Auto repair shop estimate software

An estimate is a promise with a margin inside it. This builder prices the job the way a shop actually does: parts at cost with the markup band you use, book hours at your door rate, sublet with its own smaller margin, shop supplies and tax on parts, and it shows both the total the customer sees and the gross profit you keep. Change one input and everything moves, which is what you need when the customer is still on the phone.

The book hours are yours and always will be

Lugtorq publishes no labor time guide. A time invented by a software company would be worse than useless on your bays, and a time copied from a guide we do not license would be somebody else's property. Put in the hours you are selling, whether they come from a guide you subscribe to, from your own history on that job, or from a technician who has done thirty of them. The arithmetic is ours; the time is the shop's.

Sublet needs its own margin, not the parts markup

Machine work, alignment, glass and paint are not parts and marking them at the parts rate either prices you out of the job or gives the work away. The builder carries sublet as a separate cost with a separate markup for exactly that reason. It is usually a smaller percentage, because the value you are adding is coordination and warranty rather than stocking, and it should still be a number you chose rather than one that happened.

Know the gross profit before you sell the job, not after

The estimate is the last moment at which a job can be declined cheaply. Once the parts are ordered and the vehicle is on the lift, the margin is whatever it turned out to be and the only variable left is how much time you lose. Showing the customer total and the gross profit side by side means the decision to discount is a decision, taken with the number in view, rather than something discovered later in a month end report.