Restoration Shop Management Software

My Shop Assist at a glance

Restoration shop software runs builds that last months or years: billing as the work happens, documenting every step, and keeping the owner informed about where their money went. My Shop Assist was built for exactly that kind of work.

Price: $199/month or $1,999/year. Free 30-day trial, no credit card, no contract. See pricing.

Included in every plan:

• Unlimited users, customers and jobs
• Progress billing by date range, manual or automatic, with every invoice kept on the job
• Time tracking on every task, with date-stamped labor and parts
• Unlimited photos, notes and checklists to document the build
• Groups and packages for repeat work
• Live pricing and ordering from Turn14 and your connected suppliers
• Work Completed dashboard showing where every build stands
• Two-way text messaging and a customer portal for status and photos
• Card payments through 360 Payments: in person, virtual terminal, text-to-pay
• QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop and Xero export
• iPhone and iPad app

Optional add-on: MOTOR labor times and OE parts for general repair, $200/month.

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Why general-repair shop software doesn't cut it

Shop management systems built for general repair are designed around a car that comes in, gets fixed, gets billed, and leaves in a day or two. Restoration breaks every one of those assumptions. You can't bill a $90k build in one invoice at the end. You can't track an 18-month project the way you track an oil change. And you've got no clean way to show the owner where their money's gone. That's the gap MSA fills.

Bill for the work as it happens

Progress billing is the heart of it — and in MSA it runs right off the way the work is already tracked.

Every job breaks down into individual tasks, and your technicians log time against each task as they work it. Any task can be set up as an hourly service, so that tracked time becomes billable labor automatically. Every time entry — and every part added to the job — carries a date stamp.

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When you're ready to invoice, you run a billing cycle for a date range. MSA pulls every time entry and every part logged inside that window and builds a time-and-materials bill from it: the real labor hours and parts that went into the car during that period.

So instead of one giant invoice when the keys go back, you bill in honest increments — the customer pays for the work and parts that actually went into their build since the last invoice. Cash keeps coming in across a long job, and every line is backed by dated, task-level records you can stand behind if a customer ever asks what they paid for.

Billing as you go also keeps sales tax in step with the money you have actually collected. Accountant Jerry Cecco explains why in episode 217 of Do It For A Living.

And you don't have to remember to do it. Turn on automatic progress billing and MSA creates those progress bills for you as the build moves along. Set up notifications so your office manager or bookkeeper knows the moment one is generated, and review it before it goes out.

Every progress bill, manual or automatic, is stored on the job's Invoice History, so you and the customer can see each invoice and what it covered. Payments get applied to the specific invoice they cover, and the Invoice Report shows every progress bill across all your open builds in one place, so you always know what's been billed and what's still out.

Know exactly where every build stands

Your techs track time against the tasks they're working. The Work Completed dashboard rolls that into real-time production numbers — what's done, what's in progress, how the floor is performing — so management sees the status of every build without walking the shop or chasing people for updates.

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A complete record of the build

Restoration lives on documentation, and MSA is built for it:

• Unlimited photos and files on every job — a full visual history from bare metal to finished.
• User- and date-stamped comments on every task — exactly who did what, and when.
• Checklists, descriptions, and internal notes on each task, so nothing slips on a project that runs months and passes through a dozen hands.
• Folders within each job to segment and organize the work — break a big build into sections so every tech can see at a glance what's theirs, instead of scrolling one giant task list.

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Questions shop owners ask

What does My Shop Assist cost?

$199 a month or $1,999 a year, with every core feature included and unlimited users. There's no contract. Start with a free 30-day trial, no credit card needed. MOTOR labor times are an optional $200/month add-on.

How do I bill a build that takes a year or more?

Use progress billing. Pick a date range and My Shop Assist builds a time-and-materials bill from every time entry and part logged in that window. Turn on automatic progress billing and it creates those bills for you as the build moves along.

Can the customer see what they paid for?

Yes. Every line on a progress bill is backed by dated, task-level records, every invoice is kept on the job's Invoice History, and payments are applied to the specific invoice they cover.

How do I keep the owner updated on a long build?

Text photos and updates from inside My Shop Assist, and let the owner check status in the customer portal. Authorization requests for added work go out the same way.

How do I know where every build stands?

Your techs track time against the tasks they're working, and the Work Completed dashboard rolls that up so you can see what's done and what's in progress without walking the shop.

Does it work with QuickBooks?

Yes. Finished invoices export to QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop, with parts, labor and tax mapped to the right accounts. Xero is supported too.

How hard is it to switch?

The free trial includes setup help: remote training, adding your users, importing your data and connecting QuickBooks.