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After trying Alldata and NAPA Tracs years ago, we settled on RO Writer and added on Autovitals for workflow, DVI, website, CRM. We went the other way - from repair got into car sales and found the same situation - lots of DMS packages and how do you know which is best? We are using Comsoft MonyMaker because it is recommended by the Virginia Independent Auto Dealers Association. It's kind of old school but has good functional coverage and great support.

A very important facet of this is that your pay plan should insure that you are paying your techs overtime at the appropriate rate. If you get caught in a wage/hour dispute, the burden is on you to show that you met the overtime requirement. A good pay matrix will take care of this automatically.

Hourly doesn't provide any performance incentive. I don't think we have expended as much time and effort on any other subject. Working with our coach, we developed pay matrices for techs and SAs that enable us to meet our margin goals and reward them for performance. It's one off those things that illustrates that you can't be an expert on every facet of shop management and you need to get expert help.

Last week our business network was hit with a ransomware attack. One of our company officers was looking at resumes for prospective employees and opened an attachment on an email response from a Craigslist ad. The attachment was in.zip format and as soon as it opened she knew something was wrong. Within minutes, critical files on the computer were encrypted and unusable. In addition, files on other computers that were shared on the network were also encrypted. The computer screen was filled with instructions on how to pay a $1000 ransom to buy the decryption software that would return everything to normal. The payment method is in bitcoin through untraceable networks so the jerks at the other end are completely anonymous and untraceable as well.

The ransom attack targets specific file types that such as .doc, .pdf, Excel files and graphics files. Why graphics files? People don’t want to lose family pictures and will pay to get them back.

What do you do? You and your “IT guy” can’t crack the encryption, so you are faced with either paying the ransom or finding a way to live without them… UNLESS you have a backup. Do you? We use Carbonite on our critical data and it may turn out to be a blessing. Immediately after the attack, we found out that the machine in question had not been backing up for the past 45 days! Why? We’re still not sure, but it’s not a total disaster because we want to get back a lot of the old files. We also learned that as soon as you find out you’ve been hit, you need to freeze your backup, otherwise Carbonite starts backing up the encrypted files. Also, immediately power down the infected machine and disconnect it from your local network before powering it back up again.

My biggest fear was losing our Quickbooks files, but to my surprise the attack didn’t include them. But it did get our Excel day reports for the gas station and C-store and it destroyed the data in our car lot’s dealer management system, mostly PDF files. Fortunately that machine had a current backup in Carbonite. Thanks to our backups, I was able to make the decision not to pay the ransom, but I have now spent four days cleaning machines, attempting to take the machine that was attacked back to ground zero, updating files with old backups. I’m not done yet and will spend at least part of tomorrow working with the dealer management system people to get the car lot up and running again.

Monday night and everything is working again if your are willing to accept the loss of some data, and, believe me, I am. I sit here thinking that it could happen again tomorrow and I haven’t really prepared my defense, but I willl be working on that, believe me.

Gotta agree with Harry. 10% is aggressive. As we get better at what we do, it will get harder to achieve big sales increases unless the plan includes expansion. We had a really great summer last year and our guys are looking at our 8% goal with some nervousness. If we achieve it, 2017 will be even tougher. You have to get buy-in from your staff on whatever goals you set. If they don't think it's possible, it probably won't happen.

We have been targeting 8% over the same month last year and hitting it pretty consistently.

You're not going to find a magic commission number. We worked with our business coach for months to establish pay matrices for techs and SAs that reward their performance, satisfy overtime requirements (very important) and meet our profit goals. If you can do all this on your own, you are a genius. If not, get a business coach.

I agree - absolutely no side work, but, more important, if this guy is making you miserable he's not your best tech. Recruit constantly. Do a great interview process and hire somebody GOOD.

We use BG fuel induction service.

Our guys are glued to Autovitals and its messaging capabilities all day. Techs have their tablets in hand or close by all day. Communications stream shows up on workflow screen for all, including management, to see.

We use Autovitals and bought ipad minis from the Apple refurb site and Gazelle. We put cases on them and surprisingly, have not had one break or fail.

Welcome to the forum. Lots to learn here.

We run RO Writer at two locations with Autovitals to manage workflow in the shops. I too yearned for a system that would aggregate the data, but, in reality, it's better for us to watch the two shops remotely, side by side and compare performance. Our SAs are required to post details about individual ROs on a spreadsheet that is hosted on the cloud so we can all see. That way we can see how we are doing on achievement of weekly goals.Everybody in the organization knows where we are on a daily basis and the competition between shops is interesting to watch. With Autovitals, I can sit at home and see what each tech is working on, what is delaying them and when they have exceeded estimated hours. I can also see the electronic communications between SA and tech as it happens. Autovitals is evolving faster than I can keep up with it.

You will not mess up the hybrid battery doing an oil change. You didn't tell us anything about the car - year, mileage, etc. If this car is 5 years old or more and the hybrid battery is at one bar on a regular basis, the hybrid battery needs to be checked by a hybrid specialist. The 12V battery in these cars only runs the electronic control systems. It is an AGM battery that needs special considerations when testing and charging. The hybrid battery starts the car. If you want to work on hybrids, I recommend specialized training and equipment as provided by The Hybrid Shop. These cars employ fantastic technology, but they can be LETHAL. Get trained and equipped and keep your techs safe.

Welcome aboard! It is a cool site and a great place to share.

We advertise, post on social media, make follow-up phone calls, do whatever we can to bring in customers. I want car count.

I know that not everybody is ready for it, but we recently went paperless with autovitals DVI and smartflow to manage about 120 cars per week and haven't missed the clipboards and paper forms for techs, etc. We have have used handwritten string tags for keys for the past 12 years. Cheap and effective.

I have always bought all of my insurance through a broker. They shop it for me, in theory getting me the best value - always better than the best price. They act as middle man for me on claims. I can't imagine navigating the jungle of insurance without them.

D & B number is free, but they want to sell you services to monitor your D & B rating - like a credit score for businesses. You need the D & B number to apply for government contracts, etc., but it's up to you if you want to buy their services.

We use Mudlick targeted mailing if we know a slow time is coming. For those surprise times when nobody show up, we use e-mail blasts through Kukui.

We use Autovitals digital visual inspection with LOTS of pictures taken by the techs. There are pictures of good stuff and pictures of problems, but the visuals are very appealing to customers. But the main thing that has increased our ARO is great sales techniques by our SAs. The techs can do fantastic checks, but it doesn't do any good if nobody sells it.

Check out Hot Rod. Mann bank. Very low rates and they provide the hardware. Don't forget your card reader needs to handle the chip cards or you may be liable for fraudulent transactions. Do the iPad systems read the chip?

We are normally open M-F, but for Thanksgiving week we open the Saturday before and close up Thursday through Sunday. Everybody voted in favor of the plan. We have blasted email and social media with special offers for the Saturday session and last year, both shops were fully booked. The techs get their hours for what would normally be a short week and SAs get their sales quotas. It gives everybody, including management, the opportunity to make the most of the holiday weekend.

Stay away from my coach. He's evil and you wouldn't like him and No I won't tell you who he is. If you've given your coach a fair chance to perform and you've done your part, and you're not satisfied, call Brian Stasch and give him a chance to fix the problem. If I tell my coach I want help, he immediately provides tools and ideas and dogs me until I get a potential solution in place. They have access to a wealth of tools and tried and proven techniques. I don't know why they wouldn't give you quick proposals to help you solve your problem. Our coach helped us develop a matrix that covers SAs, techs of all grades and it pretty much insures good margins if you're doing all the right stuff. It's nice because we don't have to sit around fretting about what we should pay - we just figure out where a new prospect falls on the matrix based on skill level. It rewards them for different aspects of performance and it keeps us out of trouble on tech overtime.

Nice one!

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