How to Automate Tire Guru

A tire shop sells a commodity it does not keep

Tire Guru is shop management software for the tire trade, and it arrives with the websites and the marketing attached, which tells you something about the business it serves. Its users are tire dealers, auto repair shops, mobile fitting vans and the wholesale distributors who supply them.

What separates a tire shop from a general repair shop is that the product is a commodity with thousands of variants and almost none of it on the premises. A shop carries the fast movers and orders the rest, sometimes twice a day, from distributors whose availability and cost both move without warning.

So the software has to be a counter system, a stock system and a pricing system at once. It holds the customer and their vehicles, the fitment and tread history, the work order, the parts and labour on it, the payment taken, and an inventory that is really a set of ordering rules rather than a shelf count.

A quote takes three logins and a phone call

The counter is where the hours go, and most of them go on questions the shop's own system cannot answer alone.

A customer wants a price on four tires in a size nobody stocks. The counter opens one distributor's portal for availability and cost, then a second because the first is short, then the brand's current promotion to see whether this size is on a rebate this month. A price gets quoted, the customer says they saw it cheaper online, and somebody looks that up too.

After the sale the paperwork begins. The rebate has to be claimed on the manufacturer's dealer portal, with the invoice attached, before the claim deadline passes. A road hazard or warranty claim on a failed tire goes through a different portal again. An adjustment credit on a returned casing has to be chased until it appears.

Each one is short. There are dozens a week, and they land in the middle of serving whoever is standing at the counter.

Tire Guru

Today's cost from every distributor Availability and price swept across all the suppliers the shop buys from, for the sizes it sells, so a quote is built on this morning's numbers.

Rebates claimed before the window shuts Live promotions matched to the sizes on order, and submitted claims followed to paid or rejected with the reason attached.

Backorders that answer themselves Late tires watched for an arrival date on the supplier's site, so the customer holding a booking hears from the shop first.

Automatic replenishment orders from vendors it already knows

Inside the shop the software does a great deal, and a dealer using only part of it is doing work twice.

Business Center is the shop management side: work orders, scheduling, technician assignment and a paperless flow through the bays. Job Center holds pre-defined job packages, so picking a service drops every part and labour line onto the work order. The automatic replenishment system calculates what needs ordering, creates the order and submits it to the vendor, which is the difference between a stock file and a stock file that keeps itself. Digital Vehicle Inspections put the technician's findings and photographs in front of the customer while the car is on the lift. Tire Price Optimizer sets the margin on every size.

That is a complete shop, and all of it runs on what the shop already knows or on vendors already set up.

The margin, though, gets decided somewhere else. Live availability and cost across every distributor, not only the one configured. This month's manufacturer promotion, and whether this exact size qualifies for it. What the shop down the road has the same tire listed at. Whether last month's rebate claim was paid or quietly rejected. All of that is on somebody else's website, and all of it changes weekly.

Every rebate the shop earned can be claimed on time

A distributor's stock page, a brand's dealer portal and a rebate claim page are all just websites with the shop's password already saved in them.

A morning sweep of availability and cost across every distributor the shop buys from, for the sizes it actually sells, so a quote is built from today's real numbers rather than a cost file loaded in spring. Current promotions read off each brand's dealer portal and matched against the sizes on the shelf and on order, so a rebate that applies is known before the tire goes on, not after the customer has driven away.

Then the claims. Submitted rebate claims followed to paid or rejected, with the rejection reason attached, because an unclaimed promotion is money the shop already earned and handed back. Warranty and road hazard adjustments tracked until the credit lands. Backordered tires watched for an arrival date, so the customer holding a booking hears from the shop first.

And the view outward. Competitor pricing on the sizes that move, checked weekly instead of whenever a customer mentions it. New reviews across the sites drivers actually read, sorted so the angry one gets answered the same day.

The bay makes money, the browser does not

Opening six distributor portals before the first car goes up on the lift is not skilled work. It still falls to whoever the customers are queuing to talk to.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens a distributor's ordering site, a manufacturer's dealer portal, a review site or a competitor's listing, reads what is there, and puts the answer where the counter will see it, including onto the ticket in Tire Guru.

Placing an order, submitting a rebate claim, replying to a review and quoting a customer are prepared and left for a person.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it opens.