Digital vehicle inspection, sized and priced from your own bay: the free vehicle inspection checklist, and the record every signed inspection is kept in
Defectbird is for the shop that inspects vehicles: the independent repair shop running a multi-point on every car that comes in, the mobile mechanic and the RV inspector working out of a van, the foreman walking a used vehicle before it is quoted. The free checklist on this site sizes an inspection by the points your sheet actually walks and prices the red and yellow work it finds against your own labour rate and your own authorisation rates, so what the bay spends on inspecting and what it gets back are two figures you can read side by side. Defectbird Pro keeps each signed inspection against the vehicle, the customer and the technician, with the photos and the authorisation, so the next visit starts from what the last one found.
Walked, photographed, priced, authorised
Every inspection with its points walked, its red and yellow findings, the photos beside them, what the customer authorised and what they declined, filed against the vehicle so the next visit starts from it.
An inspection is a record, and in most shops it is a sheet in a folder, photos on a phone and a conversation at the counter that nobody wrote down
- Every red and yellow finding against the vehicle it was found on, with the photo beside it. A finding a customer cannot see is a finding they decline. Holding each red and yellow item against the vehicle, with the photo the technician took and the note they wrote, is what turns a conversation at the counter into something the owner can look at and say yes to.
- What the bay spends on inspecting and what the inspections get authorised, read side by side. Almost no shop knows what its inspections cost it. The minutes go in, the advisories come out, and the two are never put next to each other. The free checklist on this site does exactly that from the shop's own rates, and it is usually the first time a foreman sees the return on an eighteen minute walk.
- Every advisory the customer said no to, waiting on the vehicle for the next visit. Declined work is not lost work, it is work with a date on it. A yellow item declined in March is the first thing the counter should see when the same car books in for an oil change in September, and in a paper shop it is the one thing nobody can find.
Defectbird Pro
Upgrading turns the worksheet into the record. The checklist becomes an inspection filed against a vehicle, with its photos, its findings and what the customer authorised, and the vehicle keeps every inspection it has ever had, so the advisory declined in March is on the screen in September when the same car comes back. Defectbird Pro is $29 per seat per month, billed monthly, one seat per technician who signs an inspection.
