How will The Leading Hand help my business?
The Leading Hand is a complete workshop software management system. It can create invoices and quotes, produce job-cards, book in and keep track of customers, and look at vehicle maintenance histories. Optional modules help keep track of your stock, create purchase orders, manage fleets and interface with accounting packages like MYOB, QuickBooks and Quicken.
The Leading Hand is developed by AMPL Software, with the continuing input of the Institute of Automotive Mechanical Engineers - and workshop owners just like you.
INVOICING
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Easily progress from Job Card to Pro-Forma to Invoice: in the same easy steps.
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Fantastic productivity features: Make invoicing fast and accurate.
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Invoices automated for speed: select from drop-down lists of jobs and parts to speed up data entry. Automatic rounding of invoices.
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Allows progressive entering of details on long jobs
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Quick Invoices: Easily store and retrieve templates for often used invoices to speed up invoicing and creating job cards.
CUSTOMERS
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Types: individual, corporate, fleet.
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Three sets of contact information: address, phone and email. A preferred Billing Address can be nominated.
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Vehicle details and histories seen with just a click.
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Levels: Up to 5 customer pricing levels support. Have different price structures for different customers.
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Stay in touch: create and send letters, emails and SMS, and even phone from within the program.
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Reports: See who your customers are and what vehicles and plant they own. See who owes what and for how long.
VEHICLE AND PLANT
Can be items such as: cars, motorcycles, trucks, forklifts, mining equipment, recreation vehicles, farm plant and vehicles, marine, caravan, aviation services.
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Details: Store details such as registration or record number, make, model, year, VIN, colour, engine number. Maintenance items (eg: timing belts) can be stored along with service intervals. A reminder will appear during invoicing when the service item is due. After invoicing, the next service date can be recorded.
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Change owner or registration number: Simple to change without confusing your accounts or service history.
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Charge vehicle repairs to an insurance company, but keep history with the owner.
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Reports: Get lists of vehicles and owners. Send letters and emails by vehicle make, model etc. Service history reports, service and rego due in the next fourteen days.
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Vehicle specifications: Interface to the Autodata service data system with specifications, diagrams etc for thousands of vehicles (sold separately).
STOCK
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Frequently used parts: Enter information and never have to type it again. Drop parts into invoices with the current price automatically marked up for profit margin.
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Maintain margins: Let The Leading Hand use the 5 standard markups automatically, or change the price for any item.
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Database of suppliers: Keep a list of suppliers. Phone or email from within The Leading Hand, or visit their website at the click of a button.
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Barcode support: Use a barcode reader to read product barcodes. Print barcode labels on standard label stationery.
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Stock Control module (purchased separately): Keep track of stock, re-ordering lists, stock-take lists, stock valuation reports, turnover by suppliers, multiple warehouses. Create purchase orders. Book purchase orders directly to invoices. Create assemblies from stock items and book those assemblies into stock.
ACCOUNTS
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Invoice, Receipt and Credit: Easy to do on the spot.
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Purchased Items: Keep information such as serial number, supplier, and purchase prices for one off purchases used in invoices; useful for tracing manufacturer's warranty.
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Labour: Record actual time taken to do a job; keep track of time billed for each technician.
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Chase debtors: See who owes what, with names and phone number for easy follow up.
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Full GST support: A comprehensive set of reports allows you to calculate your BAS statement for Cash or Accrual with a minimum of fuss.
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Bank deposits: Generate deposit reports which can be presented to the bank; look up payment information in the archive report.
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Reports: Full overview of money billed and receipted. Extract details electronically for your accountant. Invoice listing, statements, labour summary, service activity. Profit and transaction reports.
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MYOB / QuickBooks / Quicken interface (purchased separately): Harness the full power of MYOB or QuickBooks with The Leading Hand. Set up for BAS by cash or accruals. (Please note this option does not include the MYOB or QuickBooks programs themselves, nor does it include support for these programs.)
QUOTES
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Create quotes for customers or prospects quickly. Print or email.
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Keep track of quotes.
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Convert quote into invoice with a few clicks of the mouse.
BOOKINGS
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Book vehicles and plant for service and time.
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Automatically show total labour hours for the day.
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Produce a booking report and booking job card.
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Show bookings for the day or week at the touch of a button; including week to view.
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Book in a vehicle or plant for multiple days.
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Send SMS reminders.
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Create an invoice directly from a booking.
COMMUNICATION
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Keep in touch with your customers: Automatically create reminder and thank you letters and messages.
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Make up letters with different fonts, bold, italic, underlining and colour for maximum effect. A spell checker is also included.
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Can be posted or emailed.
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SMS short text messages.
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Communicate with a group or just a single customer.
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Mail merge: Full purchase users can create mail merge files for MS-Word; a great tool for power uses.
FLEET MANAGEMENT (PURCHASED SEPARATELY)
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Manage a fleet of vehicles or plant belonging to your business or owned by a customer.
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Provide a full fleet management service; with the running costs of each vehicle broken down into cost segments for each period, and with driver performance data.
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Make timely decisions on the management of a fleet.
MULTI-USER
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Have The Leading Hand running at your front desk for dealing with customers whilst also being used by your technicians in the workshop. The multi-user version of The Leading Hand handles the simple two screen operation up to large mission critical multi-workshop operations.
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The multi-user version of The Leading Hand is based on a powerful client/server SQL database engine, which means you will have a totally reliable, fast state-of-the-art system.
TIME MANAGEMENT
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The labour timer allows you to time a technician for any job/invoice.
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Multiple technicians can be timed working on the same job at the same time.
Comprehensive reports enable you to manage the performance and profitabliity of your workshop.