Every piece of body shop software has the same feature list on the pricing page. Board. Scheduling. Texting. Photos. Reports. A dashboard that looks great with twelve demo cars on it. The list does not tell you whether your techs will actually use it on a Thursday with three supplements open and a frame machine down.

So this checklist skips the feature grid. It is built around one real week in a 5–15 bay shop — who touches the tool, when, and what has to be true for it to still be current on Friday afternoon.

Print it. Bring it to the demo. Better yet, bring it to the trial week.

First: decide what job you are hiring for

Most shops looking at body shop software are not missing estimating. CCC or Mitchell already writes the file, talks to the insurer, and gets you paid. What is missing is everything that happens after the estimate is approved: where the car is, who has it, what it is waiting on, and when it is really going out.

If that is your gap, you are shopping for a production board and the ops around it — not a second estimating system. We covered that split in Collision repair software without replacing CCC/Mitchell and the broader buyer's frame in Auto shop management software: what you need vs what you pay for twice. This checklist assumes you have already made that call and want to test the tool that sits beside estimating.

Write one sentence before any demo: *"We need this to ___."* If the sentence is "stop the status calls and stop walking the floor," every item below is scored against that.

Checklist 1: the morning huddle

The first ten minutes of the day tell you whether a board is real or decorative.

• Every open car is on one screen. Not a filtered view someone has to rebuild. All of them — including the one parked out back waiting on a part.
• Columns match your stages, in your words. Teardown, repair plan, parts, body, paint, reassembly, detail, delivery — or whatever your shop actually says. If you have to learn the vendor's stage names, the team will not.
• Stuck cars are obvious without a report. A card that has sat in one column too long should look different from one that moved yesterday. You should not have to run anything to see it.
• It reads on the TV on the wall. Big enough to read from the coffee machine. If the board only works on a desktop in the office, the huddle stays on the whiteboard.
• Promised dates are visible on the card. The huddle is mostly one question: what is going out today, and what is going to miss?

If a demo cannot show you a real-looking morning board in the first five minutes, that is your answer.

Checklist 2: the tech on the floor

This is where most body shop management software dies. The office buys it, the floor ignores it, and by Wednesday the board is a record of what the office remembered.

• The person who finishes the work can move the card. From a phone, in a couple of taps, with gloves recently off. If only advisors can update status, the board will drift.
• Photos go straight from the phone to the job. Hidden damage, supplement evidence, before-and-after. No texting pictures to the office to be filed later.
• No typing to move a car. Drag, tap, done. Free-text fields for a stage change mean nobody will do it.
• Techs see their own queue. What is assigned to them next, not the whole shop.
• It does not need training beyond a five-minute walkthrough. Ask the vendor how long a new tech takes to use it. Then ask a tech during the trial.

The honest test: after two days, is the board still current at 3 p.m. without anyone nagging? If yes, the floor adopted it. If no, no feature on the pricing page will fix that.

Checklist 3: the front desk

Your advisor or CSR is the one taking the calls. Most of those calls are not complaints. They are customers asking where the car is because nobody told them. We wrote about that pattern in Why customers call, and how to stop it.

• Status is answerable in one glance. Customer calls, advisor searches the name or plate, sees the stage and the promised date. No walking the floor.
• Customer updates come from the same place as the board. If texting lives in a separate app, updates will lag the real stage.
• Supplements and parts holds are visible. "Waiting on insurer approval" and "waiting on a back-ordered bumper" are different conversations. The card should say which one.
• Drop-off scheduling respects capacity. Booking five heavy hits on the same Monday is a scheduling problem, not an estimating one. The tool should make the load visible before you say yes.
• The desk does not retype the estimate. The board needs the car, the RO number, the customer, and the stage. Not a second copy of every line item in CCC.

Checklist 4: the owner or manager

The owner cares about one thing the floor does not see: where the week went.

• Cycle time by stage, not just overall. "Keys-to-keys was 11 days" tells you nothing. "Repair plan took four of them" tells you what to fix. See Shop floor management: the column with the longest dwell is your constraint.
• Reports you would actually open. Three good ones beat thirty you ignore — more on that in The three shop reports that are worth reading.
• Data comes from the board, not from separate entry. If cycle time depends on someone filling in timestamps by hand, it will be wrong.
• Multiple people, clear permissions. Techs move cards; advisors message customers; owners see the numbers. Nobody deletes a job by accident.
• You can export what you put in. If you leave, your job history leaves with you.

Checklist 5: setup, cost, and the exit

This is the part of the demo most people skip, and the part they regret.

• Setup takes an afternoon, not a project. Name the stages, add the cars, go. If the vendor schedules a multi-week implementation for a production board, ask what exactly is being implemented.
• It runs alongside CCC or Mitchell. No migration of estimates, no second estimate of record, no DRP retraining.
• You know which modules you will never open. Marketing blasts, payroll, a parts marketplace. If they are bundled into the price, you are paying for them.
• Pricing is published. If you have to book a call to learn the price, expect the price to depend on the call.
• You can walk away in an afternoon. Month-to-month or a short trial. If it is wrong for your shop, you should find out in two weeks, not after an annual contract.

How to run the trial week

A demo shows you the vendor's shop. A trial shows you yours. Here is a simple way to run one without disrupting the floor.

Day 1. Set up your real stages. Put every open car on the board — all of them. Mount it on the TV if you have one.

Days 2–3. Techs move their own cards. Nobody in the office moves cards for them. Advisors answer status calls from the board only.

Days 4–5. Look at which column is tallest. Look at which cards have not moved. Ask the front desk how many calls they answered without getting up.

End of week. Score each checklist above. Be honest about the floor section. A tool that fails the tech checklist will fail everything else by month two, because the data will be stale.

If you want to see what "a board" means in practice before you trial anything, What is a body shop production board? is the short version. If a vendor ships a list and calls it a board, Job tracking software: the difference between a list and a board explains why that matters.

Where Carvikon fits

Carvikon is built for exactly the slot this checklist describes: a production board plus the shop ops around it — your stages, drag-and-drop cards, photos from a tech's phone, customer messaging, scheduling, and cycle time per stage, on a phone or the TV on the wall. It runs alongside CCC and Mitchell. It does not replace estimating.

Run it against this checklist on your own cars. If it passes the floor section, the rest usually follows. Start free at carvikon.com when you are ready.

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FAQ

What is body shop software?

The phrase covers several different products: estimating platforms (CCC, Mitchell, Audatex), all-in-one shop suites, point tools like texting or scheduling, and production boards that track where every car is. Most established shops already have estimating and are really shopping for the ops and tracking layer.

What features should body shop software have?

For the tracking side: every open car on one board, stages in your own words, tech updates from a phone, photos attached to the job, customer updates tied to the real stage, and cycle time by stage. Score these against a real week, not a demo.

Is body shop management software different from estimating software?

Yes. Estimating software prices the repair and handles the insurer side of the file. Body shop management software — in the sense most shops need — tracks the car through the building and keeps customers and staff current. They do different jobs and can run side by side.

How long should a body shop software trial be?

One to two weeks with every open car on it is usually enough to know. The key signal is whether the board is still current by mid-afternoon without anyone chasing techs to update it.

Do I need to replace CCC or Mitchell to use a production board?

No. A production board needs the car, the RO number, and the stage — not a second estimate. Carvikon runs alongside CCC and Mitchell.

What size shop is this checklist for?

It is written for roughly 5–15 bays, where the owner or manager still walks the floor but can no longer keep every car in their head. Smaller and larger shops can use it too; the floor and front-desk sections matter at any size.