Auto repair and dealership service where every repair order has an owner — from check-in to the parts supplier and back

Mi Retail is an operations center for repair shops, dealership service departments and after-sales teams. It does not replace the dealer or shop management system; it manages the human work that has to happen around each repair order. The check-in, the diagnosis, the customer’s approval, the parts request to a supplier, the repair, the quality check and the delivery become work items with an owner, a state, a due time and evidence. Each person sees the part that is theirs: advisors see their promises to customers, technicians their bay, the foreman what waits for quality control and the service manager only the exceptions.

No. Your dealer or shop management system stays the system of record for repair orders, labor operations, parts inventory, invoicing and vehicle history, and Mi Retail never keeps a second copy of them. What Mi Retail adds is the coordination the DMS was not built for: who must act next on a repair order, what it is waiting for, when it must escalate and with which evidence it closes. The DMS knows the repair order is open; Mi Retail knows it is waiting on a supplier, that the customer approved at 9:40 and that quality control is next. Keep your DMS; Mi Retail takes over where the work leaves it.

The service advisor checks the vehicle in and opens a repair order work item that holds the whole visit. The technician receives the diagnosis in their queue and closes it with measurements and photos. The advisor sends the estimate and records the customer’s approval on the same case. If parts must come from outside, a derived work item goes to the parts supplier’s organization, and the repair waits with that reason visible instead of occupying someone’s memory. When the parts arrive, the technician completes the repair, the foreman runs the quality check and road test, and the advisor delivers the vehicle with the evidence attached.

A parts request to a distributor or another dealership is sent as a derived work item, so both organizations need to be on Mi Retail. The shop picks the supplier from the directory and sends the part numbers, quantities and the time it needs them; the supplier receives the request in its own intake queue and assigns it inside its own team. Each side keeps its privacy: the shop follows the state, the promised time and the proof of delivery, but not the supplier’s internal work. When the supplier closes its work item, the waiting repair is released and the technician sees it immediately, without a single follow-up call.

The estimate approval is a work item on the repair order, not a note on the counter. The advisor attaches the estimate with the technician’s findings and photos, and records the customer’s decision with the date, the approved lines and any work the customer declined. Declined recommendations stay on record, which matters when the customer returns months later with the same issue. If the customer does not answer by the due time, the advisor sees the approval at risk and can follow up before the bay sits idle. The repair only moves forward once the approval is in, and everyone downstream can see it.

Each role enters Mi Retail through its own surface. A technician opens My Work and sees the diagnoses and repairs assigned to their bay, in order of priority. An advisor sees the repair orders they own and the promises made to each customer, with the ones at risk first. The foreman uses Team Operations to balance the load between bays, reassign work and spot repairs waiting for parts or approvals. The service manager uses Operational Portfolio to see how the whole department is doing, and Executive Operations shows only what needs their decision, such as a costly goodwill repair or a supplier that keeps missing its times.

Every repair order closes with its evidence: the inspection report, the approved estimate, the parts that were fitted, the quality checklist, the road test and the before-and-after photos. When a vehicle comes back with the same complaint, the shop can open the previous case and see exactly what was done, by whom and what was checked before delivery. A comeback becomes its own work item linked to the original repair, so the root cause gets an owner instead of an argument. For warranty work, the same trail supports the claim the dealership files with the manufacturer, captured while the work happened rather than rebuilt later.

Yes. A dealership is full of handoffs outside the workshop: a sold vehicle needs preparation, accessories and paperwork before delivery; a test drive request needs a car and a salesperson; an after-sales campaign needs customers contacted and appointments booked. Each of those becomes a work item with an owner and a due time, moving between sales, the workshop, administration and after-sales. The sales manager sees which deliveries are at risk, and after-sales sees which service reminders or recall appointments are still open. The dealership keeps its sales and service records where they are; Mi Retail coordinates the people who move the vehicle to the customer.

Yes, it is the same product at both ends. In a small garage where the owner receives cars, diagnoses and calls suppliers, the experience collapses to one Today view: which vehicles are waiting for approval, which are waiting for parts and which must be ready by the afternoon, without teams or hierarchies that do not exist. In a dealer group with several locations, the same work items are distributed across advisors, technicians, foremen, parts and management, each with its own surface, and the group can compare how each location is doing. What changes is how responsibilities are split, not how the repair order is represented.

Yes, as long as they have their own organization on Mi Retail. Parts distributors, body and paint shops, towing companies, glass specialists and other dealerships can all receive derived work items from you in their own intake, handle them with their own teams and close them with their own evidence. You see the state, the promised time and the result; they see only what you sent them. For a distributor, this means every order from every shop arrives in one queue with part numbers and deadlines instead of scattered calls. For a body shop partner, a sublet repair stops being a phone call and becomes a case both sides can follow.

The Automotive edition of StoneOS brings apps for the domain work of a shop or dealership — Vehicles, Customers, Appointments, Work Orders, Diagnostics, Repairs, Parts, Labor, Estimates, Service History, Warranty, Dealership Sales, Test Drives and After-Sales — on top of the Business Core apps every team uses, such as Calendar, Chat, Docs, Drive and People. Those apps keep the depth of each domain. Mi Retail is where the work they generate meets the people who must move it: a diagnosis waiting for approval, a part that has to be ordered or a vehicle that failed its quality check lands as a work item in the right person’s queue. If you keep your current DMS, it stays the record.

Start with the stretch of the repair where cars wait the most — usually estimate approvals or parts orders — instead of modeling the whole dealership. Create a service workspace, invite the advisors, technicians and the foreman, and open the next repair orders as work items with an owner and a promised time. Invite your main parts supplier to its own organization so orders move as derived work items. Within a couple of weeks you will see where vehicles wait and why. Then add quality control, delivery and after-sales, connect the DMS you already use and bring in the Automotive edition apps when they fit. Mi Retail is free to start.