Tony Passwater, industry consultant, trainer and president of QuickBooks R Us, has consulted with shops on technical training since the 1980s. He started working with QuickBooks in 1999 and became certified in the platform. Since then, he has been working with collision repair body shops to improve the usage of accounting systems and integrate it within the various shop management systems, he says.
One trend that has not been discussed much but has been gaining traction are ways for customers to pay for a repair through a shop's website.
"If someone wants to have online payments and is using QuickBooks, there is a feature that is built-in, in which he or she can check off," Passwater says.
Another option that is beginning to be explored by shops in the U.S. is an online form in which customers can pay for the repair directly, he says.
In order to create the online payment form, the body shop owner needs to follow these steps:
- Create a sub-domain within the main website's domain. A customer can reach this sub-domain by clicking on a tab on the homepage of the website.
- Once the customer clicks through the tabs, the customer should be greeted and offered a chance to pay through PayPal or using any type of their payment method.
- The customer can also be directed to the site in an email that includes the invoice for the repair and a link to the online form.
The owner of the shop will be notified when a payment is made and can go into the account to access the payment. For PayPal or similar sites, he says the person managing the accounts can go into those account sites and transfer the money over into the shop's bank account.
