Automated estimating inside Shop Boss

Mechanica works inside Shop Boss. 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 Shop Boss today.
• Digital inspections sit on the Platinum tier, and a completed inspection is the trigger for everything.
• Canned jobs and parts ordering start at the Gold tier.
• Nothing reaches a customer without somebody at the shop sending it.

What does Mechanica do inside Shop Boss?

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.

How does Shop Boss price a ticket?

With the pieces spread across tiers, which is the thing to understand before anything else. From the Shop Boss pricing page, read in July 2026: Gold is $199.00 a month and carries canned jobs and sublets, parts and labor guide integrations, and integrated parts ordering. Platinum is $349.00 and adds full labor repair guides with diagrams and procedures, plus comprehensive digital vehicle inspections.

Shop Boss also describes ordering parts online from dozens of national distributors and scanning a VIN from a phone or tablet.

Which tier does automated estimating need?

One with inspections on it.

Every system waits on the same event: a technician marking a digital inspection complete. That is the moment the vehicle stops needing a technician and starts needing an advisor, and it is the moment a draft gets built. A shop whose findings live on a paper sheet clipped to a work order has nothing for any software to read.

So the honest answer for a shop on Gold is to fix the inspection workflow first. That is worth doing on its own terms. A digital vehicle inspection with photos on it sells work that a scribbled note never will, and the value of that has nothing to do with what happens afterward.

What still happens by hand without a draft?

The reading, the deciding and the typing.

A technician records four findings. Somebody at the counter reads them and works out which repairs they call for, which is a judgement call before it is a lookup. Then they pick the operation, find the hours, work out which parts the repair needs, price each one, apply the markup and key every line onto the ticket.

A labor guide integration removes a tab. It does not remove any of those steps. Estimating by hand vs building from the inspection sets the two shapes next to each other.

What does a drafted estimate change?

The state of the ticket when the advisor opens it.

The shop's own canned jobs get matched before anything is looked up, so the hours and the customer-facing wording are yours. Work with no template gets published book time for the exact year, make and engine. Parts get quoted at your own suppliers and marked up your way, and a part nobody can price carries an explicit flag where the dollar amount would go rather than a zero somebody has to walk back later.

Each line names its source, so when a customer asks why, the answer is on screen.

What does setup ask for?

A Shop Boss login with the permissions a new advisor would get, then a pass over how the shop quotes: labor rate, markup rules, the canned job library, the distributors your counter calls first.

The library is where the work is. Shops on any system end up with entries priced under a rate they no longer charge, and those get picked first by everybody. The canned job audit worksheet turns that into an afternoon with a clear output, and it earns its keep on its own terms.

Bring your parts habits to the same conversation. Most shops have a first call and a second call for any given part, and those preferences are pricing rules even when nobody has written them down. Getting them stated out loud is half of what makes a draft come out reading like your shop.

What stays exactly where it is?

Most of Shop Boss. Parts ordering, inventory, payments, scheduling, texting and the customer portal are untouched by anything discussed here.

The scope is the estimate: reading the findings, deciding what jobs they call for, pricing those jobs, putting them on the ticket. Sublets stay with your advisor. Purchasing stays in your purchasing workflow. A tool that quietly reaches past its stated scope is a tool nobody can audit, and in a system that also handles your money that matters more than usual.

Where should you read next?

The same shortlist usually carries AutoLeap and Torque360, 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. The vocabulary sits in the glossary.