Product Updates - July 2023
Hey AutoLeap Pros!
In this month’s product release, we have several exciting new features coming out! AutoLeap will now allow you to automatically update labor costs based on your technician’s hourly rate, and then lock repair orders after invoicing to prevent edits. We’ve also introduced updates to make important information more accessible in the Technician view and in Inventory. Check out the full list below to see the many updates we’re bringing to your shop!
For the new beta features and improvements that we’ve launched, please reach out to us directly and we will be happy to help you try them out.
As with all releases, please hard refresh your browsers (Ctrl + F5) on your next login and remind
your Technicians to do the same on their devices. Thanks!
See Our Latest Release
New
Lock ROs after Invoicing (beta)
Prevent unwanted edits to completed ROs
With AutoLeap’s new ability to lock ROs after Invoicing, shop owners can limit which users are able to make changes to invoiced ROs. The ability to make ROs uneditable after Invoicing enhances security and ensures owners have a complete and accurate picture of their Invoice data.
Transfer Vehicle Ownership and History (beta)
Maintain access to the full vehicle service history when a vehicle changes ownership
If a vehicle you’ve worked on for one customer is sold or transferred to a different customer of yours, you can now transfer that vehicle in AutoLeap so the full service history is maintained. Technicians and service writers will be able to see the complete service history for a vehicle, including all ROs and their associated notes, regardless of which customer owned the vehicle at the time of service.
Service Notes Visibility
Option to make Service notes customer facing
Some shops use Service notes to communicate important information for performing repairs, while others use this field to track their customer’s concerns and related findings. Now, you’ll have the option to display those notes to your customers on the RO. Toggle on the “Make service notes external” switch under company settings to start displaying these notes to your customers.
Improvements
Labor Cost uses Technician Rate (beta)
More precise labor profitability tracking
Shops can now choose to have labor cost rates automatically update to the hourly rate of the technician assigned to the service. To turn on this feature, navigate to Technician Settings and toggle the switch to “Override RO labor item cost with technician rate”. For shops with technicians earning different hourly rates, this will improve profitability tracking on the RO and improve the accuracy of technician cost tracking found in the Technician summary by all services report.
Reporting Enhancements
Descriptions and UI enhancements to improve clarity
To make reports easier to understand, we have updated the design and layout of some data tables. We’ve also added more detailed descriptions to the Business Summary, Sales, and Profitability reports describing the purpose of the report and the calculations used to derive various metrics.
Technician View Improvements
Important information now more accessible for technicians
The license plate and year, make, and model of a vehicle are now more prominently displayed when technicians view their repair orders. We’ve also made Service notes larger in the Technician view so they’re easier to read, and given a link to Motor’s repair information for the vehicle from right within the service. All of these updates make it easier for technicians to do their work without having to switch back and forth between different AutoLeap pages.
And one final update – inspection item statuses can now be deselected. If an item’s status is selected by mistake, just deselect that status so the item can be hidden from the customer’s view when the inspection is sent.
Marketing Lead Attribution (beta)
Attribute revenue to non-AutoLeap marketing campaigns
For shops using AutoLeap’s Marketing platform, you can now automatically attribute revenue to non-AutoLeap lead sources in addition to tracking revenue generated from promotional and follow-up campaigns sent via AutoLeap. Place your AutoLeap appointment request link in Facebook, Yelp, and other ad campaigns and when your customer uses this link to request an appointment at your shop, any revenue generated from that appointment will be automatically attributed to the appropriate campaign.
Use this information to identify your best performing marketing campaigns and increase your overall marketing ROI. And to get you started, we’re making it easy by providing 10 out of the box templates for promotional campaigns!
Inventory Enhancements
Better visibility into the inventory information you need
We’ve added a notes field to Catalog items to allow shops to track important information on Parts, Tires, Labor items, Fees and Discounts. Additionally, we’ve made it easy to search through available locations when adding a new item to your Inventory, and reorganized the Inventory Stock list to make item quantity information easy to see without scrolling.
Miscellaneous Improvements
Small changes to make AutoLeap even more intuitive
When a hybrid user [a Service Writer or Admin with the ability to log in as a technician] logs into a mobile device, the default view is now the Technician view to make application navigation easier. We’ve also added notifications for incoming appointment requests, made the buttons for adding new services to the RO more intuitive, added an error message that explains why payment can’t be accepted for an invoice with unauthorized services, and increased the character limit for office users adding notes to a customer’s vehicle.
Fixes
- Resolved an issue where some tax exempt amounts appeared to be taxable due to reporting heading
- Fixed a bug in the Items Sold report that was causing Items Profitability to display incorrectly
- Fixed an error where discounts were not being accounted for in the Gross Price for Parts and Tires on the Business Summary report
- Resolved a bug preventing multi-location shops from seeing Invoice numbers on the Workboard despite having the appropriate settings turned on
