Counter Sales

A counter sale refers to the purchase of vehicle parts or accessories by walk-in customers, who do not plan on having their vehicles serviced at the shop. In the automotive industry, counter sales are:

1. An additional form of revenue generation for a shop.

2. A way to provide convenience and flexibility for walk-in customers...

3. An opportunity to deliver personalized service, potentially getting those walk-in customers back...

In Tekmetric, instead of creating an RO, gathering customer/vehicle information, and going through the approval process, we've created a counter sale feature to better enhance the experience for your service writers and customers. This article will go over how to use our counter sale feature.

Creating a Counter Sale

In order to create a counter sale, you will need to have the Customer permission enabled within your employee profile. This is usually given to service advisors and shop admins by default. If this permission is enabled, you will then navigate to the job board. 

1. Click the split Repair Order button on the top right corner and select Counter Sale in the drop down menu
2. Click on the Add button to add the part you are wanting to sell from your inventory OR manually add a part that does not live in inventory.
   1. Note: you will not be able to shop for parts within a counter sale. This is because this feature is intended to be a quick over-the-counter sale. The walk-in customer isn't usually waiting for the part to get to the shop. 
3. Save the table with the list of parts. This will commit the counter sale to an invoice number (receipt) for you to print for your customer if needed. 
4. You can add customer information to the counter sale, however it is optional. 

5. Take payment, and this will automatically close the counter sale invoice. 

   ⚠️ Important Note on Payments: Counter sales cannot be partially paid or put on account. Because these transactions are designed for quick, over-the-counter walk-in customers without an associated vehicle service, the balance must be paid in full to close and finalize the invoice.

Adding Fees to a Counter Sale

Currently, there is no direct feature to add a dedicated "fee" (such as a disposal fee or core charge) to a Counter Sale. If you need to process a fee, you have two options:

• Option 1: Add the fee as a part (Use with caution). You can manually add a line item and title it as your fee.

  • ⚠️Important Note: Because this is processed as a part, it will report as part sales revenue in your financial reports rather than a fee. Additionally, it may be taxed as a standard part depending on your shop's tax settings.

• Option 2: Create a standard Repair Order (RO). If you need to accurately track specific fees and apply correct tax exemptions, we recommend bypassing the Counter Sale feature and creating a standard Repair Order (RO) for the transaction instead.

Need to Order Parts for a Counter Sale?

If your customer calls in ahead of time to order a part, you'll want to add a purchase order from within the Orders section on the left menu.

Once you add the purchase order, it will automatically add the part into inventory for you to pull into the counter sale once the customer comes in to pick it up. 

For more information, read our guide on adding purchase orders.. 

Counter Sale List / Searching for Counter Sales

Today by default, our job board shows active vehicles currently being serviced in the shop. Since the job board is focused on vehicle service operations, counter sale tickets will not appear on the Active job board, but we will have a counter sale view.

To access your list of Paid or In Progress counter sales, click the Active drop down menu on the job board, then select the counter sale option. 

The search engine in this page behaves like a pseudo filter. This means that as you type and search for any of the listed information below, the list will filter out to show relative results. A user can search for any of the following information on the counter sales or counter sales refunds:

• Part Name
• Part Number
• Customer name
• Counter Sale number
• Refund Counter Sale number

Reporting Updates

Counter sale tickets will NOT affect your car count, hours, effective labor rate, close ratio, or ARO in your financial reports. These metrics will continue being focused on vehicle service sales. However, all counter sales will be included in payment details and reports, as well as any numbers around part sales and tax.

For more information on what is affected in your reports, please contact our support team. 

Accounting Link (The Back Office) Integration 

We will be sending counter sale invoices to Accounting Link integration.

• Counter sale invoices will be sent as a RepairOrder object and prefix the ID with “cs-."
• If a customer is not set on the counter sale, we will send the customer name “Counter Sale” and ID COUNTERSALE since this is a required field by The Back Office. 

How-to Video