Set up Shop Fees

Taking the time to set up your fees will reduce the time it takes for your service writers to build repair orders, give your customers a professional and consistent experience, and help standardize data in your reports.

When you created your shop in Tekmetric, we preloaded the most common fees into your settings, but of course, you’ll need to review and adjust these examples to better fit your state/local regulations. Tekmetric allows you to preset an unlimited amount of fees and discounts; however, we recommend to set only about 5-10 so your team doesn’t get overwhelmed with too many options.

Once you setup your fees and discounts, be sure to train your employees to only use the pre-configured options, rather than creating their own. This will keep your reporting consistent. Below are some pro tips when it comes to setting up your fees: 

Pro Tips: 

• A trend we’re seeing in the industry is to auto-apply shop supplies fees to each individual job, rather than on the general repair order. This allows customers to see the all-in total per job when making approvals, as opposed to approving individual jobs, and then seeing this additional fee at the end that they don’t understand. It helps build transparency and increase their trust in you and your shop. 
• While some fees (e.g. tire fees) are set amounts by law, shop supply is an arbitrary fee that shops charge to help cover overhead costs (rent, office supplies, etc.). You don’t want to charge an outrageous amount that your customers will balk at, but the amount should help increase the bottom line by offsetting these expenses. We recommend doing some research in your area to see what other shops charge. Also, take all your overhead expenses in a month, divide by your average monthly car count to find a balance of what that right amount per RO (or job) should be. 
• As an owner or manager, you can use our Discount Detail or Fee Detail reports on a set cadence to review which fees or discounts were used by your team during the period. This will help you identify which team members might need additional coaching. 

Within Shop Settings, you can manage and set up your shop fees, and select how they should be applied to repair orders. Please follow the instructions below on how to setup your fees in Tekmetric.

Setup Fees

1. Click the Shop Settings section on the bottom of the left menu bar.
2. Click the 2nd tab, RO Settings.
3. RO Settings table - This table is where you setup most information regarding your repair order and estimates. It is where you set up your labor rates, shop fees, discounts, taxes, job categories, other payments, and advanced settings.
4. Click Shop Fees to set up any fees you'd like to charge your customers.

Add a New Fee

1. Click the Add Fee button to add a new fee row. You will fill in the following information:
   1. Auto Apply - You can choose if you would like this fee to be auto-applied to every RO, every Job, or to not auto-apply the fee at all. Do not auto-apply to every RO or job if it is a job specific fee (e.g. tire disposal fees). 
   2. Fee field - Here you can enter the name of the fee. Some examples are: tire disposal, shop supplies, and hazmat.
   3. Method field - Select whether this fee will be applied as a percentage, fixed dollar amount, or by the number of tires.
   4. Calculate on field - If you apply percentage, you can apply it to labor, parts, sublets, or any combination of the three by selecting the individual boxes.
   5. Amount field - Depending on the method you prefer to use, you will set up a percentage, dollar amount or per tire amount you want this fee to charge. 
   6. Cap field - Here you can set the maximum limit for this fee (this is only applicable to percentage method fees). This can later be evaluated in the fees report. 
   7. Taxable - Choose whether or not this fee is taxable by checking the box below taxable within the same line as the fee.
2. Click Save Fees when you have finished making edits.  

Note: The xQty field will only appear when Tire is selected as the Method. This will allow you to set the number of tires on the RO level. 

Deleting Fees

To delete a fee, click the X icon to the right of the fee, then click Save Fees.

If you'd like to setup a fee to be applied to a specific job, and every time the job is added to the estimate, it'll add the fee, then we recommend building canned jobs.