do to be an AAA approved shop is suppply the names of 300 customers amd invoices. If one does that now you are giving customers names and pricing information to a competitor. That is not very smart is it.

Curt, welcome! It is good to have you. I think that this can be a venue where we all learn from each other and help each other. I am a little older than you are but I only have about 11 years experience running a shop and zero years experience working on cars.

The November issue of Motor Age contained a lot of articles that I found worthwhile. I think this one about managing customer expectations is worth reading: http://motorage.search-autoparts.com/motor...e/detail/641559

It seems that RepairPal.com could be a competitor or do something similar to what Prundo is trying to do. Has anyone looked at RepairPal or saw any evidence that consumer are using it?

I do not think you are out of line if you can afford to do that. We just have never had the level of profitability to allow us to do those kind of things. Hopefully we will someday reach that point.

Not that I am aware of. Some pay Christmas bonuses some based upon productivity. We also collect all of the scrap (steel, aluminum, etc.), sell it, bank the money, and divide this among them. It will be $200-$500 each.

Very nice site!

http://www.carxevansville.com/

We do not pay Christmas bonuses although we always give the guys their choice of gift cards (Walmart, Gander Mountain, etc.) usually $100. What we do pay is a $100 cash bonus each month to each of our employee when we exceed $70,000 in sales for the month. This year they have collected about $900 each in bonuses (eventually we will have to raise the sales goal). My guys really like that. It really motivates!

No do you?

With the direction we are headed we need to add more scan tools although we probably see fewer Eurpoeans than you do. We also see very few Infinities, Land Rovers, and Minis. Please rate the scan tools in the order of importance to your business. If you primarily used a Modis what would be your next addition?

We do not REQUIRE training however we do have training provided by our franchisor. Our franchisor has classes that techs can be sent to and about once per quarter there is a trainer who will come to our shop and work with our techs either as a group or as individuals. We can select what training we want provided. Most of this is basic stuff. For more advanced training we utilize classes that vendors sponsor such as Standard Ignition or AC Delco. We have also used classes by Bill Fulton.

Our primary tool is a Snap On Modis. We use to use an OTC Genisys. Joe, what scan tools do you use and what do you recommend. We are doing more Europeans and coming up short and more body control stuff.

There are repairs that if one is experienced they know that the labor time is incorrect and should be compensated for. When you are a non-tech like myself that is not the case. I can only try to learn and remember which repairs take longer and also consult with my techs when in doubt and this helps. Some things can only be known by experience. All sorts of things such as the complexity of the vehicle, age, corrosion, etc. can change things. Yesterday was a bad day because we got our lunch ate on the labor times on two different repairs. All in all I would say we shorted ourselves about 6 hours of labor time. That is over $400. Ouch! I think as much as possible on unfamiliar repairs in the future I will check both guides where possible. For example a rear axle seal/bearing on a 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara calls for 1.3 hours in Alldata and 2.7 hours in Motor. You are right that an hour of brain surgery is worth more than an hour of raking leaves. Most shops don't like doing heater cores or evaporators so when we do one would try makes sure we charge enough labor.

We currently use Alldata for our labor guide. However, we also have access to Identifx which has Motor labor information. Lately we have discovered some large discrepencies between the labor times. For example the labor to do a head gasket on a 2001 Chrysler Sebring 3.0 is 6.9 in Alldata and 9.9 in Identifix (or something close to that). The later seems to be closest to the actual. I could site other similar examples. Does anyone know which is most accurate? Advice?

This post raises two good questions. What or how is everyone charging as far as shop fees are concerned? What does shop rent run?

The more people you have the harder it becomes. We only have seven people. If I had 14 I couldn't do some of the things we do now.

It is stated in our employee handbook that vacations have to be scheduled at managements discretion or something like that. We tell everyone up front that vacation time cannot be taken at peak times. However, once I did allow one employee to take vacation at that time of year. To compensate we try to schedule holidays where at least one of our techs gets four days off if a holiday falls on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday. Once a month one of our techs has a scheduled three day weekend. We do this by rotating days off. Once a month a tech will have Saturday off this week and Monday off next week which gives them a long weekend. If a holiday falls on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday the lucky tech has a four day weekend which is very popular.

American Families Save $26 Billion Annually at Independent Repair Shops, Data Shows November 24, 2009 Right to Repair proponents say research demonstrates need for legislation. http://www.autocarepronews.com/Article/686...data_shows.aspx

I would not allow it, although I will work with an individual for an extra day or two off if I can accomodate it.

No! What I am saying is that I would like to be able to import the OEM part numbers and labor time into my estimates from what ever guide I am using be it Mitchell or Alldata. Based upon what I have seen so far I am leaning towards Alldata's system. Has anyone used both Mitchell and Alldata? Any other suggestions.

I voted!

How to changing a VW belt in 5 seconds:

FOOTBALL AND THE BLONDE... Out of all the blonde jokes, this one has to be the best!