Spare parts: ordered, confirmed, delivered?

In every body and paint shop, the same question comes up several times a day: Has the part been ordered? Has the dealer confirmed it? Is it here yet? Behind it sits a second question: What does the part really cost?

Without software to help, the answer is spread over several places. The parts are in the calculation, and the order sits in one mailbox. The order confirmation arrives as a PDF in another, and the delivery note lies on the counter. Anyone who wants to know where a part stands has to gather the documents first.

Car Repair Flow is the software body and paint shops use to run their repair jobs. In it, the team orders a job’s parts from the dealer straight from the calculation. The confirmed price comes back from the order confirmation once the team has reviewed it. And one board shows every order and every part in its status.

The parts are already in the calculation

The DAT calculation brings the spare parts into the job, each with its part number, description, quantity and price. Nobody has to type them in. If a part is missing from the calculation, the team adds it as a position of its own and orders it like the others.

In the view “By Position”, every part shows “To order” or “Ordered”. A part counts as ordered only once its order has actually been sent.

The order goes out by email, with a PDF

The team selects the parts and creates a new spare parts order. Car Repair Flow proposes the dealer: the supplier the shop has set up for the vehicle’s make. If parts go to different dealers, the job gets several orders.

For every order, Car Repair Flow creates a PDF from the shop’s own template. It lists the part number, description and quantity of every part. It also carries the order reference, the location’s delivery address and the vehicle with its plate and VIN.

The order PDF goes to the dealer with an order email. The shop connects its own mailboxes for this, whether Gmail, Microsoft 365 or IMAP. A mailbox for spare parts is already selected. The recipient address comes from the dealer’s master data, per make if the shop wants. Before anything goes out, the team sees sender, recipient, text and attachment, and sends the email itself. Anyone who wants to collect parts first saves the order as a draft.

The order counts as sent only once the mailbox has sent the email. If it was still a draft, it then moves on to waiting for the order confirmation. The email and the PDF stay with the order, so anyone can look up what went to whom, and when.

The AI reads the order confirmation

Order confirmations and delivery notes arrive by email in the shop’s mailbox. If a dealer confirms only by phone, the team enters the confirmation by hand. The AI reads every document. It picks out the supplier, the document number and the order reference. For every position, it reads part number, quantity, confirmed unit price, discount and delivery date.

Every dealer lays out its documents differently. The AI still reads the data reliably. The order reference leads the document to its order, and every line finds its part. Where a match is not clear, it stays open and the team decides.

A new document starts as “Pending”. The team puts the confirmation next to its own order, corrects a position where needed and marks the document as reviewed. If a document has no order, the team links it by hand. If an order confirmation does not fit, the team rejects it.

The purchase price comes from the order confirmation

Every spare part has two prices: the one from the calculation and the one the dealer confirms. In Car Repair Flow, the reviewed order confirmation decides which price counts for purchasing. If the dealer grants a discount on a part, the AI reads it too. Car Repair Flow keeps it on the part next to the confirmed unit price.

From a reviewed document, Car Repair Flow shows the current and the confirmed price for every matched part. Each line also shows how it was matched. The team selects the lines and applies the confirmed prices. The part then holds the confirmed unit price, the discount and the delivery date, and it shows “Price checked”. Car Repair Flow skips lines without a matched part and lines the dealer has already invoiced, and lists them. The customer’s calculation stays as it is.

If the confirmed price should go into the calculation as well, “Fill prices from AB” helps. The AI proposes the price from the order confirmation for every position, with discount and delivery date. When the team accepts the proposal, the calculation position holds the price after discount. With “Send to DAT”, the team then brings the calculation in DAT up to date.

Later, the reviewed order confirmation is also the yardstick for the dealer’s invoice. How Car Repair Flow checks the invoice against it is in the article on incoming invoices.

Delivery notes and open parts

Delivery notes land in the same list as order confirmations. The AI reads them and matches them to their order, and the team reviews them. The team sets what has arrived to delivered. A part that is still missing gets a status of its own, such as back order.

Every part has its own status, even within one order. Not every part of an order takes the same path: one arrives later, another has to go back to the dealer. So when the team moves an order to a new status, Car Repair Flow asks whether its parts should follow. The team picks “Order Only” or the order together with its parts. Inside the job, each order shows how many of its parts have been delivered.

One board for every order

On the board “Spare Parts Orders”, every order is a card in the column of its status. The shop defines the statuses itself, for example draft, waiting for confirmation, waiting for delivery and delivered. Each card shows the plate, the dealer and the location, and below them the parts with their status. Delivered parts are crossed out, so open ones stand out at once.

The board shows the orders of every location. It can be filtered by location or narrowed to “Only my orders”, and there is a list view as well. One look shows what has been ordered, confirmed and delivered. Inside the job, each part shows whether its price has been checked.

What a shop sets up first

• The mailbox for orders, with the inbox for order confirmations and delivery notes.
• The dealers, with their addresses for spare parts orders and the makes they are preferred for.
• The template for the order PDF and, if wanted, for the email.
• AI reading of order confirmations and delivery notes.
• The statuses for orders and parts.