Making Money

Cars require less standard servicing.

You seem to be busy working on a lot more older cars and making a lot less money.

Do something about it. Put your price up by 10%.

"But I’ll lose customers", you say.

Yes, about 10% of your customers (the ones who don’t want to pay the right price anyway).

The end result is 10% less work, and more money in your pocket.

It works! Every workshop I have seen try this has made more money for less work.

The current market price for service work is $50/hour. $60/hour is being charged by specialist or prestige car workshops.

If you are still charging $40-$45/hour, you are underrating your value and working too hard for little if no return.

If your business looks more professional, it can also charge professional rates and get away with it.

Take a good look at your business from a customers’ perspective.

Go out the front NOW and have a look at the front of the building, the reception area, the workshop.

Does it look like someone actually cares about the business?

Would you take your car to be serviced at your workshop if it looks the way it does?

If not, do something about it.

Clean it up, give it a coat of paint, put up some posters (all the reps will give them to you for free and it will generate new business as customers read them while they wait), make sure your employees start the day in clean overalls, empty the rubbish bins, sweep the floors and so on.

If your workshop looks like it’s cared for, your customers will think their car will also receive the same treatment. This is worth something to most customers.

It also saves time (and money) when printing invoices as it uses less ink/toner and takes less time.

Do this in conjunction with the above tips and we will almost guarantee increased profits. Introductory offer – if you haven’t tried our printer forms yet, we’ll give you 10% discount and postage free for your first order.

And for existing customers, so you don’t miss out, you can have the same offer until the end of February.

Year 2000 (Y2K)

In 99% of cases the answer is NO.

Why? Because if you are using an IBM Compatible computer, it uses an IBM compatible real time clock (RTC).

The RTC keeps track of the time and date. In 1979 when the design for the first IBM PC first took shape, the year 2000 was a long way off, and IBM thought their computer wouldn’t really last all that long anyway. Consequently, although the RTC had provision for the century in its memory, it was in fact ignored and even partially overwritten.

Since that time, all IBM compatible computers have used the same RTC. The end result in 99% of cases will be that when the date rolls over to 01/01/00, most PC’s will in fact roll back to 1900, not forward to 2000. In most businesses this will not cause any major problems, unless you use software which uses the computers date as a critical part of the business operations. The simple fix in most cases is to make sure that the first time the computer turns on after the year 2000, that the date is manually changed to the year 2000.

CAMS offers another simple alternative, and also offers a more comprehensive test. For $25 we will send you a software package which will test your computer(s), report on any problems found, and in most cases, automatically fix the problem so you don’t have to remember to fix it yourself. This will also allow you to write to your bank, suppliers etc and tell them you have performed Year 2000 tests and your hardware is now compliant.

From the software side however, there are a wide range of issues. If you want your accounts to remain year 2000 compliant, you need to upgrade to the latest versions of software.

In the case of Workshop Manager/Apprentice/Easy, you need version 5.2.

For other software contact the supplier.

As far as operating systems go, ie. DOS, Windows etc, only Windows 98 is almost Y2K compliant, but in most small businesses an upgrade is not absolutely necessary. If you are considering an upgrade to hardware, then consider updating to Windows 98 as well.

Internet

Don’t get conned by those "100 hours free" offers. In most cases you must use up the time in the first month, then it’s $5-$9 per hour. You also usually have to give them your credit card details and actually unregister so you don’t get billed each month.

Unlimited packages aren’t unlimited. Whilst you can be on the Internet as many hours as you like (although many still limit you to 4-8 hours per day – so much for unlimited), you can usually only download 100 Mbytes per month without then paying $1-$5 per Mbyte over this limit. In a typical hour you will download 4-5 Mbytes depending on the sites visited. This equates to 20-25 hours per month, maximum before you start paying penalty rates.

We can set you up with an e-mail and Internet account with no credit cards, hidden penalties or limits for $55 and 20 hours usage. You can then take as long as you want to use the 20 hours up (1 month, 6 months 2 years if you only use it for getting e-mail).

You can also get a monthly account from us for $1.66/hour (eg. $25 for 15 hours per month).

If you want a web site hosted it can be done cheaper and easier than using Citysearch or other similar companies and we’ll even give you an address that you can remember. Talk to us about it.

Talking to us

If you need stationery, or have a non-urgent question, fax (or e-mail) it to us.

Many times I get rung up while I am driving in the car and asked for a box of invoices. By the time I actually get back to the office, half the time I have no idea who asked for the invoices. If a fax is waiting for me at the office, I can immediately send the goods without waiting for you to ring and remind me that I forgot.

If it is urgent, always ring, but keep in mind that while I am doing training or helping someone else, I may turn off my phone so I can give them my undivided attention, the same way you would expect if I was with you.

Remember also that our address and telephone numbers changed in July last year. I am no longer getting faxes or messages sent to the old numbers.

Finally, if you need computer advice, ask us for it.

I have been building, servicing, programming, upgrading, networking and playing with computers for over 16 years.

Yes experience comes at a price, but bad advice or equipment is far more costly in the long run.