Service VIN vs Tekmetric

It is, if your work is film and coatings rather than mechanical repair. Tekmetric is one of the most respected repair-shop systems there is — repair orders, photo and video inspections, a deep parts pipeline and gross profit visible on every RO. The gap for an appearance shop is that all of that margin machinery is built from repair objects: parts markups and labor-guide hours. Its published materials model no film coverage zones, no roll inventory by the foot, no coating layers or cure times, and no manufacturer film-warranty registration. Service VIN starts from exactly those objects: quotes priced by panel and film tier with a live margin costed from the roll on your rack, profit-ranked scheduling, per-job gross profit, film warranties, and an AI team on the phones and texts.

Service VIN is flat: Essentials $79, Growth $199, Operations $299 and Command $399 in US dollars, two months free on annual billing, no per-seat charge, and unlimited team logins on Growth and up (Essentials includes three). As of July 2026 — verify current pricing on Tekmetric's own site — Tekmetric's published plans run $199 (Start), $349 (Grow) and $439 (Scale) per month, with an Enterprise tier priced by conversation, and to its credit it is month-to-month with no long-term contracts. The add-ons are where the bill grows: published rates of about $70/mo per shop for Multi-Shop Management, $39/mo per shop for the Tire Suite and $345/mo per shop for Marketing — third-party breakdowns put a growing shop running Scale plus Marketing plus Multi-Shop at roughly $850+/mo per location. None of that is a knock on Tekmetric; it is simply a repair-shop budget for repair-shop machinery a film shop won't use.

Visibility tells you what happened; automation changes what happens next. Tekmetric earned its reputation partly by making gross profit visible on every repair order — for a repair shop, that's real and valuable. Service VIN is built on the automation side of that line for film work: the margin is computed live while you build the quote, from the actual per-foot cost of the film the job will consume, so the underpriced package is caught before it's sent; open slots are ranked by projected profit so the margin number decides the calendar; and every finished job writes its real material cost to an append-only ledger, so per-job gross profit shows up without an admin pass. You don't read the margin at month end — it acts all week.

Yes, through CSV. Tekmetric is not one of the native one-click import presets — those are Urable, Tint Wiz, OrbisX, QuickBooks Online and Zoho Books — but Service VIN imports from any CSV, so you can export your customer list and bring it across. Be honest about scope: the importer moves your customers, their vehicles, your invoice history, your job history and your open leads. It does not move photos, quotes, notes or appointment history. Importing never messages your customers — that is an enforced, self-tested guarantee — and there is a one-click undo that removes the records an import added, as long as you have not started working them. Use the 14-day free trial to test the whole thing before you commit; nothing is charged for 14 days.

Probably not, and it would be dishonest to tell you otherwise. If your day is repair orders, parts fitment, labor-guide hours and digital inspections, Tekmetric-class software is built for exactly that, and Service VIN doesn't try to be — there's no embedded multi-supplier parts search, no MOTOR labor guides and no repair-order workflow here. This page is for the appearance and protection trades: shops installing PPF, tint, wraps, ceramic and detailing packages who are eyeing repair-shop software because it looks like the serious option. For that shop, the serious option is the one that can actually cost a roll of film.

It closes the loop between ad spend and paid invoices. Because Service VIN owns the lead, the quote, the job and the invoice, it can tie a Google Ads click to the invoice it eventually produced — and with your plan — no add-on; integrations ship from Growth up, and the free trial includes everything — you can connect your ads account read-only, import about two years of history, get an account audit every Monday morning (plus on-demand re-runs once your data is in), and read a Campaign ROI report in booked jobs and paid-invoice revenue instead of clicks. To set expectations honestly: the first import starts the night you connect, and the full two-year backfill lands over roughly three nights. The paid Ads Autopilot add-on is the part that acts — building campaigns from your real catalog (created paused, under a daily ceiling you set), letting the weekly optimizer make changes, and syncing audiences — and turning it on is a conversation, not a checkout. Tekmetric's published platform doesn't claim to feed your paid invoices back to Google as conversion values; its marketing layer is a different kind of tool.

No — there is no per-seat charge. Service VIN is flat monthly pricing: Essentials $79, Growth $199, Operations $299 and Command $399 in US dollars, and annual billing gets two months free. Growth and Command give you unlimited team logins for your installers, detailers and front-desk staff; Essentials includes three. Tekmetric's published plans are priced per shop location (as of July 2026 — verify on their site), with multi-shop management as a per-shop add-on.

It depends on the trade, and we would rather say so than win the question. Tekmetric is an excellent repair-shop system — DVIs, the PartsTech pipeline, MOTOR labor guides and live gross profit on every repair order — and a mechanical shop should probably keep it. Service VIN is better for film and coating work: margin computed live from the actual roll cost while you quote, scheduling ranked by projected profit, per-job gross profit from a material ledger, and a bundled AI calling-and-texting team. Tekmetric figures here are approximate and as of July 2026 — verify on tekmetric.com.

Export your data from Tekmetric as CSV and import it into Service VIN. Tekmetric is not one of the native presets (those are Urable, Tint Wiz, OrbisX, QuickBooks Online and Zoho Books), so it comes across as a CSV import. Customers, vehicles, invoice history, job history and open leads come across; photos, quotes, notes and appointment history do not, so plan to start those fresh. Importing is silent — it never texts, emails or calls a customer — and a customers import can be undone in one click within 24 hours. The full scope and the step-by-step are on the switch page.