Glossary · parts
Will-call order
A will-call order is a parts order placed with a supplier and held at that supplier's counter under the shop's name for pickup, instead of going out on a scheduled delivery run.
Also called
- At the counter
- will call, willcall, counter pickup, hold for pickup, pick-up order, counter hold, pick ticket, counter will-call, what is a will call order in auto parts, Will-call order in auto parts
A will-call order is a parts order placed with a supplier and held at their counter under the shop's name, waiting for somebody from the shop to come get it. The order is live, the part is set aside, and the clock on that repair order runs until a person makes the trip.
What does will-call mean at a parts counter?
The counter has three ways to get a part into a shop's hands. It goes on the delivery truck, it goes on a special run, or it sits on the will-call shelf. Will-call means the shop is coming.
The name is old and comes straight from retail: the customer will call for it. At a parts counter it now covers anything staged for pickup, including a part pulled from stock five minutes ago and a special order that came in overnight on a stock truck. Both sit on the same shelf and both get billed the same way.
When is will-call the right call?
Four situations, and everything else should ride the truck. The supplier does not deliver to the shop, which is normal for dealer parts departments and for anybody outside the delivery radius. The last run of the day is gone and the vehicle has to go home tonight. The part is fragile or oversized enough that the shop wants eyes on the box. Or the vehicle is apart and every hour on the lift is a bay the shop cannot sell.
Everything else is habit. Shops that pick up parts because the counter is close develop a route nobody scheduled, and the cost of it never appears on a repair order.
What does a will-call cost that a delivery does not?
Somebody's time and a vehicle. A twenty-minute round trip is rarely twenty minutes once the counter has a line and the part is not up front. Meanwhile the technician who needs the part is either waiting or switching to another job, and the switch costs its own setup time on both ends.
The honest comparison puts the trip against a hot-shot delivery. Freight on a special run is a number on an invoice. The trip is labor the shop already pays for, spent driving, while technician efficiency drops on the job it interrupted. Only one of those two costs turns up anywhere a manager reads.
What goes wrong with will-call orders?
Parts get picked up and never make it onto the ticket. Somebody grabs a box on their way past, hands it to a tech, and the repair order never sees the line. The supplier bills it, the statement clears and the shop ate a part it sold to a customer. That is a straight hit to parts margin with no trail back to a job.
The other failure is the will-call nobody collects. The shop reorders, the original gets restocked with a fee or sits until somebody at the supplier writes it off, and the credit lands two statements later if it lands. Cores make this worse, because a will-call part carrying a core charge means the deposit is already on the account for a part still on somebody else's shelf.
How should a will-call sit on the repair order?
With a PO number on it and a name attached. The PO is what matches the supplier's invoice to a job, and a pickup without one is a charge the shop cannot allocate. The ticket should carry who is going and when, because "somebody is picking it up" is the status that quietly turns into three hours.
Shops running a waiting-on-parts label on the job board get the third piece for free: a will-call that has been staged all afternoon is visible to everyone instead of living in one person's head. The parts that go missing are the ones only one person knew about.
Close the loop when the box lands. Somebody marks the line received, the ticket comes off the waiting status, and the board stops showing a truck as blocked by a part that has been sitting on the bench since eleven. A status nobody updated is worse than no status at all, because people plan around it.
Back to the glossary, or read how an estimate gets priced.
Questions shops ask
- Why would a shop pick a part up instead of having it delivered?
- Time, mostly. The part is needed before the next delivery run, or the supplier does not run a truck to the shop at all. Dealer parts departments are the common case, since many of them stock the OEM piece nobody else has and expect somebody to come get it.
- What does a will-call trip cost the shop?
- A person and a vehicle off the property for as long as the round trip takes, plus the tech standing at a bay with the truck apart. None of that reaches the ticket, so price the trip at what you pay the person driving and set it against the freight on a hot delivery before deciding which is cheaper. The trip that hurts most is the second one, after the first part turned out wrong.
- What happens to a will-call nobody picks up?
- It sits behind the counter with the shop's name on it, and the charge is usually already on the account. Suppliers clear their shelves on a schedule, and the part gets restocked with a fee against the shop or credited late. The job that needed it has normally been re-ordered by then, so the shop owns two of the same part.
- Should a will-call have a purchase order number?
- Yes, before anybody leaves the building. The PO is the only thing tying the part to the repair order once it is in somebody's hands, and a part picked up without one gets billed to the shop with nothing to match it against. Counters ask for it because their system wants it too.
- Who should do the pickup run?
- Whoever is cheapest to have out of the building, and it is almost never the technician who needs the part. Sending the tech means the bay stops and the shop pays labor rate to drive. Shops with steady volume put the runs on one person and one route.