Canned jobs are pre-defined jobs that include labor and parts associated with common repair work done. These jobs are considered "canned" because they are routine, repeatable jobs that can be standardized in terms of time and cost for your shop.
For example, let’s say it takes your service writer 2 minutes to write up an oil change job on every repair order. This could cost your service writers up to 2 hours a day just writing the same description over and over again. With a canned job, it would take them less than 1 minute write up on the estimate, and a smart canned job would be less than 10 seconds! Every second counts when trying to improve your shop’s efficiency.
We recommend building canned jobs for services frequently done in your shop, and in Tekmetric, you can build a normal canned job, or a smart one. This article will cover the following topics:
Smart vs. Normal Canned Job
First, let's cover the differences between a smart canned job and a normal one:
Canned Job - pre-saved job that includes labor and parts associated with the service being done. Canned jobs behave like a guide for your service writers because these parts and labor lines are essentially placeholders. So when the service writer uses the canned job on the estimate, they will still need to manually lookup the correct labor and parts for the vehicle being serviced.
Smart Canned Job - similar to a normal canned job, it is a pre-saved job that includes labor and parts associated with the service being done. However, these parts and labor lines automatically lookup the specific labor times and parts needed for the vehicle on the estimate, rather than the service writer needing to do it.
As an example in this article, we will build a normal canned job and a smart canned job for an oil change, then show you how they would work on an estimate.
Creating a Smart Canned Job
We recommend building a smart canned job for quick, maintenance types of services like an oil change, cabin air filter, spark plugs, etc.
To get started, navigate to the Canned Jobs section on the left menu bar.
Video on Engine Oil & Filter smart canned job linked here.
- Select New Canned Job on the top right, then select Smart Canned Job Wizard. The Wizard will walk you through setting up any smart job you select.
- Select Engine Oil & Filter, this is our most popular canned job used on smart jobs.
- Title your smart job. This will appear to your customers on the estimate and invoice.
- Select a job category. This is optional, but highly recommended if you're interested in analyzing most performed services in your job, what is the most profitable, where you could improve, etc. If you haven't set these up, visit our job category article.
- Select your labor rate.
- If you have a set menu price for your oil changes, you can setup a package price here, as well as charge for additional oil. Once you're done, click Continue.
- For example, if you charge $59.99 for up to 5 quarts of oil, then you will set your package price at $59.99, and enter a 5 for the charge for additional oil field.
- The surplus oil feature is only available on the smart canned job since we have a specific part line for oil in the code.
- In the next screen, you can adjust the labor line description if you're interested, or keep what we have listed.
- Select the labor hours you want on this Engine Oil smart job. You have two options:
- Use Tekmetric Labor Guide - if selected, we will adjust the labor hours on the job automatically, based on the vehicle being serviced.
- Use my own labor hours - if selected, you can add your own hours for the engine oil canned job. Many of our shops will charge 0.3 or 0.5 hrs for every oil change.
- Select your labor or part matrix if you'd like. Then select Continue.
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Select Engine Oil in your inventory. Here, you will want to add all the oil you stock in your inventory. This allows for quick and easy access for your service writers on the estimate (we will show an example later in the article).
- Note: if you're building this at the multi-shop level, you'll need to link oil once the canned job is published to the shop, since you can't manage inventory at the multi-shop level at this time.
- Engine Oil Filter - no action needed here, we will automatically pull from inventory if we find a match for the brands listed below. If not, we will display your vendors to get a quote from.
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Brands we match to today: Bosch, Carquest, Duramax, Ecoguard, FVP Releaguard, Mighty, NAPA, OEM, Pennzoil, Pronto, Service Champ, Spire, Valvoline, Wix
- Select Continue. We will then show the preview of the job, feel free to adjust if needed, then select Save.
You'll know if the canned job you've built is smart or not based on the lightning bolt. If there's a lighting bolt, then it's a smart job.
Creating a "Normal" Canned Job
We recommend building a normal canned job for harder, more complex services such as transmission rebuilds, drive axle shaft work or assembly, etc.
In this example, we will build a normal canned job for an oil change, so you can see the difference between a smart job and normal job when added to the estimate.
To get started, navigate to the Canned Jobs section on the left menu bar.
- Select New Canned Job on the top right, then select New Canned Job.
- Title your canned job. This will appear to your customers on the estimate and invoice.
- Manually add your labor line description, labor hours, and labor rate.
- Next, you will select Add Part > Add Part Manually
- Add part placeholders for the Engine Oil filter and Engine Oil (see screenshot below for example)
- Add fees and discounts (optional), then select Save.
- Now that the canned job is saved, select a job category. This is optional, but highly recommended if you're interested in analyzing most performed services in your job, what is the most profitable, where you could improve, etc. If you haven't set these up, visit our job category article.
- If you have a set menu price for your oil changes, you can setup a package price by clicking the lock icon next to the subtotal. Once you set your package price, select Save.
- For example, if you charge $59.99, then you will set your package price at $59.99, and select how you'd like calculation to be. NOTE: you can not charge for surplus oil on a normal canned job, this is only available on the smart canned job.
Connecting to Part Suppliers
Now that we've created canned jobs, let's add them to our estimate to see how they work.
When we add a normal canned job to the estimate, we will need to either 1) search inventory or 2) shop our vendors for the correct oil and filter. This will take your service writer about 30 seconds to a minute finalize, and about 6-8 clicks.
When we add a smart canned job to the estimate, Tekmetric will automatically pull the oil filter from inventory if we find it. If we don't have it stocked in inventory, we can quickly shop PartsTech within the job. Then all we would need to do is select the correct oil in our inventory "belt" shown in the video below. This will take your service writer less than 10-15 seconds to finalize, and about 2-3 clicks.
Watch the video below to see the difference when adding to the estimate.
Video
Smart Canned Jobs in Multi-Shop
Setting up a smart canned job is very similar at the multi-shop level as well. Please watch the video below to learn more.