Automotive Repair Order Template

I don't have a template but if you can tell me a little more about what you need on the invoice I can try to point you in the right direction to customize it.

If you have ever seen an automotive repair order, I need a section for parts and cost of sale parts column. I need an area to input the repair issues and labor for those issues. and I need it to calculate sales tax. In the heading I need area for customer information, name-address-vehicle information. And I need this information to go into history for that customer.

So the key is more in the other areas of the program.  First of all you need to make sure your item list is setup correctly to show the level of detail you want on the invoice.  This includes Labor items too.  As for the customer my recommendation would be to enter the customer in your customer list and then each vehicle as a job so have the history per vehicle. 

If you have the file setup this way then most of what you are looking for will already be there.  You can type in the decription fields more detail that is specific to an item.  You can also go in and change the name of the column headers, etc... to better match your terminology.

One thing you can do in your item setup that could help is to use Group items for things that get added everytime - for example for an oil change you may want to include several items like the oil itself, oil filter, disposal fee, and labor.  By using a group item you can either show the detail or hide it, save time by only having to select the one item, and make sure nothing gets left off.

One other thing to consider is looking on marketplace.intuit.com for software that is specifically for Auto Repair shops which integrate with QuickBooks.   

Sherry1951: There are a couple of different issues here.

In the heading part, do you want to have things like the vehicle ID (VIN), mileage, and so forth? You have a limited number of "custom fields" that you can use here. You add them to the customer list, then you can add them to the form as fields. See this blog article on custom fields in QuickBooks.

For the detail section, in QuickBooks, you can enter items in the item list for various parts and services. You then add them line by line to the invoice. Unfortunately, if you want two sections side by side, such as the parts on the left and labor on the right, you can't do that in QuickBooks easily. It wants things separated vertically, not horizontally. I have been working on a program that can print in this format, but it has some restrictions. See a screen shot of what I have been doing at this link: http://screencast.com/t/VtVl8G...
 

For sales tax, you have to set up the sales tax preferences, add sales tax items, and set up the customer for sales tax. You can see my sales tax in QuickBooks article for more details.

Let us know if you have more questions, or if I have missed the mark...

You actually don't need to use Custom fields to capture items in the header - those can be done during form customization.  You can change the label for existing fields or add additional ones during the customization. 

If you want to add custom information specific to the line item then you want to add custom fields to the items themselves.

There are limited numbers of fields in the "header" section of form customization. Those auto repair shops I've worked with will want the VIN, model, make, mileage and so forth. It is hard to fit that all into other fields like FOB, and such. It doesn't make sense to use a field like "rep" that is a dropdown list for these kinds of things.

That is why I recommend that you use "custom fields" for this. You can define 7 custom fields in the customer record (more in Enterprise 10), and they then show up as fields you can add to the header. Each is 30 characters of text. Much more flexible.

If you rename existing fields on the template, then in QuickBooks reports you will see that data in the original named fields, which is confusing. If you use custom fields then the name of the custom field shows in the reports, and that is much more accessible.

There is a field named "Other" in the header section, I generally tell people to avoid that as it isn't supported as well as custom fields. You can't see that in most QB reports, for example.

Adding custom fields to the item list gives you additional columns in the detail section that are just reference fields. This is useful in some situations, but in general I find that auto repair shops create one invoice per vehicle, so putting vehicle specific info in the detail columns usually isn't what you want.

Sounds like you guys understand what most of us auto repair guys are looking for. Is there anywhere we can download a form like we need to work with?

Not at this time. It isn't as simple as a form template, unfortunately. It takes a special program...

I have found some good templates in Google Docs and I have also found templates by googleing auto repair order template.  You might want to add microsoft word at the end.  I have used many templates from the in the past.  Good Luck!

Have you resolved this issue?  My husband has run an auto repair for 26 years and I have some useful QB tips

-Donna

Northridge Business Solutions, LLC