Features
Motive Power controls work orders, workers, profitability, and handles
customer contact. Motive Power views the basic unit of work as a job. Each work
order is organized as a series of jobs. Each job has a job description, parts
list, sublets needed (if any) and timeclock. Work orders show separate totals
and profit margins for each job. Detailed information is kept for each customer
and each vehicle or piece of equipment owned by that customer. Detailed reports
break down parts usage, sales, and timeclock data. All payments, work orders,
e-mails and license number changes are logged. Motive Power does not require you
to perform any end of day or end of week activities. The system prompts you when
reminders are due or a backup is overdue.
Work orders features:
- Smart Jobs
- Timekeeping
- Job Scoring
- E-mailing
- Voice Messages
Customer Management features:
- Customer Information
- Vehicles/Equipment
- Customer Contact
- Integration with QuickBooks
Customization options:
- Invoice Formatting
- Supplies Charges
- Sales Tax Setup
- Job Scoring Setup
- Drop Down Lists
- Job Titles
- Personnel
- Reminders
- Warning
Reporting abilities:
- Parts Needed
- Timeclock Details
- Sales Analysis
- Activity Logs
- Exports
Other daily operations:
- Cashbox details
- Data backup
- Sales and tech summaries
- Reminder print and e-mail
- Recover disk space
Services:
- GarageKeeper 2000 data conversion available
- Multi-user installation available
- Support contract available
Motive Power has these unique work order features:
- Smart jobs - learn every job, part, and sublet ever done and makes
them available for easy reuse. Any job that has been done will appear
automatically the next time that same job needs to be done on that same
vehicle or piece of equipment. Any job done is available as a starting point
for any other job that needs to be done.
- Timekeeping - provides a built in time clock that allows for both
real time capture and hand entry of time spent on a job by job basis. Reports
help you to analyze worker productivity and gather information for use in
calculating payroll.
- Job scoring - guarantees proper profit margins on each component of
each job. You set your minimum acceptable margin for labor, for parts, and for
sublets. Motive Power shows you anything that does not meet your profit
requirements for each of these components for each job on the current work
order. You can choose settings that prevent a work order from being finalized
until it meets these margins.
- E-mailing
- lets you send copies of estimates and work in progress to customers that
have an e-mail address in their customer record.
- Voice messages - allow the person doing a job to hear the symptoms
exactly as described by the customer. Customers talk faster than most service
writers type. This is a great way to handle descriptions of unusual noises or
intermittent failures.
Motive Power has these customer information and business
building features:
- Customer information - Motive Power tracks two names for each
customer. This can be used for families with different last names or to tie a
customer's name to their business name. It keeps e-mail addresses and
unlimited phone numbers for each customer. You can set pricing levels and tax
types for each customer.
- Vehicles/Equipment - allows any number of units for each customer.
It tracks 10 facts about each unit, such as make, model year, license, serial
number, color, etc. The service history of each unit is available together
with the ability to see the details on any service by displaying the work
order that contains that service. A location is provided for each unit for
shops that do on-site or mobile service.
- Customer contact - Motive Power can print or e-mail reminders as
services become due. An interface to a third party reminder service is
provided for shops that prefer that approach.
- QuickBooks integration - If you run QuickBooks Pro 2004 or better,
Motive Power can automatically record your partial payments and finalized
invoices in QuickBooks.
Motive Power is easily dialed in to your needs:
- Invoice formatting - provides a great deal of control over the
appearance of the printed work order. Custom graphics, colors and fonts are
provided for the work order heading. Several areas are available for custom
text so that you can put your hours and policies in as much or as little
detail as you prefer.
- Supplies charges - lets you add an overhead charge to each work
order. The title, percentage, minimum and maximum amounts, and tax treatment
of these charges are under your control.
- Sales taxes - are easy to set up and change. You can apply
different percentages to labor, parts and sublet items. The program provides
for multiple different taxing authorities. It covers odds cases such as the
Florida law that does not tax labor on labor only tickets.
- Job scoring setup - lets you dial in separate profit margins for
labor, parts and sublet. You decide if tickets can be paid off below margin
and by whom. You decide if time must be captured on labor operations, or if
costs must be captured on parts and sublets. You decide if vendors must be
picked from the vendor list on parts and sublets.
- Dropdown lists - are shipped with information filled in so you can
get started right away. You can add or remove items from these lists. Lists
include makes/models, engines, vehicle types, colors, parts pricing, customer
types, order statuses, job titles, sublet types, vendors, part types, and
payment types.
- Job titles - are the most powerful part of Motive Power. Each time
you add a job on a work order you start by picking a job type. Job titles
include a job description and a labor operation type. Types include things
like brakes, diagnosis, fuel injection, etc. Job titles can also include time
charged, service intervals, and whether this particular job title should
generate a customer reminder.
- Personnel - lists all your workers and what types of operations
each worker can be assigned. You set your hourly billing rates here as well as
the hourly cost of having each particular worker on the job. These figures are
used in job scoring and reports to help you analyze profitability and set
rates.
- Security - lets you decide which workers are permitted to make
changes to your data. Decide who does work orders, changes customer
information, alters your custom settings and generates reports. You can limit
who can see and alter timeclock figures, who can pay off a ticket that is
below margin, and who can override the selling price of parts and sublets.
- Reminders - are the best way to build your business. Motive Power
provides you with the ability to print reminder postcards or e-mail reminders.
If you don't want to do that job yourself, Motive Power provides a connection
to a third party reminder service. This company,
CustomerLink, uses information from Alldata to decide when to send out
reminders on your behalf.
- Warnings - are the way that Motive Power tells you that something
needs to be done. You decide how often to do backups, send reminders, and
recover space on your hard disk. When those items come due, the program gives
you a gentle reminder by putting a cloud across the sun of the Daily Task
button.
Motive Power provides a variety of reports like:
(most reports can be saved in HTML format)
- Parts ordering - helps you to get the items you need.
- The replace parts report shows you all the items you used from stock in
a given period. The report gives you a list of what you need to get from
each vendor to replace those items.
- The parts on tickets report shows you everything you put on works orders
since a given time. Typically you would do your morning write up and then
print this report of the parts you put on tickets in the last hour or two in
order to get them coming. This insures that you do not forget an item.
- Timeclock reports - give you a way to see exactly what happened.
- The entry detail report shows the exact start and stop times or hand
entered entries for each job on each ticket done in the time period you
specify.
- The invoice detail report shows you every minute for a specified work
order or invoice.
- The time invoiced report shows the total time spent. You can show this
by invoice, day week, or month. You can see the activity for one or all
techs and one or all operations. This is a great way to see the breakdown of
work in your shop. For example you may want to see the total time spent on
brakes for the last three months.
- Sales reports - help you with gross sales figures and profit
analysis.
- The sales recap shows you total sales by period for labor operations,
techs, parts types and vehicle makes.
- The below score report details invoices that failed to meet your labor
or parts or sublet margins.
- The detail profit report gives you the breakdown of an individual work
order.
- The reminders sent report shows you the customers that were contacted
for additional work.
- The reminders due report shows you which customers are due to be
reminder about which services.
- The job analysis report shows you how many times each labor operation
has been performed in a given time period. You can also specify makes models
and years of vehicles or equipment to be help you make decisions about the
work load in the shop and skill levels needed for workers.
- Logs - give you a way to review the history of what happened in
your shop.
- The license log shows you the history of license plates and owners for
each vehicle. This is very helpful in states where the license plates change
regularly.
- The e-mail log is a history of whom you sent e-mail to when and for what
purpose.
- The order log shows you the history of a work order and any associated
estimates and invoices. It also details the original estimate price versus
the finished price and gives you a way to look at tickets that were started
but never invoiced.
- The payments log shows you when and how you took in money. Details cover
advanced and partial payments as well showing whether payments were made in
cash, by check, or with a credit card.
- Exports - give you a way to send data from Motive Power to
other programs.
- Most of the reports can be saved in HTML format for use by other
programs.
- The invoiced sales export includes details on jobs from finalized
invoices. The info can be sent to Microsoft Excel 2000 or better as a
pivot table, or exported as tab-delimited ASCII.
- The invoiced parts export includes details on parts grouped by type from
finalized invoices. This can be sent to Microsoft Excel 2000 or better as a
pivot table, or exported as tab-delimited ASCII.
Daily tasks show you things that you need to do such as:
- Cashbox balancing - to help insure that the money taken in is
accounted for and deposited. All payments not deposited are detailed. Because
Motive Power has no required daily or weekly processing, you can make deposits
when it is most convenient for you.
- Backup - insures that your data is secure in case of machine
failure. The short term backup button makes quick snapshots of the current
state of your active data. We recommend that you do this at least once a day.
The long term backup should be done to some type of media that you take home.
This protects you in cases of fire, vandalism, or total hard drive failure. We
recommend that you do this at least once a week.
- Summary - provides you with details on recent shop activity. Totals
are shown for parts, labor, sublets, supplies, discounts and sales taxes.
Gross parts, labor and sublet totals are shown for each type of labor
operation. Hours on the job, sales, and profitability for each type of labor
operation are shown for each tech. The default setting is for a daily report
but you can set any range to create weekly and monthly reports as well.
- Reminders - bring in more business. When there are reminders due to
be sent, the reminders button lights up. You click the button to print
reminder postcards or the button to e-mail reminders. The settings are done in
a different part of the program so you do not see any of that in the daily
task area.
- Recover Space - to get back disk space used by outdated voice
messages. When messages are older than the date you specify, Motive Power asks
you for permission to perform the physical deletion of these messages.
Motive Power Services:
- GarageKeeper 2000 data conversion – Enables import of GarageKeeper 2000 customers,
vehicles, and invoices into Motive Power. You can find out more about getting your GarageKeeper data into Motive Power by sending an email
to
support@motivepower.biz.
- Multi-user installation – Enables multiple stations to run Motive Power. This allows service writers and technicians to update the same work orders
at the same time. Includes configuring network security and installation and testing Motive Power on the workstations. Email
support@motivepower.biz for more information.
- Support contract – If you prefer a fixed expense we provide that service. We highly recommend a support contract for shops where the owner or manager is not always on site during business hours.Enables multiple stations to run Motive Power. This allows service writers and technicians to update the same work orders
at the same time. Includes configuring network security and installation and testing Motive Power on the workstations. Email
support@motivepower.biz for more
details.