Tracking Repair Orders

The software allows you to list and track repairs made to each vehicle as well as total the costs of those repairs by entering your repair orders into the software's Repair Order Entry window. Think of a repair order in much the same way as you would think of a dinner check from your local restaurant. The overall check has a check number, a date, the name of the restaurant providing the service, and the total cost of the bill. On the check, each item ordered is (usually) written out with an item number from the menu, a description of what that item was, and the cost for that one item. Keeping this model in mind, you can think of a repair order as being similar to the overall restaurant check, and each of the repair order's items as being similar to each food item on the overall check. The sum of all individual repair order items will make up the total cost of the repair order.

The Repair Order Entry  window can be accessed two ways:

1. Select the Repair Orders option from the Maintenance menu while displaying the vehicle being repaired.
2. Click the Repair Orders button which acts as a cost entry box heading under the Pricing Information tab of the Inventory Detail screen.

The software will then display the Repair Order Entry window into which you can being entering your repair order data.

Adding Repair Orders

To add a repair order, click the Add button on the right-hand side of the screen. A new line will be added to the listing. Click in each section of the line and fill out the requested information. You will not need to enter a figure in the Total Cost section of the new line as this will be calculated by the software. Again, using the analogy described above, think of the repair order as similar to a restaurant check.

When you enter the name of a repair order vendor, the software will compare that vendor's name to any vendor names previously saved into the database. If the vendor's name is not in the database already, the software will ask if you want to add this vendor to the database.

Click the Yes button to add the vendor name to the database or click the No button to leave the vendor out of the database. Adding the vendor name to the database will help speed up your data entry of future repair orders if you use the same vendor in the future. Once the vendor's name has been saved to the database, you can recall that vendor whenever you add a repair order line to the listing by clicking the drop-down arrow in the Vendor section of the line and selecting the vendor's name from the list of memorized vendors that appears.

Note: Clicking the No button will not remove the vendor's name from this repair order entry. The vendor's name is simply not added to the drop-down list for easy data entry.

Once you have entered the appropriate information for the repair order, you may add detail information for each item in the repair order. Again using the analogy above, think of the items of a repair order as each individual food item on the overall restaurant check.

To begin entering the items on this particular repair order, click the magnifying glass in the repair order's entry. The software will present a sub-window into which you can begin to add each item. To enter an item, click the Add button at the bottom of this sub-window. A new item entry line will be added to the listing. Simply fill in each section of the line: the part number, a description of the item, and the price of the item. The software will keep a running total of these items and use that total amount as the overall total cost of this repair order.

If you wish to delete an item's entry, simply click in the line representing the item you wish to delete and then click the Delete button at the bottom of this sub-window.

When you are finished entering your repair order items, click the Close button at the bottom of this sub-window. You may add more repair orders if you wish by repeating the process. If you have finished entering repair orders for this vehicle, click the Close button at the bottom-right of the window. The software will add up the total cost of all repair orders and place this figure into the Repair Orders cost box under the Pricing tab of the Inventory Details screen .

Deleting Repair Orders

To delete an entire repair order and all of its individual items, simply click the repair order line entry and then click the Delete button at the right-hand side of the window. The entire repair order will be permanently deleted from the database.