What changed — and what it means in the bay

15 August 2026 — the inspection reads the number, the shelf says what it should hold

A tyre is four tyres, and the number picks the colour

The inspection had one “Tread depth” line for a whole vehicle. That line cannot say “your right front is down and the other three are fine” — which is the sentence that sells one tyre instead of four, or four instead of one when that is the truth. Tyres are now four lines and brakes two: the customer approves an axle, not a car.

Each measurable line also names a scale with a unit and two thresholds, so the number a technician types offers its own colour next to the field. Offered, never applied — a technician looking at feathered wear on a 7/32 tyre calls it yellow and he is right: he is looking at the tyre and the table is looking at a digit.

And the customer’s copy now prints the standard under the measurement: fails the state at 2/32, wet grip drops off below 4/32. “Tread depth 3/32” persuades nobody who has never bought a tyre by depth. That turns a number into your shop’s standard rather than a salesman’s opinion.

What your shelf should have on it

Every parts room has a minimum-quantity field, and nobody can fill it in honestly — it is a guess about a future you have no data for. Except you do have the data: every part you ever sold is sitting on a signed estimate with its number on it.

Ninety days of that history now answers “which parts do we buy over and over and still not stock”. A filter ordered fourteen times a quarter and never kept is fourteen repair orders that each waited on a delivery — a bay held, a customer told “tomorrow”, and sometimes a job lost to the shop down the road that had one on the shelf.

Signed estimates only, because stocking against quotes nobody accepted is how a parts room fills with things that never move. Lines with no part number are dropped rather than guessed at. The suggested minimum is two weeks of the observed rate, and the screen says out loud that this is a guide from ninety days of history, not a forecast.

The tablet in the bay can forget you

A shop runs on a tablet three people touch, and the default everywhere on the web is to keep you signed in forever. That is right for your own laptop and wrong for the tablet: whoever picks it up next is signed in as whoever used it last, with the customer book open in front of them.

There is a “keep me signed in” box on the sign-in screen now. Ticked — which it still is by default — nothing changes. Unticked, the session dies with the tab, and the credential already stored on that machine is removed rather than left lying there.

The demo shop now has an inspection in it

The demo had a week of work in it and not one inspection — which is the screen it exists to show. It sits on the open ticket, unquoted: the customer came in for a pull to the right, the walkaround found the right front worn on the inner edge and the front pads down, and nothing has been priced yet. So a demo can end with pressing “build an estimate from the findings” in front of the person watching.

14 August 2026 — what a part goes for before you quote it, the DOT inspection, and a second lock on the door

The price of the part, on that car, before you name a number

An advisor quotes a job with the labour in front of them and the part price from memory or from whatever the jobber said last month. Guess low and the margin is gone; guess high and the customer prices it themselves on their phone while sitting in your waiting room.

There is now a price check in the Parts room: type the part, name the car, and you get live fixed-price listings from eBay Motors filtered to that vehicle — a low, a median and a high, with a handful of real listings underneath. The median, not the average, because one collector-priced listing should not move the number you quote.

What it is not: a catalogue, and not somewhere to order from. You buy from your jobber. This is the number you want before you pick up the phone. When the fitment data does not cover a part, it says so rather than quietly showing you prices for a different car.

The DOT annual inspection, on a tablet and on paper

Any shop with a few fleet accounts produces this form, and its contents are not the shop's to design — 49 CFR 396.17 requires the inspection every twelve months and Appendix A fixes exactly which systems are on it. Which means most shops keep a second product, or a paper pad, for one form.

It is now an inspection template like any other: all fifteen Appendix A systems, sixty-one items, in the order the rule lists them. Tick it off on a tablet, attach photos to the lines that failed, print it with your logo — beside that vehicle's history by VIN, its unit number and its engine hours.

There is also a free printable version at autodxpro.com/tools/dot-annual-inspection — no signup, no email wall, same as the work order template. Use it even if you never open the software.

A second lock on the door, if you want one

Your account reaches your customer list, your pricing and every invoice you have ever written. A password is one thing to lose.

Two-step sign-in is now in your account settings: turn it on, scan the code with any authenticator app, and signing in asks for a six-digit code as well as the password. A code from an app rather than a text on purpose — a phone number can be moved to somebody else's SIM, and that is a real attack on the person holding a shop's customer list. It is off unless you switch it on, and any member of your team can switch it on for themselves.

Texting a customer now asks first

Sending a text to a US mobile is not like sending an email: the carriers require a registered campaign, and that registration rests on how consent was taken. So the customer record now carries it properly — the words to read at the counter are on the screen, the yes is recorded with the date and who took it, and the first message confirms the subscription and says how to stop.

The part that matters: a customer who was never asked is not texted. Not "the box was unticked" — the message does not leave. That protects the shop, not us.

Any list in the owner dashboard, as a spreadsheet

Signups, errors, support messages, trial codes — each list now has a CSV button beside it. The file is built from the same place the screen is, so it cannot quietly disagree with what you are looking at, and it opens in Excel without turning names into nonsense.

And a page that answers the question shops ask first

autodxpro.com/security — where card details go (never to us), how one shop is kept out of another's records, what runs where. Written plainly, because "is my customer list safe with you" is a fair question and deserves a specific answer rather than a badge.

12 August 2026 — the verdict becomes a parts list, and the app remembers where you were

The parts list writes itself

A diagnosis names the part that failed. The job needs more than that part: the gasket underneath it, the bolts the manufacturer only lets you fit once, and the fluid that ends up on the floor when it's opened. Those are what get left off the order, and a forgotten stretch bolt holds a car up a day.

There is now a button under the verdict that builds the whole list — the failed part, the parts that go with it, gaskets and seals, single-use hardware, fluids — grouped so you can see at a glance what is a part and what is a bolt you must not reuse. Tick what you need, correct a quantity, and it lands on the repair order as needed, which is exactly what the parts room orders from.

Two things it deliberately does not do. It quotes no part number that wasn't already in the verdict — no catalogue, no invented digits — and it never prints a fluid capacity or a torque figure from memory. A wrong number there is a damaged engine and a claim against your shop; where a spec matters it says to check the manufacturer's, and means it.

The Cases button says how much work is waiting

It carries the number of repair orders still open, so you can read the floor off the top bar without opening anything. And opening it lands the cursor in the search box — because opening it is almost always "find that car": a tag number read off the keys, a VIN, the customer's name.

Hours by hand, where you go looking for them

Typing in a shift somebody worked but never punched was possible before and nearly impossible to find — it lived in one corner of the day view. It is now on the Weeks tab, the screen you open when you notice the hours are wrong, and on an empty day, which is when hours actually get written down. The form offers your whole crew, not only the people who already have hours: the new hire nobody punched in is half the reason it exists.

Bring another shop in, pay less yourself

Settings now hands you a referral code and a link. Give it to a shop that would use this, and when they subscribe, 30% of what they pay for their first 12 months comes off your own bill — as credit applied to your next invoice, automatically. It is a discount on your subscription, not a payout: nothing to invoice us for, nothing to declare, and you can see on the same card who you brought in, which of them are actually paying, and what is coming off next.

Refresh lands where you were

Every screen has its own address now. Reload mid-diagnosis and you come back to the diagnosis, not to a lobby; the browser's Back button closes one layer instead of leaving the app, and Escape does the same. Small, and it was the most common way to lose your place.

The app speaks your language; the paperwork speaks the customer's

The interface and every message it can show you are translated, and the language is picked up from your browser the first time. What is never translated: fault codes, VINs, part numbers, and anything a customer reads — estimates, invoices, reports, emails. Those stay in English, because that is what the parts counter and the customer's insurer expect.

A tour that walks the screen

The "?" in the corner replays a guided tour that points at the real controls in the order they sit on your screen, top to bottom, and shows only the ones your account actually has. It also closes now — along with the support bubble — because on the diagnostic screen there is no corner where a floating button isn't in the way of something.

Also: a shop with one person no longer carries the technician switcher in the top bar. It picks who a diagnosis is filed under, which is a question only a shop sharing one tablet has — and the one person is now selected automatically, so their work still files under their name.

11 August 2026 — the car's condition on record, reminders that sell work, and hours by hand

Photograph the car before anyone touches it

Check-in photos live on the repair order itself now. Walk the car at drop-off, shoot the scratch that was already there, and it's on the record with the job — not in somebody's phone. The argument about "that dent wasn't there this morning" ends before it starts.

The customer book watches the calendar

Customers now surfaces every car that is due for service — by the months since its last visit or the miles it is projected to have covered, against your shop's own interval. One click sends the reminder, and the record is stamped so nobody nags the same customer twice. This is the cheapest work a shop ever books: the customer already trusts you.

Parts below minimum become purchase orders

The inventory already knew what was running low. Now the low-stock view turns everything below its minimum into draft purchase orders per vendor in one click — quantities suggested from the shortfall. And when you need a price, the parts room searches live eBay listings for the exact part number without leaving the page.

A board for the bays

Appointments now have a Bays view: name your bays once and see the day as your floor actually runs — what's on the lift, what's waiting, and a warning when two jobs claim the same bay, exactly like the warning for one technician booked twice. On the repair order, sold hours now sit next to clocked hours per job, so you can see which work pays before the reports tell you.

Hours by hand, marked as such

The timecard's day view can now take hours typed in after the fact — the shift somebody worked but never punched. Owner only, marked with its own sign so written-down time never masquerades as a live punch, and the clock refuses hours that overlap a shift it already witnessed. A timesheet you can trust is one that admits how each number got there.

Try the engine on a real example

New accounts can run one free demo diagnosis — a real analysis of a real misfire on a 2015 GTI, not a canned video. What you see is exactly what your own VIN and codes would get.

Also: the loading screen now rains fault codes, matrix-style. It seemed wrong for a diagnostics company to make you watch a spinner.

9 August 2026 — payroll on your clock, bookings without a time, honest revenue

Also: the name is now just AutoDX. Same product, same people, same address — we dropped the "Pro" so the company, the trademark and the software finally all say the same word. Nothing you use changes.

Your payroll week runs on your shop's clock

The timecard used to cut days and pay-weeks by the clock of whoever opened the screen. On the west coast an evening punch could land on the next day, and a Sunday-evening hour could fall into the wrong pay week. Now the shop has its own timezone — set it once in Settings → Financials — and the two weekends a year when the clocks change stop costing a technician an hour of pay. Multi-location shops set one per location.

Book a visit without inventing a time

"He'll drop it off sometime Tuesday" is how a large share of visits actually get booked. You no longer have to make up an hour to get it on the calendar. A visit with no set time doesn't hold a bay and doesn't count as a double-book — it just sits on that day, where it belongs.

Reports count the discount you actually gave

A $1,000 job at 10% off with $40 of shop supplies was reporting as $1,000. The customer paid $1,015.20. The shop earned $940. Revenue now comes from the estimate's own money snapshot — discount applied, fees in, tax out, declined lines excluded — so the average repair order and the margin mean what they say. Tax was never your money and no longer inflates either one.

The owner's dashboard draws

Revenue over time, the estimate funnel from sent to signed, where the work came from, and how long jobs sit in each status. Every bucket is a day in your shop's timezone, not UTC — so a 6 PM sale on the west coast lands on the right bar.

Fix your own line in the crew chat

A wrong digit in a part number is the whole reason this exists. You can correct your own message for a short window after sending it — and it is never silent: everyone sees that it was edited, and the original is kept on the server. The thread stays the shop's honest record of who told whom to do what.