Integration
Automated estimating inside AutoLeap
Mechanica works inside AutoLeap. The tech finishes the inspection, the priced estimate lands on the same repair order, and the advisor reviews and sends it.
AutoLeap at a glance
- Connection
- Live today
- Reads
- The completed digital inspection, including every technician finding
- Customer concerns as written on the repair order
- The shop's own canned jobs, labor rate and parts markups
- Writes
- Drafted jobs onto the same repair order the technician was working
- Labor lines carrying published book time for that year, make and engine
- Parts lines carrying the price provenance behind each number
- Vendor
- AutoLeap
Mechanica works inside AutoLeap. When the technician finishes the inspection, the priced jobs land on the same repair order, and the advisor opens a ticket that is already built.
Key takeaways
- Mechanica works inside AutoLeap today.
- AutoLeap already wires the labor guide and supplier pricing into the estimate screen.
- Mechanica does the part that is left over: reading the findings and drafting every priced line.
- Nothing reaches a customer without somebody at the shop sending it.
What does Mechanica do inside AutoLeap?
A technician finishes the inspection and marks it complete. Mechanica reads the findings and scopes them into jobs. Labor comes from the shop's own canned jobs where one matches, and from published book time where none does. Parts are quoted at the shop's own suppliers and marked up the shop's way. The draft lands on the repair order and waits for an advisor.
Where does an estimate get built in AutoLeap?
On the estimate, with the inputs already there. AutoLeap states that "labor guides from Mitchell and MOTOR ensure accurate labor times without manual guesswork" and that "real-time parts pricing from 225+ suppliers pulls directly into estimates without switching systems." Canned jobs are described as turning repeat services into structured estimates.
So the tab-switching has been dealt with. A shop on AutoLeap is not walking between three screens to price a job, and that is a real improvement over the way this work used to be done.
What is left over once the lookups are wired in?
The judgement and the typing, which is most of the afternoon.
Picture the ticket. A technician's inspection comes back with five findings on a 2019 Power Stroke. Somebody has to read those and work out that the coolant seep is a front cover gasket job, that the front brakes are pads and rotors on both sides, and that the belt note means a belt.
Next comes choosing the right operation for each one. After that, deciding which parts each repair needs, including the gaskets and single-use fasteners the summary line never mentions. Only then does anybody price it, mark it up, word it for a customer and key it in.
A guide that returns hours in one click saves the walk to the guide. It does not read the findings. The where estimate time goes piece breaks the sequence down, and estimating by hand vs building from the inspection sets the two shapes side by side.
What does a drafted estimate change?
The order the work happens in. Instead of an advisor opening an empty ticket, the priced jobs are already on it when they get there.
The shop's own canned jobs get matched first, so the wording and the hours are yours. Anything with no template behind it gets published book time for the exact year, make and engine. Parts get quoted at your suppliers and marked up your way. Every line names where its number came from, so when a customer asks why the front cover job is $1,600, the answer is on the screen instead of in a catalog.
The advisor then does the part that sells work. They read it, change what they want and get on the phone, which is where the money is.
None of that removes the advisor from the decision. Which jobs a customer hears about, in what order and how the conversation gets framed stays a human call, and it should. Software is bad at knowing that the driver in front of you just lost a job.
Does anything change in the bay?
No. Same inspection, same photos, same notes.
AutoLeap makes the point that inspection photos show a customer something a text description cannot, and that stays exactly true. What changes is what happens after the technician marks that inspection complete. Cleaner findings do produce better drafts, because there is less to interpret, and what a clean inspection note looks like covers that for its own sake.
What does setup ask for?
Two things, and the second one is the real work.
The first is an AutoLeap login with the permissions a new advisor would get. The second is a pass over how the shop quotes: the labor rate, the parts markup rules, the canned job library, the brands your counter reaches for by default. That conversation decides how much of a draft reads like your own work.
Most shops discover during it that a chunk of their canned job library is priced under a labor rate they stopped charging two years ago. The canned job audit worksheet finds those before the conversation starts, and it is worth an afternoon on its own terms.
Where should you read next?
The same shortlist usually carries Shopmonkey and Shop Boss, and Mechanica works inside both of them too. The integrations hub lists every system it works with. How a line gets its price is walked through in how an estimate gets priced. The vocabulary sits in the glossary, and the Tekmetric page lists the ticket shapes the engine handles.
Questions shops ask
- Does Mechanica work with AutoLeap today?
- Yes. The technician finishes the inspection in AutoLeap, Mechanica drafts the priced estimate on that same repair order, and an advisor at the shop reviews it before it goes anywhere.
- AutoLeap already has labor guides built in. What does a draft add?
- The reading and the deciding. AutoLeap describes labor guides from Mitchell and MOTOR inside the estimate, which removes the walk to a second screen. What it leaves in place is a person reading the technician's findings, working out which jobs those findings call for and then keying every line. The lookup was never the slow part of that sequence.
- Do our canned jobs get used?
- First, before any lookup happens. AutoLeap describes canned jobs turning repeat services into structured estimates, and a shop that has built that library properly has already written down how it prices its most common work. A draft that ignored it would arrive priced like somebody else's shop, and an advisor would stop trusting it inside a week.
- Does the parts pricing come from our suppliers?
- Yes, yours. AutoLeap states real-time parts pricing from more than 225 suppliers pulling into estimates. A drafted line quotes at the shop's own supplier accounts and applies the shop's own markup, so the number that lands is the number your counter would have arrived at with three tabs open.
- Does anything change for our technicians?
- No. Same inspection, same photos, same notes. AutoLeap points out that inspection photos show a customer things a text description never could, and that stays true. The trigger for a draft is the technician marking the inspection complete, and nothing new is asked of them in the bay.
- Does anything reach the customer automatically?
- No, and that rule does not vary by system. Mechanica writes a draft onto the repair order and stops. A person at the shop reads it, changes what they want and sends it through the flow they already use.
- What about the invoice step?
- Untouched. AutoLeap converts approved jobs into invoices in one click, and that is downstream of everything a draft does. The scope here is the estimate: reading the findings, pricing the work, putting it on the ticket. Payments, scheduling and invoicing stay where they are.
- How do we get started on AutoLeap?
- Book a demo and say you run AutoLeap. Setup is a login with the permissions a new advisor would get, plus a conversation about how the shop quotes: labor rate, parts markups, canned jobs and preferred brands.