Integration
Automated estimating inside Fullbay
Mechanica works inside Fullbay. The tech finishes the inspection, the priced jobs land on the same service order, and the advisor reviews and sends them.
Fullbay 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
- Fullbay
Mechanica works inside Fullbay. When the technician finishes the inspection, the priced jobs land on the same service order, and the person at the counter opens a ticket that is already built.
Key takeaways
- Mechanica works inside Fullbay today.
- Fullbay already carries MOTOR inside the platform, so the lookup is local.
- Heavy-duty tickets carry the longest parts lists in the trade, which is where the drafting earns most.
- Nothing reaches a customer without somebody at the shop sending it.
What does Mechanica do inside Fullbay?
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 service order and waits for a person to review it.
Who is Fullbay built for?
Heavy duty. Fullbay describes itself as "heavy-duty truck & trailer repair shop software" and sells into diesel repair, fleet maintenance, construction equipment and mobile repair operations.
That matters here more than it would on a light-duty system. A heavy truck ticket is a different animal from a brake job on a sedan: bigger dollars, longer parts lists, more consumables, more chances for something to be left off and found during teardown.
What does the MOTOR integration already do?
Puts the reference data where the work is. Fullbay's MOTOR integration page describes repair times for light and heavy-duty vehicles, a parts cross-reference across millions of parts, and wiring diagrams, with the whole thing living inside the platform so "no need to leave Fullbay to get the data you need."
That is the right design. Any second tab is a tab somebody forgets to open when the shop is busy.
So what is left to do by hand?
Everything between the findings and the finished estimate, until a draft does it.
A technician writes up an air system fault, a leaking wheel seal and a charge air cooler pipe. Somebody has to read those three notes and turn them into repairs, then find the operation that matches each one, then work out which parts each repair needs. That last step is the one that bites on heavy duty. Wheel seals want new bearings and a nut you do not reuse. Air work wants fittings. Nobody thinks of any of it until the truck is on the rack.
After that comes the pricing, the markup and keying every line onto the service order, all of it while a fleet dispatcher calls to ask when the truck will be ready. The where estimate time goes piece breaks that sequence apart.
None of those steps is hard. There are simply a lot of them, and they land on the one person at the shop who is also expected to be selling work on the phone.
Why does a longer parts list change the case?
Because the cost of building an estimate scales with the number of lines on it, and the benefit does too.
A four-line ticket is fifteen minutes of counter work. A twenty-two line ticket on a Class 8 truck is most of an afternoon, and it is the ticket the shop most wants out the door quickly, because the customer is losing money every hour that truck is down. Work that got trimmed off because it was slow to price is real revenue walking out on a vehicle that was already apart. The single-use fastener entry covers the parts that get missed and the kit contents entry covers the ones a supplier has already bundled.
What does a drafted estimate look like here?
The service order already priced when the service writer opens it.
The shop's own canned jobs get matched first, so hours and wording are yours. Anything with no template gets published book time for the exact vehicle. Parts get quoted at the shop's own suppliers with the shop's own markup. Every line names where its number came from, which is worth more on fleet work than anywhere else, because a fleet manager asks why for a living.
What does setup ask for?
A Fullbay login with the permissions a new service writer would get, then a conversation about how the shop quotes: labor rate, markup rules, the canned job library, the suppliers your counter calls first.
On heavy duty, bring your parts sourcing reality to that conversation. Shops in this trade often have one dealer they use for a particular chassis and a different one for engines, and those habits are pricing rules whether or not anybody wrote them down. The canned job audit worksheet covers the library side.
Where should you read next?
Shops weighing this one usually have Torque360 and Shop-Ware on the same shortlist, and Mechanica works inside both of them too. The integrations hub lists every system it works with. The Tekmetric page lists the ticket shapes the engine handles, and the glossary holds the vocabulary.
Questions shops ask
- Does Mechanica work with Fullbay today?
- Yes. The technician finishes the inspection in Fullbay, Mechanica drafts the priced estimate on that same service order, and somebody at the shop reviews it before it goes anywhere.
- Fullbay already integrates MOTOR. What does a draft add?
- Everything downstream of the lookup. Fullbay states that MOTOR sits inside the platform for repair times, parts cross-reference and diagrams, so nobody has to leave the service order to find an hour. Somebody still reads the technician's findings, decides which repairs they call for, picks the operation, prices each part and types every line. On a heavy-duty ticket that is a long afternoon, and it is the part Mechanica drafts.
- Does a heavy-duty ticket change the arithmetic?
- It makes it worse in the direction that matters. A heavy truck repair carries more parts per job than a light-duty one, and more parts means more lookups, more chances to leave a gasket off and more money riding on getting it right. The longer the parts list, the more a drafted estimate is worth.
- What about core tracking and inventory?
- Untouched. Fullbay handles core management and inventory across locations, and none of that moves. The scope here is the estimate: reading the inspection, pricing the work, putting the jobs on the ticket. Cores, purchasing and the rest of the service order stay exactly where they are.
- Do our canned jobs get used?
- First, before any labor lookup happens. Fullbay sells canned jobs for common repairs, and a shop that has built those properly has already written down how it prices its own work. Matching them first is what makes a draft read like the shop wrote it. Everything with no template behind it falls back to published book time.
- Does anything go to a customer automatically?
- No. Fullbay lets a shop send estimates and take electronic approvals, and that step stays with a person. Mechanica writes the draft onto the service order and stops. Somebody at the shop reads it, edits what they want and sends it.
- We do a lot of fleet work. Does that change anything?
- The approval path is different and the drafting is the same. Fleet work often means a purchase order and a contact who authorises by email instead of a customer standing at a counter. A draft that arrives priced with the source named on every line is easier to defend to a fleet manager, because a fleet manager asks why more often than a retail customer does.
- Does anything change for the technicians?
- No. Same inspection, same notes, same workflow. The trigger for a draft is a technician marking the inspection complete, which they already do. Cleaner findings produce better drafts because there is less to interpret, and that was true before any software was reading them.
- How do we get started on Fullbay?
- Book a demo and say you run Fullbay. Setup is a login with the permissions a new service writer would get, plus a conversation about how the shop quotes: labor rate, markup rules, canned jobs and the suppliers your counter calls first.