DealersEdge Professional Forums

New to AutoMate here. Wish we had Dealer Track but trying to live with it.

When retrieving a saved quote looks like you should be able to F2 to add parts, but doesn't work for me. Also don't see where to save quote again instead of converting to a sale.

Emailed AM but no response yet.

nope, once you finish a quote, it's considered a finished document. You'll have to do it over or do another one to attach to it.

There are so many simple things you cannot do with Automate, it's completely ridiculous.

you will hate it soon enough

Wait until you get to special order a part for a customer that the service dept never gave a customer # to since it's not required on their end. Everything is great if you have everything in stock. If not, have fun

Figures. Thanks.

was hoping for an answer like.... "It's easy just go to....." and "You are going to love AutoMate"

LOL - not quite the case

Barely a day goes by that I don't want to scream at the top of my lungs - AutoMate sucks!! - Sometimes it slips out

Even the trainer, when he was here, admitted that the parts functions are the worst part of their system.

Here's another shitty part. When RO's are closed and listed as "picked up by customer", Sometimes there's no way to physically see the parts that are on the RO. Only the dollar amount but not the actual parts. The first time it happened, I tried everything I could find on my own before calling support. They actually had to log in and unlock something temporarily to be able to view the parts that were billed out.

Also, make sure you have access to the service side of things. There are a few things that you need access to that are only available on that side.

There is so much crap that makes absolutely no sense and will have you constantly shaking your head going wtf?.

There's no live look at what your counter people are selling during the day. Only after the day is closed can you see what they sold. Closing the day sends every invoice into accounting whether they are paid or not so my accounting office closes the day the following day after marking what invoices haven't been paid. Can't close the month until the day is closed so last month, I was completely locked out of the system until they closed out the prior day. Couldn't so anything, price update, bill a part, nothing...

transaction reports suck ass - can't see who or what you sold the part for, only the cost relieved from inventory and the invoice #. If you want more info you must go elsewhere with the info you retrieved from the first report.

Core tracking - pathetic - there isn't any

There may be ways around some of my complaints but the simple, basic functions of a system such as this are absolutely horrible. I wouldn't wish this shit on the people that work at GM - Oh yes I would

We have been on Auto/Mate here for a couple of years now and honestly it is not that bad. You will get used to it in time and make it work for you. Obviously other DMS's have more functions and reports available to make your life a little easier but you will figure out how to make it work for you.

To address a couple of things from Zeps last post: If an order is closed you can view the parts sold in the transaction journal function #20, F2, #1, RO/Invoice #

Get comfortable with FO/Mate. You can make a report to track your cores. I have a clean core report and core transaction report so I can see all of the cores in my inventory and the cores I sold based on the date range for the data I import to the report.

It is definitely not as easy as ADP or Reynolds but after a while you will make it work for you.

LMAO - Now why couldn't Automate tell me that when I called about not being able to see parts on an RO after it had been picked up?

thanks for the tip

Sounds like you didn't have the greatest trainer. The one we had just got promoted so he obviously knew what he was doing...

My first email to them requesting online training/operation manuals was answered "Sorry, no we have none". Day later another reply from different person "Yes, we have some online videos... what topics did you want?" Then next day a helpful call from a different person saying he was sending me an email with training PDF's.

I never got any of that stuff - just the week they were here in the middle of a busy Cape Cod summer.

Either way, I'm not impressed in the least after using Reynolds for 20 years.