Manager Forum

Hey there all. Question/idea for the development guys. Is there a possibility to add a second or even a third "category" field in the labor item window? I sometimes have jobs that tie into each other (as we all do) and it'd be nice to just type up an invoice fluidly which saves time (seconds, but still time once it adds up). For instance: performing a clutch job on a front wheel drive vehicle. You find out the sway bar links are broken and the vehicle's brake pads are down to 2/32nds. So rather than adding those extra jobs separately, I think it'd be easier to just keep writing it up all in the same job that it came in for and elect the other 2 categories as "secondary categories" aside from the "primary category" for the original estimate/repair. I'd love to see this come to fruition as I always type every customer's invoice in detail as far as: the customer's concern, the process of diagnosis, the recommended repair, and anything additional that may happen along the way. It helps to do it that way especially when the customer sees it typed out that way and says "ah yes, I see now". Like the mastercard commercials- the look and sound of your customer having an understanding and peace of mind as to how and why you performed the repairs (in print) is "priceless".

Interesting idea, but I see several complications. First, how would you distribute labor dollars to the different categories for reporting purposes? Second, when looking up history you may not find sway bar links because they are buried in another labor. Best practice is to keep separate labors separate. If you want some logic to why you did sway bar links during an unrelated job, just put an explanation in the symptom field. We do this all the time and there is never any confusion on the customer side.