MAIL
Garage Keeper
Quality
To be truly useful, a computer program must perform quickly and reliably.
Execution speed and data integrity are top priorities in the design
and
programming of GarageKeeper 500. This starts with the choice of
programming tools and carries through to the choice of hardware and
software for the operating environment. Each item is chosen to give
you the
best
protection for your information.
Designed for Automotive Repair Shops & Dealerships
GarageKeeper 500 provides invoicing, customer tracking, inventory control,
and service management to mechanical repair shops and small new car
dealerships. By making your invoices on a local area network or on
a
single-user computer using GarageKeeper 500, you can automatically
update information on parts usage, services done to the vehicle, mechanics’
labor dollars,
weekly sales and profit figures, and accounts receivable.
GarageKeeper 500 gives you the tools you need to manage your inventory,
write estimates and work orders, track parts and service history, and
keep in
touch with your
customers.
Professional, Accurate Estimates
& Work Orders
Generate printed, accurate estimates quickly
and then turn them into
work orders with a single keystroke. Start
out with work orders when no
estimates are needed. Turn work orders into
invoices with a single
command when the work is finished.
Paste information from the Mitchell International
CD-ROM Mechanical
Parts & Labor Estimating Guide (available
separately) into your estimates
and work orders.
Estimates and work orders can include parts,
labor, sublet labor,
advance payments, and sales tax.
GarageKeeper pulls current prices from inventory
and applies proper
customer discounts automatically when you
add parts to estimates and
work orders.
You don’t have to know the exact part number
to put an inventory item
on an estimate or work order. You can specify
the beginning of the part
number or part name, and start there to find
the part you need, from
within the work
order.
Items you don’t stock can be added to estimates
as comments. When
estimates are converted to work orders, these
comments are turned into
purchase orders automatically.
Estimates can stay on file until they are erased
or turned into work orders.
Work orders always stay on file until you
erase or invoice them. You can
change any item on any estimate or
work order.
Add parts discount by percentage or amount to any work order.
Track 5 different categories of sublet labor.
Sales tax on parts, shop labor, discounts on
labor, and each type of
sublet labor are calculated according to sales
tax rates and rules you
assign in advance.
Display work in progress by date and time promised,
status, license# or
customer code.
Assign specific line items on estimates or
work orders to warranty providers
and let GarageKeeper figure the correct prices
and make separate
invoices for the customer and each
warranty provider.
Express shop labor in hours and GarageKeeper
will calculate the labor
amount from the hourly rate of the mechanic
and the job class you
assign.
Inventory Management
GarageKeeper helps you manage your inventory
with up-to-date
information about parts, prices and
profits.
Define up to five part number/vendor combinations
for each part in
inventory. Use any of the five part
numbers to refer to that part.
Print inventory counterpads with your choice
of 26 facts about each part
you stock.
Browse through the inventory in four sequences:
by part number, location,
part name or application.
Print the inventory and purchase orders in
VW-Porsche-Audi or Mercedes
sequence.
The average cost is maintained for each inventory
part. When new parts
are received, their cost is averaged with
the cost of items already in stock
to compute the new weighted average
cost.
Use the + key to calculate list price from
cost according to your own cost
+ table.
Various customer pricing levels are available
on parts: list price, 3 prices
based on percentages of markup for each of
10 inventory types, cost
plus 1 to 99 percent, and list minus 1 to
99 percent. You can designate
individual parts as never
discounted and/or exempt from sales tax.
When you pay invoices, receive parts, or change
the cost, price, or
number on hand of an inventory part directly,
GarageKeeper logs the
activity in parts history. You can view and
print the log in several ways,
including a Bosch report and top
special order items.
You indicate that a part has a core by filling
in a core value when you
add the part to inventory. After that, GarageKeeper
adds the sore
charge to work orders whenever you
sell the parts.
You set up the minimum stocking level and reorder
quantity for each
part. When the number on hand falls below
the minimum, GarageKeeper
puts the part on a purchase order.
You issue the purchase orders when you actually
order parts. You can
request a printed copy and/or a copy saved
on your hard disk. Purchase
orders remain on file until they
are received or cancelled.
Receivings for stock are checked against purchase
orders. This protects
you from accepting parts which were
not ordered.
The receivings task can handle parts returned
to your suppliers, in addition
to incoming parts and sublet work.
Receive special order parts, either with or
without purchase orders,
directly onto work in progress,
without going through inventory.
Year-to-date number sold and profit and the
date of last sale are
maintained for each part. The sales analysis
reports use this information to
recommend changes to your inventory.
Worksheets printed in location sequence make
it easy for you to count
your inventory periodically. The inventory
load task makes it easy to enter
your counts into GarageKeeper.
Adjust inventory prices by percentage, by amount,
or using your cost +
table. Parts are selected by vendor, date
of last activity, application,
and range of locations or part
numbers.
BACK TO TOP
Customers and Service
History
Whenever you pay an invoice, GarageKeeper records
it. At the beginning
of the next business day, these invoices are
copied to permanent
storage. You can display and
reprint these paid invoices.
GarageKeeper keeps the paid invoices in a "megadisk"
area. You decide
how much hard disk space to use for this.
You can display and reprint
these paid invoices very easily,
even from within a work order in progress.
You define service jobs for the services you
want to track. These service
jobs can apply to certain makes, models, and
years of vehicles, or they
can be more general.
You use the service jobs on estimates and work
orders by entering the job
name you defined. GarageKeeper finds the service
job which goes with
the particular vehicle. If you don’t know
the exact name of the service
job, you can browse through the
appropriate jobs.
Service jobs can include labor, inventory parts,
and "generic" parts. With
generic parts, the description of the parts
helps you select the specific
part number from your inventory
when you use the job.
You define the service intervals for each service
category. Service
intervals can be miles, months, or
both .
Each service job can be tracked by the service
category. This tracking
number shows on the work order screen when
you use this type of service
job. You can also assign service categories
"on the fly" to jobs that were
taken from the Mitchell CD-ROM.
When you pay invoices containing service categories,
GarageKeeper
records these services and re-averages the
monthly mileage for the
vehicle. You can choose to calculate a lifetime
average, an average
over the last two services, or an average
over a number of months for
each vehicle. You can view this
service history.
Print customer lists, mailing labels, and letters
for all your customers, or for
customers you select based on customer, vehicle,
and service
information.
Put the selected customers to an ASCII disk
file, if you want to use the
information with another program.
You can print a variety of customer reminders
according to the service
intervals you have defined. You can use the
reminder letter which comes
with GarageKeeper, or you can use
reminder letters of your own.
Print reminders for services done or due in
any time interval. For services
which are due by mileage, GarageKeeper projects
the due date based
on average miles driven, if
possible.
Browse through your customers by full or partial
license#, customer code,
postal code, or vehicle serial
number.
Maintain an odometer offset for any vehicle.
GarageKeeper will add this
figure to the current mileage odometer reading
you enter on a work
order to arrive at the actual
mileage.
Keep free-form notes on each customer, and
access them easily from
any customer screen or work
order.
BACK TO TOP
Business Management and Accounting
Each time you close a day or week, GarageKeeper
helps you balance
your cashbox. You find mistakes the
day they happen, not weeks later.
The daily report prints when you end the day,
and summarizes the
invoices paid, sales tax collected,
and cashbox activity for the day.
The weekly report prints whenever you choose
end of week. The weekly
report recaps all your business for the past
week, including details on
invoices paid, parts profit on every invoice
paid, and parts and sublet
labor received.
The weekly report includes a total of labor
billed by each mechanic, and
an efficiency report to help you see how your
workers are doing by
person and by job class.
Use the ASCII Accounting Export to feed selected
weekly report details
into many popular accounting
programs and spreadsheets.
Accumulate parts, labor, other charges, and
tax totals for each invoice
paid during the last 99 months, for
use in custom reports.
The monthly report, showing totals of invoices,
sales tax collected, and
receivings by vendor for the month just finished,
prints automatically on
the
first day of each new month.
You can display the sales tax collected today,
this week, this month, and
this
year.
Accounts receivable tracks your fleet charge
accounts, makes account
statements and aging reports, and prints a
weekly recap of A/R activity.
Journals of A/R activity can be
displayed or printed.
A/R activity is grouped into fleets for billing
purposes. Each fleet account
can include one or several vehicles. Customer
charges are recorded
automatically when you pay invoices
by charge.
Service charges can be applied to overdue accounts.
Setup a recurring charge for any vehicle, and
GarageKeeper will make
an A/R invoice for the vehicle at
the interval you specify.
Print a report of work in progress, showing
the labor hours on selected
work orders and/or estimates by mechanic and
by job class. This helps
schedule labor, and points out
overbooking and underbooking.
Attach a cash drawer to a serial port on the
cashier’s workstation, and
have GarageKeeper pop the drawer
open when appropriate.
Information
Security
GarageKeeper helps you eliminate incorrect
information before it ever
gets into your data. For example, if you press
a letter key while entering
an amount, GarageKeeper ignores
it.
The Btrieveâ record manager helps GarageKeeper
recover from most
power outages without any damage to
your data.
File rebuilders help you recover from unforeseen
problems.
Customized for Your Business, by
You
You can change the appearance of printed estimates,
work orders, and
invoices. Specify the vertical placement of
the heading, labor, parts, and
totals on the page. Include blocks of text
with warranty information or
advertising messages.
Set up a different layout for parts only tickets,
and print the unit list, unit
net, extended list, or savings in
addition to extended net.
Choose your printers: Epson/IBM, Okidata, C.Ioth,
Toshiba, or
Hewlett-Packard LaserJet+, LaserJet Series
II, LaserJet III, or LaserJet4. You
can route your report to as many as
three printers.
If you use a LaserJet printer, you can customize
GarageKeeper’s
standard invoice, purchase order, and account
statement forms, or have
us do it for you.
Define as many mechanics codes as you need,
and decide whether the
labor for each mechanic will be entered as
hours or dollars on estimates
and work orders. GarageKeeper supports multiple
job classes for each
person, if you need to charge different rates
for different classes of jobs
and/or track the income separately.
Decide how you want your parts margins to be
displayed on the totals
screen for work in progress. Choose a margin
percentage, or a more
subtle indicator to flag margins above or below a certain percentage.
Define up to 18 passwords to limit entry into
GarageKeeper, and restrict
access by
function key.
Set up ten sets of sales tax rates for up to
3 taxing authorities, define how
the taxes are calculated, and specify which
set of rates and rules applies
to each customer. GarageKeeper uses this information
to calculate the
sales tax on estimates, work orders, and invoices.
If you have multiple
taxing authorities, you can specify that the
tax for each be printed
separately on work orders and invoices. This
feature allows Canadian
shops to comply with the GST laws.
Define the names of the 5 types of sublet labor to track.
Set up the cost + table with the markup percentages
you want to charge
for parts, and use it to calculate
list price from cost.
Set the percentage to charge for customer returns, from 0 to 100%.
Select the way parts receivings affect inventory
prices: average with
existing price, replace current
price, or no price change.
Set a percentage variance for parts receivings.
GarageKeeper will warn
you when a new part comes in at a cost or
price which varies from the
current cost or price by more than
this percentage.
Decide whether you want automatic customer
pricing discounts to apply
to special order parts.
Select the screen colors for each major task.
You can mix monochrome
and color stations
on the network if desired.
Define layouts for the bin labels and customer
mailings labels you want
to print, including sheets of
labels on LaserJet printers
Print code 39 bar codes for part numbers on
purchase orders, if you have
a LaserJet printer.
BACK TO TOP
GarageKeeper 500 Major
Functions
GarageKeeper is designed to handle the paperwork for your repair shop
without changing the way you do
business. GarageKeeper is an interactive
program, made to run on the service counter, on the parts counter,
on the
shop floor, at the cashier’s window, and in the office as you perform
your daily
tasks. Start work orders when the work actually begins, and keep them
up to
date as the work progresses. Issue purchase orders when you are ready
to
order parts, and receive them when they arrive. Look up inventory parts
and
prices whenever you need to, and always know what you have on hand.
View old paid invoices for a customer’s vehicle without leaving the
current
work order.
You get around GarageKeeper by pressing function keys to select the
major
tasks, and by selecting items from numbered menus where
appropriate.
Function
Description
F1
Work Orders
Start estimates and work orders, update
estimates and work orders in process, pay
invoices
F2
Inventory
Add new parts to inventory, look at or
update parts you stock
F3
Purchase Orders
Issue and cancel PO’s for stock and
special orders
F4
Receivings
Record parts (stocking items and special
orders) and sublet work as they come in
F5
Customers
Add new customers, look at or update
existing customers, review the vehicle
service history and paid invoices stored on
line
F6
Service
Management
Menu
Maintain and print the service jobs and
service categories, view and reprint
invoices paid today or old invoices from
floppy disks, look at parts history log
F7
File
Maintenance
Menu
Add and update vendors, customize
GarageKeeper for your shop, load
physical inventory counts, adjust inventory
prices, maintain the table of vehicle
makes and models
F8
Reports Menu
Print inventory, customers, reminders, sales
analysis, bin labels, purchase orders,
physical inventory worksheets, the Bosch
report, top special orders sold, other parts
log details
F9
Accounts
Receivable
Manage charge accounts for individuals
and fleets, print statements, print aging
reports, apply service charges
F10
Exit
Balance your cashbox, print the daily and
weekly reports
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