Futures
Current GarageKeeper users should upgrade to Motive Power 3, our shop management program for 32 or 64 bit Windows 7. We import your GarageKeeper customers and vehicles. We convert your inventory into the Motive Power parts catalog. We bring your GarageKeeper 2000 invoices into Motive Power so you don't need to keep GarageKeeper running.
Should I use Motive Power 3.5 or GarageKeeper 2000?
Here are the features that Motive Power 3.5 has that GarageKeeper 2000 does not have.
SmartJobs – Every job you do automatically becomes re-usable. Changes made on the face of the current ticket become the latest instance of that Smart Job.
Invoices by job – Each job shows a labor description, parts and sublets, totals and techs. The invoice total sums those up and add the discounts, supplies charges if any, and taxes.
Work flow – Shows what is where now, when it needs to be done, and who needs to do it. Work flow is a way of defining the path through your shop from initial contact to finished job, to reminder.
WorldPac speedDIAL – Create estimates and build POs at the same time directly from the parts section of the current work order.
Do things once – One of the main reasons we created Motive Power was to take advantage of the power of SQL Server to re-use data. Write up a job once and re-use it forever.
Help system – Detailed context-sensitive help is available from anywhere in the program by pressing F1.
Time clock – Available from the work order screen. Job dispatch shows each tech what to do when.
Profit scoring – Control profit margin for labor, parts and sublet for each job and for the ticket overall.
Invoice graphic – Easily place any color or black and white jpg or gif image on your invoice.
Customer sales history – Quickly see how much a customer has spent in various time periods.
Vehicle service history – Quickly review the service history of a vehicle without having to open individual work orders to see those details.
Unlimited vehicles per account – One account tracks all the vehicles and/or equipment belonging to a single owner with easy ways to transfer vehicles in and out of customer accounts.
Find customer – Use the contents of up to 12 different fields to find a customer.
Find vehicle – Use the contents of up to 13 different fields to find a vehicle.
Profitability analysis – Decision support is provided in a 30 dimension Excel Decision Cube.
Accounting integration – QuickBooks is updated as part of the process of finalizing the invoice. Invoice totals are broken down by labor, parts, sublet, supplies, taxes and Accounts Receivable entries.
One click reminders – Both emailed and printed service reminders happen with a single click.
E-mail from work order – Send a copy of the current estimate or work order and a message or just a plain message directly from the work order.
System maintenance warnings – You get a signal when you have exceeded the number of days you specified between backups and other system maintenance.
Easy to use customer count – Easily find out how many 2005-2010 BMWs or how many F-150s you service.
Supply or environmental fees – Set fees by dollar or percentage. You specify what total the fee is based on (parts and/or labor and/or sublet) and how it is taxed.
Spell checker – All the long fields where you type away, like job description or work needed, have a spell checker running. You can add words to the dictionary like tranny or EFI.
Runs on Windows XP/Vista/7/8 – Uses the latest Microsoft Windows.
SQL Server 2008 R2 –This is the most current version of Microsoft’s flagship product available as of March 2012.
Custom reports available – Everybody thinks about their shop differently. By using SQL Server we can make custom reports in a short time at a reasonable price.
Warranty provider per job – Providers are set per job. They can be assigned the liability for the parts and/or labor, and/or sublet portions of any job.
Separate work order screens for techs – Techs see the jobs assigned to them in the order those jobs are promised out the door. Any job that must go today is in the tech’s personal alert color.
Multiple techs on same job – You can run time tracking for more than one person on a job. This helps truck stops that routinely assign multiple people to a job as well as capture helper time on an R&R.
Fine grained security on tech work orders – You have control over what a technician is allowed to do with every field on a work order.
Review parts by time added to ticket – Makes it easy for a service writer to find parts added to a ticket since a specific time, regardless of how that part got added.
Work order attachments – You can attach any file that Windows can open. Common uses are attaching the safety check list to the work order, taking pictures of broken parts, and saving analyzer reports.
Work order voice recordings – You can make either microphone or telephone recordings of customer complaints or service writer instructions to techs.
Workload balancing – Provides an easy way to alert you of tight schedules and help you to fix them.
Work in dollars or hours – Most labor and discount fields let you enter either one.
Vehicle history report – Shows all the services you have done on this vehicle regardless of the number of previous owners or license plates.
In-house comments – These don’t print anywhere. They are available for each customer, vehicle, work order job and work order info page.
Handles license plate updates –Can tell the difference between an update to the license or a different vehicle
Handles changes in ownership – Provides a way to move vehicles to different customers and a retain all service information and send the reminders to the new owner.
Mileage in and out – Some jurisdictions require you to record this info.
Many new reports – Lots of new individual reports and a set of logs that track things happening with third parties like the Email log, the order log, the payments log, the QuickBooks long and the speedDIAL log.
Unlimited phone numbers – Now you can track every phone in the family if you like.
Detailed FAQ at web site – The built-in Help system is about how to use Motive Power. Details on interactions with operating systems and hardware and third party items are kept current in the FAQ.
Mouse or keyboard in most areas – You can operate Motive Power the way that you prefer.
Parts report within work orders – Enables service writers to track the parts for the work orders they are writing. There is a report for the whole shop in the main reports section.
Tool Tips on many fields throughout the program – If we thought the button title was not 100% obvious we added a tool tip to give you more detail.
Split off unsold jobs unto new estimate – Estimated jobs that the customer does not approve for the current visit can be moved onto another estimate or work order so your time is not lost.
Many ways to find customer and vehicle – You now have 4 screens to help you find customers and you can combine the criteria on any screen to narrow your choices.
Tech Report – Shows the techs exactly what they got credited with for any given time period. This was designed specifically to accompany paychecks in flat rate shops.
Control of job order on printed invoice – You can move that brake cable that got replaced late in the day to be next to the rest of the brake work you did.
Use any printer – If the printer works in Windows it works with Motive Power. You can add color to your invoices as well. Any printing limitations are those of the particular printer chosen.
See your older invoices – When you convert from GarageKeeper 2000 those invoices are available to view and print from within Motive Power so you don’t need to keep GarageKeeper running.
On-line training – Basic training is available on line at You Tube. Find the channel MotivePowerDotCom.
Features GarageKeeper 2000 has that Motive Power 3.5 does not have
Service jobs – The advantage is that you make a job and set up the year range. The disadvantages are that you can’t do that from the face of the work order. Part number and price changes are not captured unless you go into service jobs and edit them. In Motive Power you make the change on the face of the current invoice. In Motive Power if you don’t have a 100% make/model/year match you can pull any job from a finalized invoice onto any estimate or work order as a starting point.
Inventory control – This is really the main reason we structured GarageKeeper the way we did. Back in time you could not get high productivity figures without a substantial inventory. Since 2000 that has changed quite a bit. We participated in a multi-year experiment with Rod Georgiu, the gentleman that started Alldata. The main thing we learned is that once 70% or more of the work is done using recently delivered parts, the in house inventory record keeping is no longer accurate.
That said, we have several shops using both Motive Power and GarageKeeper. Motive Power has a field for part type on the work order. People keeping an inventory can call those stocked parts. Motive Power can produce a report of stocked parts used in any given time period. Shops use this report to make a single parts-only ticket in GarageKeeper to keep the old inventory straight. It is a good way to make progress and slowly reduce the remaining inventory.
Accounts Receivable – Part of the reason for keeping accounts receivable in GarageKeeper 2000 was for fleet accounts. Motive Power has the fleet capability built in for each customer. Motive Power feeds QuickBooks with invoice details and A/R details. Quick Books is better than the GarageKeeper accounts receivable. Almost all accountants and bookkeepers understand QuickBooks. Very few outsiders are comfortable working with GarageKeeper accounting.
Periodic processing – GarageKeeper requires start and end of day, end of week, end of month, and end of year processing. Motive Power has none of those things. All information for any time period is always available.