What Service Management Software works best?

[TennWalker]

Hello Everyone,

We are a small Sharp and Toshiba dealership with 3 technicians. What type of service management software would you suggest that would not break the bank for a small dealership?

We really need to begin keeping a better record on what was done on each machine and the parts associated with it during each contract year.

Thank you!

[Absurd]

what I did for my company is to create a service log that goes out with every new machine that has a spot for customer name- machine- install date- serial number- across the top and 10 service call reports down the page with each containing the date- time- service rep- problem- solution- parts used- and a note section. Then I turned that form into a pdf that was able to be typed into in each section. Then as new machines came in the form was created for that machine and named the machines model number and serial number and put into a folder called "new" then when the machine is sold it is moved into the appropriate city/customer name folder and as service calls are done at the end of the day the service rep fills in the the digital version and throws away the hard copy of the service log kept at the machine that is filled out by hand when the service call is done. in windows the service list can be searched by customer name, machine model or serial number. In windows vista you can even search into pdf documents. it does not do all the bells and whistles of a software but it will let you keep track of all the past service logs in a easy to use and fast to find way. and of course its free except for maybe the editing software needed to create the forms in pdf so they dont get messed up and your time. I used ms word to create the forms and then used acrobat distiller to turn them into pdf and then used adobe pro 5.0 to make the areas typable. once created they can be typed in by adobe reader but can not be saved so you really need the pro version to make it all work nice. I back loged several thousand machines and now every new machine has a form created when it comes on the truck. this can even be done through remote desktop so if you have multiple offices they can log in and do their logs on the central server.

I choose to separate my machines by city and customer name to make it easier to browse but that part is up to you.

[TennWalker]

Thank you very much for the reply. I believe that I will setup something like you are describing or I may try a very inexpensive solution like Ayanova.

Many thanks again!