Auto detailing business software that runs the whole shop

The one that can tell you which packages make money. A detail shop sells bundles — a maintenance wash, a one-step correction, a coating package — and the margin on each one depends on what the chemicals, pads and coating actually cost. Service VIN puts that cost on the line, so the margin is live as you build the quote. Urable, QuoteIQ and DetailPro are all real options; the tables above say where each of them is stronger.

Treat a bay as a physical place with one car in it. A correction that needs eight hours and a maintenance wash that needs one cannot share a bay, and a calendar that only models a time slot will let a front-desk hire book both. Service VIN puts bays and detailers on one drag-and-drop calendar and refuses the overlapping hold in the database rather than hiding the option in the interface.

That is the difference worth paying for. A detail shop's next conversation is about a specific car — what was corrected, which coating went on, whether the maintenance interval is due, whether the warranty still stands. Service VIN keeps the customer, every vehicle they own, every past job, the coating warranty, the photos and the whole text and call thread on one record, so nobody has to remember and nothing is re-keyed.

It needs the real cost on the line and a way to be paid without a second app. Each product line carries what it cost you, so the invoice reports true COGS instead of a percentage somebody guessed; the deposit taken at booking is already credited; a card surcharge, if your shop charges one, lands on the bill rather than vanishing. The customer pays on a link they open on their phone.

Cheaper tools exist and one of them is in the table above — QuoteIQ publishes an entry tier well below our entry plan, for one seat. What Service VIN is cheap at is crew: Essentials $79, Growth $199, Operations $299 and Command $399 in US dollars flat with no per-seat charge, so the bill does not move when you hire. The smallest commitment here is the Operations plan at $299 a month, with nothing to migrate.

Yes. A quote holds package tiers, à la carte work, add-ons like an engine bay or a pet-hair charge, per-line discounts and an order discount, all priced from real material cost. The customer approves it from their phone and can leave a deposit at the same time, which drops the job onto the calendar as a booked slot rather than a note to call them back.

Yes — the AI Front Desk answers the calls nobody reached, texts back the ones that ring out, and books from your real calendar. It answers from your actual services and prices rather than a script, and it writes the booking into the system of record instead of promising a callback. Quiet hours and opt-outs are enforced in code, and every message it sends is on the customer's thread afterwards.

As automations you can read and edit, not a black box. A finished job asks for the review on its own; a customer who has not been back in a while gets a win-back message from the Campaign Runner; an open quote is chased on a schedule you set. The AI-written ones start draft-first so the shop's voice stays yours, and a message about a customer's own car is never held back by the marketing contact budget.

Yes. There are native import presets for Urable, Tint Wiz and OrbisX, plus QuickBooks Online, Zoho Books and any CSV, covering customers, vehicles, invoice history, job history and open leads. Imported records are held apart from the live messaging rails, so bringing across a back catalogue cannot text somebody who has not heard from you in two years. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial with every feature unlocked.

Service VIN is flat monthly pricing with no per-seat charge — Essentials $79, Growth $199, Operations $299 and Command $399 in US dollars, two months free on annual billing, and unlimited team logins from Growth up. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial with every feature unlocked. What the alternatives publish is in the tables above, each figure with its source and its date.

A solo mobile detailer whose whole need is an invoice and a calendar will be happier with something smaller and cheaper. A shop that actually wants marketing run for it — ads managed, leads bought — is describing an agency relationship rather than software, and a platform that sells that bundle may fit better. And a shop whose crew will not use anything but paper should fix that first.

Tax: your shop sets one rate and every line on an invoice is taxable or exempt against it, so GST at 5 percent or HST at 13 or 15 is a setting rather than a workaround, and the sales-tax report gives your bookkeeper the taxable base, the exempt base and the tax actually charged on an accrual or a cash basis. What it does not do is split one invoice across two provincial rates, because there is a single shop-wide rate and no per-line rate in the data; if you bill at two rates, check that first. CASL is not a switch somebody flips but a set of rails: service and appointment messages are treated separately from marketing, marketing is counted against a per-customer limit, quiet hours and opt-outs are enforced in code, and an opt-out applies across the whole shop. The SMS policy page sets out the rules the product follows, and nothing here is legal advice.