Highlights in Version 8.8

New Interfaces in Version 8.8

• PartsTech interface, letting you order from nearly all your suppliers on a single screen.
• Merchant Partners interface, with which your customers can use fleet cards like WEX & Voyager, and private cards like Goodyear and Firestone.
• TireMetrix interface, automating your DOT tire registration. Electronic DOT registration is now required by law for tire dealers.
• Max Finkelstein Tire interface, connecting you directly with Finkelstein Tire Distributors.

Point of Sale

• Greatly improved the speed of saving Workorders for shops with large inventories.
• When searching for a customer while creating an appointment in the Scheduler, you can now enter any of the 4 numbers associated with a customer to find that customer. Enter the number in the yellow box above the phone column.

PartsTech

With the free PartsTech interface, you can order from all, or nearly all your suppliers from a single page. PartsTech connects you to AutoZone, NAPA, WorldPac, CarQuest, Advanced, Federated, Bumper to Bumper, and many others. For a supplier map, click here.

• Setup is automated at PartsTech’s website. Add and remove suppliers at will.
• You can pull parts from your various suppliers into the Workorder. Then after your customer approves the job, you can order from all the suppliers at once with a single click. Or you can uncheck the parts you are not ready to order, and order the rest of them.
• You can assign keywords to your various inventory items, such as labor items and generic parts. (This is done in the Sales tab of Inventory Entry.) Then, when you have that item selected in the Workorder and click the PartsTech button, PartsTech will see those keywords (like “air filter” or “brake pad”) and take you directly to the parts you need.
• To get started, you can call PartsTech at 866-308-5193, or reach them at info@partstech.com.

Merchant Partners

In addition to Major, Fleet and Industry-specific credit card processing (like Voyager, WEX & Goodyear) with zero markup, your customers can get the credit approval they need now with a very quick and easy integrated Financing Application. Access all these offerings from Merchant Partners/1stMILE within your AutoFluent Software. Click here for more information, or call AutoFluent support.

TireMetrix

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced that tire dealers must now electronically register all tires sold, or potentially face heavy fines. See this article by the Tire Business magazine. To both protect you, and help you build confidence with your customers, AutoFluent has teamed up with TireMetrix to include their DOT registration product in our Tire Module. TireMetrix has by far the most innovative registration product on the market. Its features include:

• DOT numbers are automatically validated as you enter them
• DOT alert for expired or recalled tires
• Reporting on recalled tires sold, to facilitate follow-ups with customers

Reports

• New Report: Inventory Sales by Customer. This report will tell you what has been purchased by a particular customer in a given period. It lists all the items purchased, showing quantity, amount, and optionally profit amount and percent. You can filter it by inventory type, group, etc., like other inventory reports. This is useful for showing trends and tracking profit for your important customers, and giving you ideas on offering them incentives.
• When emailing customer statements, you can now edit / customize the message in the body of the email.
• The back-dated inventory report now ignores current adjustments, not just current sales and purchases.
• The Sales Rep Sales Report now gives you averages per sales rep for the period, to help you monitor the productivity of your reps. You get the average invoice amount, as well as the average parts, labor, miscellaneous, spiff and profit.
• Labor hours have been added to the Sales Rep Sales Report by Mechanic. Note that these are hours associated with the mechanic listed in the Workorder line. If a job on a Workorder line was worked on (and clocked in on) by multiple mechanics, this number will not reflect that. Instead, you should use the Mechanic Tracking reports.

Miscellaneous

• In order to be more friendly with spam filters, the email headings have been changed when emailing statements and invoices.
• When running a daily report, your customer’s balances are recalculated to assure accuracy of the customer control totals.
• If you are tracking Bin Quantities, when you enter quantities in the Physical Inventory Count window, you are shown both the total quantity on hand and the quantity in the selected bin for each item. If you are not tracking Bin Quantities, you see the quantity on hand and the available quantity instead.