Founderwright for auto repair & collision
AI for auto repair and collision shops. Every bay, every hour, accounted for.
Car count, labor rate, and comebacks decide whether a shop makes money. We connect your shop management system, parts ordering, estimating, payroll, and books into one AI brain and build the boards and agents that keep them in view, built in-house around your bays and your techs.
Private-equity-grade tools. Without giving up equity. Built by an operationally minded CFO, not a software vendor.
- General repair
- Collision & body
- Heavy-duty & diesel
- Fleet maintenance
- Tire & alignment
- Transmission
- Multi-shop groups
Operator-CFO built
Not generic software. What a CFO would put in front of a repair shop.
Founderwright is built by an operationally minded CFO. The numbers that grow a company organically are the same ones that make an acquisition work and hold up when you sell. Every build starts there: surfaced before you ask and ranked by dollar impact.
Car count
Effective labor rate by job type and technician
Discounts, comebacks, and flat-rate gaps show up in the rate, not the car count.
Hours billed
Hours sold vs. flagged vs. clocked, by tech, every day
The gap is labor you paid for and never billed.
A list of declined estimates
Declined-work dollars coming due this month, by customer
Your cheapest sales are repairs customers already know they need.
The same numbers carry a repair shop through every stage: recovery, growth, acquisitions, and exit prep.
The morning brief
Surfaced before you ask. Ranked by what it’s worth.
Agents watch every connected system overnight. By morning, the issues that matter most are ranked, assigned, and drafted.
Tuesday, 7:10 a.m. · What the owner sees before the doors open
Ranked actions
From your own numbers, across every system- 13 cars will miss today’s promised timeToday2 waiting on parts · 1 on approval since Friday
- 2Efficiency down on 2 flat-rate techsThis week71% and 78% last week · shop average 104%
- 3Chase 4 open supplementsThis week$11,200 pending over 3 days · 2 cars in rentals
- 4$46K in declined work due back this monthOn track212 customers · reminders drafted for advisor review
Illustrative data. Every build is designed around your company’s own systems and numbers.
Voice notes that take action
Or just say it.
Between jobs, on the drive, or walking the floor: record a thought and the platform drafts the tasks, schedule changes, and answers. Nothing happens until you approve it. How voice notes work.
“Call the fleet customer about the declined brake work, move the transmission job to first thing tomorrow, and what’s our effective labor rate this week?”
- New taskAdvisor: call fleet customer about declined brake work · due today
- RescheduleTransmission job → tomorrow, first bay · tech notified on approval
- AnswerEffective labor rate this week: $142 · down $9 on two comeback jobs
Illustrative. Nothing changes until you approve it.
Sound familiar
Full bays don’t always mean a good week.
Clocked, flagged, and sold don’t match
Techs get paid on one clock and billed on another. The gap between hours worked, flagged, and sold shows up at payroll, after the week is gone.
Declined work never comes back
A declined or unanswered estimate is work the car still needs. Inspection findings get written up, texted, and forgotten when the customer goes quiet.
Supplements stall the body shop
A car sits waiting on a supplement or a back-ordered part while it holds a stall. Cycle time stretches, rental days pile up, and the insurer notices.
Parts margin slips out the back
Cores, returns, and vendor credits live on paper. Parts leave at the wrong matrix, and comeback parts get absorbed without anyone deciding they should.
What we’d build
What we’d build for a repair or collision shop.
We start with how a repair order moves through your shop, from write-up to pickup. Every tool is built in-house by Founderwright around that flow, owned by you, and running on your real ROs, techs, and parts within days.
Owner’s command center
Car count, average repair order, gross profit on labor and parts, and cash by location, with today’s problems ranked by dollars and every figure opening to the RO.
Technician efficiency board
Hours flagged against hours clocked and hours available, by tech and by day. See who’s beating the clock, who’s waiting on parts, and where billable time goes.
Bay and workflow board
Every car in every bay with its status, promised time, and what it’s waiting on: approval, parts, sublet, or a tech. Cars at risk of missing pickup surface by mid-morning.
Deferred work recovery
Declined and deferred work saved to the vehicle, with reminders timed to the next service interval. Advisors see what a customer passed on before the car pulls in.
Labor rate and parts margin
Effective labor rate by job type and tech, and parts margin checked against your matrix on every ticket. Discounts, goodwill, and comebacks are tracked so every leak has a cause.
Collision cycle time
Keys-to-keys time on every collision job, with days lost to supplements, parts, and approvals called out. Supplement requests are drafted with photos and notes attached, ready for the estimator to send.
Claims and warranty tracker
Insurer payments, warranty claims, and fleet invoices matched to each repair order. Short-pays, denied labor, and claims aging past terms become tasks with an owner.
Fleet customer view
Each fleet customer’s units, open work, spend, and preventive maintenance due, in one view you can share. Fleet managers approve work and see status without calling the counter.
The compliance line
We build above the line. We connect to everything else.
For a shop, the line sits under payroll, the books, tax filings, card processing, insurer and warranty claim systems, and hazardous waste and disposal records. The counter, the bays, and the parts room sit above it.
Above the line
Built custom, in-house by Founderwright, around how you run. Owned by you.
Below the line
The regulated systems you’re required to keep. We read from them, and where they offer a write API, approved work is written straight back in.
Keep any tool you like. We integrate with it. Most shops already run a shop management system, an estimating platform, parts catalogs, and a digital inspection app. Keep them, and point us at the gaps between them. See the systems we connect.
The build
How we’d build it for a repair or collision shop.
Follow a repair order
We follow a repair order with you from the phone call to pickup: how advisors write it up, how work reaches techs, how parts are ordered and priced, and which numbers you watch most.
Connect the shop system
We plug into your shop management system and build the first command center on your real repair orders, techs, and customers. Advisors keep writing tickets exactly as they do now.
Add parts, time, and claims
Next we connect parts invoices, tech time, payroll, estimating, insurer and warranty payments, and the books, so efficiency, labor rate, and parts margin come from one set of numbers.
Build around the bays
One tool at a time, we build what your shop has been missing above the compliance line, like a deferred work tracker or a fleet customer view. What we build belongs to you.
The numbers it runs on
Your definitions. Measured the same way everywhere.
Every metric is defined with you once, tied back to the source systems, and checked by agents before anyone makes a decision on it.
Questions
What owners ask us.
Do we have to switch shop management systems?
No. Your advisors keep the system they know, along with your estimating and parts tools. We connect them early and build the efficiency board, deferred work tracker, and claims follow-up around them. If a tool above the compliance line later stops fitting, we replace it with software built for how your shop writes and works a ticket.
What stays below the compliance line in a repair shop?
Payroll and payroll tax, your books of record, tax filings, card processing, insurer and warranty claim systems, and your hazardous waste and disposal records. We leave all of that in place and read from it. Where a system offers a write API, approved work is written back, with a person signing off on each write and a log of every one.
How do you handle flat-rate and hourly techs?
Both are measured on the same definitions: hours flagged, hours clocked, and hours available. Flat-rate techs see efficiency and pay tied to the lines they flagged. Hourly techs see productivity and the time lost waiting on parts or approvals. Spiffs, bonuses, and comeback rules are applied the way you set them and checked before payroll runs.
Can it run a collision shop and a mechanical shop together?
Yes. Collision and mechanical work each get their own board, because cycle time and supplements drive the body shop while car count and labor rate drive the service bays. You see both in one place. A car that needs body and mechanical work is tracked once, with each side credited for its own labor and parts.
Who owns the software you build for our shop?
Your shop does. The system is yours: the tools we build above the compliance line, the repair order history they hold, and the data behind every ticket. Grow it with us or hand it to your own people. If we ever part ways, the software and the data stay with you.
Start with one conversation.
Recovering, growing, buying, or getting ready to sell: tell us how your company runs. We’ll show you what it could run on.
Start a conversation logan@founderwright.com