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I’ve recently opened up shop for my self (repair & custom). Aside from a few space issues with my partner, things seem to be well. However, I am finding price estimates to become a weak point and an issue I need to address immediately.
Specifically, I’m having trouble with the labor times for each job. I’ve been in the auto repair business for going on 13 years now and can usually guesstimate the labor times based off memory from my history as a tech pretty well. Sometimes, more often than I would like, I find my self WAY OFF. This is sometimes good for me & sometimes bad for me. (Either way it’s not professional and bad for reputation).
a quick story…. I had a Nissan Elgrand (Japan/Europe market only I think) come in with a bad wheel bearing. I’ve done hundreds of bearing replacement jobs and just figured since it’s rear wheel drive, it’s just like most vehicles. (Remove the castellated nut;replace bearings and races; job done. I quoted the job for an hour. After lifting the car up and removing the wheels, I notice that this will be one of those pull the suspension apart and press in and out the bearings…. I ended up loosing 2.5 hours of my time.
As I mentioned before, I just opened shop so I don’t have the necessary funds to purchase labor books or ALL DATA. Does anyone have any good ideas for me until I can get proper labor guides?
Thanks for reading guys!
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Only choice you have is to get a labor guide. It will pay for itself in no time from lost hours on jobs and losing customers you over quote. It is a very important investment. I use mitchell ondemand5 on my computer, has booking and billing, labor times, and repair data. best $500 I ever spent.
After a little research, this looks good and cheaper. Has anyone seen it??
I have chilton repair and alldata,and I find chilton to be the better product,chilton is easier to navigate and the info is seldom wrong as alldata has led me wrong a few times.
you might want to look into identafix also.We use Mitchell OnDemand too at work and I find it to be really good, it also has repair manuals on top of the labor time guides which is also handy when we need repair info for an off brand vehicle. It’d be a good investment to have and would pay itself off in the long run!
Nallarano Thanks for the feedback! It looked good from the description. I’ve only used the All Data when I was in various shops in the states. Now I have my shop here in Japan. There are some cars here that are not in the US though….LOL!
Shaun_300 OnDemand looked great too. Living here in Japan, I have to go through auctions sites or things like Amazon to get this software….but, I could only find a seller in China with really bad reviews from buyers. (I think the site was Ali??? can’t remember the name but it looks like a middle eastern name…) LOL.
I’m also trying to expand out to ex patriots from the US living here in Japan but the military bases are not very close to me. That’s why I’m preparing to advertise mobile services. The chilton’s guide looks to be a CD-Rom which, I think, will be more useful while on the go. I don’t know about PC stuff and software very much so….I could be wrong.
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