Manage Your Time Inventory and Shop Capacity With Autosoft’s Service Schedule

No two dealership service departments are the same. Yes, the basic concepts, policies, and procedures may be similar from shop to shop, but very few are managed in the same way.

This fact is no truer than in the management of the daily service schedule. With the Autosoft Service Schedule application, you have the power to completely customize your service schedule to manage YOUR shop the way YOU want.

Create Multiple Schedules

Autosoft Service Schedule gives you the flexibility to have three different schedules: Service, Body, and Quick Service. No longer do your appointments have to clutter up one schedule and make management inefficient. Each schedule can be set up with that department’s specific capacity and parameters.

Customize Shop Hours and Capacity

Set your specific shop open and close hours for each day of the week to display on the schedule. This setup will ensure no appointments are booked outside of regular business hours.

You can also establish an hour capacity for each day of the week. Establishing this capacity will help you manage the one inventory item in the service department, TIME!

Setting your shop capacity can be as simple as taking the number of technicians in your shop and multiplying it by the number of available hours in the day (for example, 6 techs x 10 available hours = 60 hours capacity).

As appointments are booked, sold time will deduct from the total daily capacity and show what percentage is still available on the service schedule main screen. You will be able to see, at a quick glance, how much of your time inventory is booked and how much is left to sell.

TIP: Consider setting your capacity under 100% to leave room for upsells and additional walk-in business. Monitor your capacity usage and adjust accordingly.

Select Appointment Display Preferences

Perhaps you prefer to show your appointments on the service schedule not as the full appointment capacity, but rather as check-in times in 15-minute intervals. You have this option to display scheduled appointments either with quoted time or in 15-minute intervals (capacity percentage will still calculate based off of appointment duration).

You can also set your preferences to display the service schedule time in 12-hour or 24-hour format based on your shop’s processes.

Color Code Appointment Types

With the Autosoft FLEX DMS Service Schedule, you can customize the color of appointments based on their type. Five appointment types can be designated with their own colors—Dropoffs, Pickups, Requires Ride, Requires Loaner, and Waiting—and a single appointment type can be selected as the default when booking.

Set Up Columns by Technician, Advisor, Teams, or Repair Type

Autosoft DMS allows you to customize your service schedule to the way your shop operates. Simply select a technician from the drop down menu to assign a column or create a custom column (example: Recall Appointments).

For each column, you can designate a daily schedule, block time for lunch schedules, and set temporary vacation, training, and PTO schedules.

You can further organize your columns by creating column groupings, which you can use to collect related technicians or columns (teams). You can add technicians or custom columns to the group and can adjust your schedule to view only these groups.

These items are just a few of the customizable features of the Autosoft Service Schedule. Manage your time inventory and ensure you load your shop to its capacity to keep technicians working, customers happy, and money rolling in!

Ready to upgrade from Schedule Xpress? Check out this article to learn how.