Integration
Mechanica and Protractor
The Protractor connector is in build. Here is the workflow it follows and what setup asks of a shop before it goes live.
Protractor at a glance
- Connection
- In build
- Vendor
- Protractor
The Protractor connector is in build. This page covers the workflow it follows and what setup asks of a shop, so a shop running Protractor can tell whether the shape fits before the connection lands.
Key takeaways
- Status is in build. Tekmetric is the connection running today.
- The workflow is the same on every system: inspection complete, draft, human review.
- Setup is mostly a pass over how the shop already quotes.
- Nothing reaches a customer without a person sending it.
What workflow does every connector follow?
A technician finishes the inspection and marks it complete. The findings are read and scoped 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.
How does Protractor build a work order today?
On the work order, with the lookups and the accounting wired to it. Protractor's own site describes built-in features "such as integrated labour guides and online parts ordering right on to the work order and into payables automatically", and names parts and labor matrices alongside margin thresholds and automated labor bumps.
That is a system built by people who think about margin, and it shows. What it does not remove is the part of the job that sits between a technician's findings and a priced line: somebody reads the inspection, decides which jobs it calls for, pulls the operation time, prices the parts and types the whole thing in. The matrices then do their work on numbers a human put there.
What does deferred work tracking change?
More than most shops give it credit for. Protractor's material talks about "fast estimating, keeping track of deferred work and prompting the Advisors", which is a real second bite at revenue a shop has already earned.
The catch is that a deferred line is only worth returning to if it carries a real price and a description somebody can read aloud on the phone. Work that got trimmed off a ticket because it was slow to quote leaves behind a stub, and a stub is not a follow-up. A draft that prices everything the findings call for, including the jobs the advisor was never going to have time for, is what makes the deferred list worth working. The declined work entry covers what a usable one looks like.
Why does the accounting side raise the stakes?
Because a bad number travels further in Protractor than it does elsewhere. The site describes an integrated general ledger with receivables and payables, plus tax tracking and banking integration, and parts ordering that posts to payables on its own.
In a system that tightly coupled, a placeholder price becomes a problem in two places at once. So an unpriced part on a draft carries an explicit flag where the dollar amount would sit, and every line names where its number came from. A zero is a figure somebody has to walk back, and with a general ledger underneath they walk it back twice. The needs-pricing flag entry covers the reasoning.
What does setup ask of a shop?
Two things. Access to the shop management system, and a conversation about how the shop quotes: labor rate, parts markups, canned job library, preferred brands. The second one is the work. Running the canned job audit worksheet first makes that conversation shorter.
On Protractor, the pricing rules are the piece to bring to that conversation. A shop running matrices, margin thresholds and labor bumps has already written down how it turns cost into price, which is further than most shops get and it makes setup faster. Bring the rules as they are configured today. The version somebody remembers and the version the software is running are rarely the same document, and the gap between them is usually money.
One more Protractor-specific note. Shops on this system often carry a long deferred list going back years, and a connector does nothing to clean that up. Working it is a phone job for a person, and it is worth doing before you add more to it.
What does this page deliberately not say?
Anything about how the connector behaves on an unusual ticket. Named failure modes come from running a connector against real repair orders, and inventing them for a system nobody has run yet would be vendor marketing with our name on it. The Tekmetric page lists real ones, because that connection has real history.
Where to read next
The integrations hub has the rest of the roster with its current status. The pricing workflow is in how an estimate gets priced, and the vocabulary is in the glossary.
Where should you read next?
The same shortlist usually carries Mitchell 1 and R.O. Writer. The integrations hub carries the rest of the roster.
Sources
Questions shops ask
- Is the Protractor connection live today?
- No. It is in build. The status line on this page is rendered from the connector roster itself, so it changes the day the connector does. Tekmetric is the connection running today.
- Will the estimate be written onto the existing repair order?
- That is the design, and it is the same design every connector follows. Drafted jobs belong on the ticket the technician was already working. Put them somewhere else and you have added a copy step between two systems, which is where prices drift.
- Will anything be sent to customers automatically?
- No. That rule does not vary by system. Mechanica writes the draft and a person at the shop reviews it and sends it.
- Will our own canned jobs and markups be used?
- Yes. Matching the shop's own pricing setup is what makes a draft read like the shop wrote it, and it is the first thing the setup pass covers on any system.
- How do we get told when it is ready?
- Book a demo and say which system you run. Shops on a connector still in build get told when it lands. Nobody here quotes a date they cannot hold.
- Protractor already tracks deferred work. Does a draft help there?
- It helps by making the deferred line worth returning to. Protractor's own material talks about keeping track of deferred work and prompting advisors, which only pays off if the deferred job carries a real price and a real description. A job that was trimmed off the ticket because it was slow to quote leaves behind a stub nobody can call a customer about six months later.
- Protractor posts parts to payables automatically. Does that change anything?
- It raises the stakes on the number. Protractor describes online parts ordering that goes onto the work order and into payables automatically, so a price that was wrong on the estimate has a longer tail than it does in a system where accounting is separate. That is one reason every drafted line names its source and an unpriced part carries an explicit flag instead of a zero.
- Do our parts and labor matrices still apply?
- Yes, and applying them is the point. Protractor lists parts and labor matrices alongside margin thresholds and automated labor bumps as built-in features, and those rules are how your shop turns a cost into a price. A draft that ignored them would arrive priced like somebody else's shop, which is the fastest way to make an advisor stop trusting it.
- Which connector is running today?
- Tekmetric. That is the connector that exists in code, and the Tekmetric page is the only integration page on this site that describes specific ticket shapes, because that is the connector that exists in code today. Everything on this page is the workflow and the setup, which are knowable in advance.