Posts Tagged ‘Tire dealer POS’

TCS ADDS CARFAX QUICKVIN TO TIRE POWER

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

COOKEVILLE, Tn. (October 28, 2010) – TCS, software and technology provider for the tire and automotive industry, has upgraded its Tire Power and Tire Core point of sale systems to include Carfax QuickVIN. Users now can retrieve the year/make/model and vehicle identification number (VIN) of their customers’ cars by entering only the license plate information. The new QuickVIN tool is available to all current customers within the latest versions of the software.

“What a luxury to quickly get all the specific vehicle data with only a license plate number,” says Jamie Schwoerer of Don Owen Tire Service Inc. in Illinois.  “We don’t need expensive scanners or have to take additional time running back and forth to cars to get the data.  Tire Power with Carfax QuickVIN reduces the time it takes for us to build a work order and gets our customers out the door quicker. It also reduces the troublesome task of managing parts returns due to incorrect ordering, saving us tons of office time as well. It’s proven to be a truly valuable enhancement.”

Eight out of ten SMS users would prefer to have Carfax QuickVIN available with their current system, according to a recent independent study. Users can eliminate the risk of costly data entry errors and help ensure they order correctly-fitting parts. TCS is one of the first providers to include Carfax QuickVIN with their software and was a valuable partner in the development of QuickVIN.

“The Carfax QuickVIN integration is another powerful tool TCS is providing its software users to help them grow and succeed through their technology,” says Barry Reese, President of TCS. “Speed, efficiency, and superior customer service are vital to maintain and grow your tire and auto service center in today’s market and QuickVIN delivers on all of these.”

Tire Power subscribers using Carfax QuickVIN also have their service records turned into free advertising on Carfax Vehicle History Reports. Shop name and contact information appears alongside each service record on the Carfax Report, reaching millions of potential customers that use Carfax.

Attendees of the 2010 SEMA/Global Tire Expo in Las Vegas are encouraged to visit TCS at Booth #42167. Representatives will be demonstrating the latest version of Tire Power with Carfax QuickVIN Nov. 1 – 5.


About Tire Company Solutions
Tire Company Solutions, a Microsoft Certified Partner, develops and markets both off-the-shelf and custom software solutions, ecommerce platforms and support and consulting services to independent tire and automotive service companies. In business within the Windows environment for over 16 years and headquartered in Cookeville, TN, TCS has created information technology solutions for tire and automotive centers with one focus: making them more profitable.  In addition to the software, TCS offers ecommerce solutions, consulting services and website creation for its customers.  For the latest news, information or an online demonstration, visit the company’s website, www.tcstire.com or call 1-888-449-8473.

About Carfax (www.carfax.com)
Millions of used car buyers and sellers each year rely on Carfax, the most trusted provider of vehicle history information. Using the unique 17-character vehicle identification number (VIN) found on vehicle dashboards and title documents, Carfax instantly generates a detailed Vehicle History Report on any used car or light truck. Carfax Vehicle History Reports™ provide valuable information that helps used car buyers and sellers make better decisions. For more information about Carfax or to sign up for Carfax Service Link, visit www.carfaxonline.com/slaftermarket.

CONTACT:
Molly Reese
TCS Technologies
888-449-8473
mreese@tcstire.com
http://www.tcstire.com

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Tire Estimator

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

One of the many powerful tools inside of Tire Power software’s point-of-sale is the “Tire Estimator” tool.  This feature allows you to quickly and easily give a customer who is either on the phone or in front of you a “4 and out the door” price on tires.  From here you can create a quote, work order or invoice in one simple step by using one of the buttons at the bottom left of the window. Depending on what type of business you are (retail vs. wholesale for example) there are different ways you will want to setup the “Tire Estimator” to work for you. There are several options to consider when setting this tool up. For example the default price class, tax group and package which will be used.

Tire_Estimator
For the wholesale tire locations who don’t normally install tires, they can simply use a blank package and a wholesale specific tax group which includes any delivery fees or fuel surcharges, but eliminates the state and local taxes. For the retail tire and automotive service shop, you can have custom packages built for each unique scenario your salespeople may come across. For example, you could have a package with a road hazard plan built in, and one without. This way you could easily tell a customer the “out the door” difference in the two options. “Tire Estimator” is just another one of the tools built into Tire Power with the flexibility to conform to your business rather than forcing you to completely change your business to utilize the tool.

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Making the Most of Your Tire Power Software – An Easy Search for the Hard to Find Customer

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

As Tire Power users, we all have done it.  We need to enter a customer transaction, only to not be able to find the customer’s name.  We think they are in there, but why can’t we find their name?  Is the name in the database misspelled, an extra space inserted, or does it have an extra letter which is making the search not work correctly?  This can be frustrating and a little embarrassing, especially if the customer is right in front of you.  Over the years I have heard and seen some pretty good tips to help you find that customer, such as using a phone number look up, or first name look up, but one of the most underused and powerful searches you can use to find an elusive customer in your database is the % sign lookup.

Let’s say I am in Front Counter searching for the customer, ‘Weaver Autobody’.  The quickest way to search is to enter in “weav” in the ‘Last Name’ field.  In this case, I do get some results, just not the one I need.  I am fairly certain the customer is in there, so how can I find them?

CustSrch_no

Next time, try this.  In the ‘Last Name’ field, in front of your search criteria, enter in a ‘%’ sign like this, “%weav”.  This tells the software to search the database for customers with the letters “weav” in sequence anywhere in their name and display them.

CustSrch_w

In this case we find the results we need.  Notice we returned results of any last name/company name which has the letters “weav” in sequence.  As it turns out in our scenario, someone accidentally inserted the letter ‘Q’ in front of “Weaver”, probably because ‘q’ and ‘w’ are next to each other on the keyboard, making the search not work like it should.  By using the ‘%’ sign, we told the software to locate any name with the proper sequence of letters, and we got the result we needed.  Give this tip a try the next time you need to find a customer so you too can make the most of your Tire Power software.  Stay tuned for more tips.

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MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR TIRE POWER SOFTWARE – Sorting Vehicle Lists Inside the ‘Search Customers’ Window

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Are you making the most of your Tire Power software?  Keeping abreast of new or not so obvious features can enhance your experience with the software, and make you and your employees more efficient.  In this continuing series of blogs, we will shine the spotlight on these features in order to help all our users make the most of their software.

A new feature we have recently added in Tire Power is the ability to sort the list of vehicles assigned to a customer on the ‘Search Customers’ window.  On this window, once the customer is selected on the left of the screen, the vehicles assigned to this customer are listed to the right.

Vehicle_List

Typically, if the customer only has a few vehicles assigned to them, it is not a big deal to see the desired vehicle and then select it to view the vehicles history.  However, if you are dealing with a customer with a vehicle fleet, a car lot, etc., you may have so many vehicles listed that finding the vehicle you are looking for can be a challenge.  With the ability to now sort the vehicle list by any of the columns, this will greatly speed up the search process.  Simply double-click the column header of the desired column, and your list will be sorted by the data in the column.  For example, in the image above, we were searching for a vehicle based on the unit number.  Since we keep the unit number information in the description column for the vehicle, by double-clicking on the ‘Description’ column header, we sorted the list by the unit number making it easy to view the list and select the vehicle we needed.  In this case, there really were not many vehicles to search from, but imagine if this customer had a list of 150 vehicles or more to search through.  Being able to sort this list would speed up your search process tremendously.  The next time you need to search a customer’s vehicle list from ‘Search Customers’, give this tip a try and let us know what you think.  Stay tuned for more tips.

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