GuestLot vs shop management software
A shop management system tracks the job. It does not track the car. Tekmetric (tekmetric.com) and Shopmonkey (shopmonkey.io) run repair orders, estimates, parts, invoicing, and customer communication, and they are the correct purchase for that. Neither one handles keys, Tesla authorization, or what you could prove about a vehicle that sat on your lot for three days.
So this is not a versus. If you are choosing between an SMS and GuestLot, buy the SMS — it is how you write tickets and get paid. Come back for the custody half when a Tesla owner asks you a question your repair order cannot answer.
Two different records of the same visit
Both systems open when the car arrives and close when it leaves, so it is easy to assume they overlap. They do not. A repair order answers what did we do to this car and what do we bill for it. A custody record answers what happened to this car while we had it. Those questions come up on different days, and only one of them arrives as a phone call about a scuff nobody remembers.
The distinction matters most for the shops that hold cars longest. A tint job is out the same afternoon; a PPF or wrap job sits for days, and a collision job for weeks. The longer the dwell, the more the repair order is silent about — nights, weekends, lot moves, the detail vendor down the street.
What Tekmetric and Shopmonkey genuinely do
This list is taken from the vendors’ own product pages, linked in the sources below. It is a lot of product, and a shop without it has a bigger problem than anything on this site.
- Repair orders, estimate building, and digital vehicle inspections with photos.
- Parts and inventory, purchase orders, VIN lookup, tire management.
- Invoicing, payment processing, text-to-pay, and accounting sync.
- Scheduling, online booking, automated reminders, two-way texting, review collection.
- Reporting on revenue, technician productivity, and multi-shop rollups.
None of that is something GuestLot does, competes with, or intends to build. We do not write tickets, hold parts, or touch your money.
Where the shop management system stops
Neither vendor’s product page mentions key custody, telematics, or Tesla authorization — not as an omission, but because it is a different category. Here is the specific shape of the gap.
- No key custody trail. Which staff member took the NFC card, at what time, and whether it came back is not a field on a repair order.
- No Tesla third-party authorization. There is nothing to grant at intake and nothing to revoke at pickup.
- No movement record. Miles added this visit, after-hours lot exits, and Supercharger sessions do not appear anywhere in the job ticket.
- No owner-facing artifact at hand-back other than the invoice.
- Digital vehicle inspection photos are a real and useful start — but they document condition at two moments, not custody across the days in between.
Why that matters commercially rather than philosophically is set out in the garage keepers guide: coverage tends to respond when you can show reasonable care, and a closed repair order is evidence that you did the work, not evidence of how you held the car.
Side by side
- Shop management systems compared with GuestLot
Category
Shop management system
Vehicle custody software
Core job
Write the ticket, do the work, get paid
Check the car in, watch the lot, hand it back with a receipt
Repair orders and estimates
Yes — this is the product
No, and never will be
Parts, inventory, purchase orders
Yes
No
Invoicing and payments
Yes
No — we bill you, and nobody else
Inspection photos
Yes, as part of the DVI
No — we do not duplicate the DVI
Key custody trail
Not in scope
Yes, per visit
Tesla authorization and revocation
Not in scope
Yes — owner-granted, auto-revoked at pickup
Movement while parked
Not in scope
Counts and timestamps — exits, miles, Supercharger sessions
Live GPS map
Not in scope
No. Deliberately, permanently no
Owner report at hand-back
Invoice
AccessReceipt, private link, no account
Priced by
Their published plans
$179 per location per month, one plan
When the SMS is the right and only answer
Worth saying plainly, because a comparison page that never concedes anything is not worth reading.
- You do not have a shop management system yet. Buy one before you buy anything here.
- Your cars are in and out inside a day and you rarely hold keys overnight.
- You see very few Teslas. The custody problem is general, but the authorization half of our answer is Tesla-specific.
- Your gap is quoting, scheduling, or collections. That is an operations problem, and it bills you every single week. Custody is a risk problem, which only bills you occasionally — which is exactly what makes it easy to postpone.
Running both
The two records meet at the same appointment and neither duplicates the other. Your SMS owns the customer, the ticket, and the money; GuestLot owns the window between the car arriving and the car leaving.
- Shopmonkey can post its Order webhooks to GuestLot directly, signed with a shop-admin key you create yourself.
- Anything else — Tekmetric included — connects through the GuestLot Zapier app: Start Custody Job, End Custody Job, Find Custody Job by VIN.
- GuestLot does not write the receipt back into your shop management system. For most vendors the write-back either does not exist or only creates new records, and we will not claim a feature we cannot demonstrate. The full vendor-by-vendor table is on the integrations page.
- A shop running no software at all still runs the whole product from the counter. Check-in was never dependent on an integration.
Questions
What is the best software for a shop that works on Teslas?
For running the shop, the answer is the same as for any other shop: a shop management system such as Tekmetric or Shopmonkey, which handles repair orders, estimates, parts, invoicing, and customer communication. Nothing about a Tesla changes that. What a Tesla does change is the custody half — the key card, the third-party authorization, and what you can prove about the car while it sat on your lot. No shop management system covers that, which is the gap GuestLot fills. Most Tesla-heavy shops should run an SMS and GuestLot together, not one instead of the other.
Is there software to track customer cars at an auto shop?
Shop management systems track the repair order attached to a car — its status, its parts, its technician, its invoice. That is job tracking, not vehicle tracking. GuestLot tracks the vehicle itself for the length of the visit: who took the key card and when it came back, whether the owner's Tesla authorization is active, miles driven this visit, after-hours lot exits, and Supercharger sessions. It reports counts and timestamps only. GuestLot does not publish a live GPS map of customer cars and never will.
Does a shop management system already do custody tracking?
No. Tekmetric's shop management page lists repair orders, digital vehicle inspections, estimate building, parts and inventory, payments, and customer communication. Shopmonkey's product page lists job creation, estimates, purchase orders, VIN lookup, parts ordering, invoicing, payments, scheduling, and photo and video capture. Neither product page mentions key custody, vehicle telematics, or Tesla authorization, because that is not the category they are in.
Can GuestLot run alongside Tekmetric or Shopmonkey?
Yes, and that is the intended setup. Shopmonkey can post its Order webhooks to GuestLot directly, signed with a shop-admin key you create yourself. Any other system, Tekmetric included, connects through the GuestLot Zapier app, which ships three actions — Start Custody Job, End Custody Job, and Find Custody Job by VIN. GuestLot does not write back into your shop management system, and does not claim to.