Master Service Pricing to Stand Out on the Openbay Marketplace

Openbay vehicle owners consider several factors when deciding whether to book service at your business, including location, ratings and reviews, amenities, and, of course, price. Today we’re going to take an in-depth look at how service pricing works on the Openbay marketplace.

Nobody knows your auto service business better than you do. That’s why Openbay doesn’t tell you how to price your services. When you join the Openbay marketplace you set and manage your own pricing for labor, parts, and service packages. Accurate pricing information enables Openbay to deliver automated service estimates on your behalf and ensures that your team has the right information when they manually create or adjust estimates.

Openbay generates estimates using a combination of pricing variables that you control, including customer distance, labor rates, aftermarket parts pricing, and service package pricing, each described in detail below.

Customer Distance

The customer distance setting determines the radius within which people will get estimates from your business. Based on your service area and customer type, you can set your customer distance from as close as 5 miles to as far as 50 miles. If your service center is in a dense urban area, you would typically set a smaller customer distance than if your business is in the suburbs. If you’re a mobile mechanic, you can use the customer distance setting to control how far you’re willing to drive to jobs.

Whatever you decide, you can change the setting at any time to win more business. And there’s no harm in experimenting with customer distance to cast a wider net — Openbay vehicle owners frequently travel for quality service.

Labor Rates

The Openbay marketplace supports two types of labor rate: your standard hourly rate for parts and labor jobs, and an optional, labor-only rate if your business accepts labor-only jobs.

Labor rates vary widely based on region and areas of expertise. If you perform a specialty service such as complex electrical work or performance vehicle repair, you might use a higher labor rate to reflect the premium service you provide. If you’re in an area with a lot of Openbay shops, you might consider lowering your labor rate to win more customers. As with all aspects of pricing on Openbay, you can update your labor rates at any time.

Parts Pricing

Openbay features a parts pricing matrix that applies your markups to aftermarket parts used in itemized estimates. Markup rules are expressed as a percentage that is added to the base part cost in service estimates. For example, if you have a rule that parts from $50.00 to $99.99 get a 50% markup, then a part that costs you $60.00 will be $90.00 in a customer estimate. You can create as many markup rules as you want to optimize profit margins on your Openbay services.

Sometimes a customer requests original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts for a service, or they are the only parts available for a job. OEM parts are exempt from your parts pricing matrix, and are included in estimates at MSRP.

Service Package Pricing

Openbay offers an extensive menu of common service packages, including oil changes, diagnostic services, wheel alignment, inspections, and more. Service package estimates feature a single, all-inclusive price that you determine. Flat-price estimates are popular with Openbay customers, because they don’t need to review and compare detailed, itemized estimates in order to understand how the service is priced.

Openbay has special pricing behavior for engine oil changes, enabling you to set a base price, an included oil amount, and an oil unit price for vehicles that require more than the included amount. So for example, if you set a $50 price for a synthetic blend oil change that includes 5 quarts, and an oil unit price of $10 per quart, then a vehicle that requires 7 quarts of oil will receive a $70 estimate.

You can choose to offer as few or as many service packages as you’d like. Since service packages are the most popular choices on Openbay, we recommend offering as many as you can.

Tax Rates

Openbay has an integrated tax calculation capability that saves you time and ensures accurate estimates. We maintain up-to-date parts and labor tax rates at a street address level for the entire United States. When an Openbay customer starts the booking process, we apply the appropriate tax rates to their estimate. If you need to adjust an estimate once you have a vehicle in the shop, you can click for a new tax calculation or manually adjust the tax amount before completing the service.

You’re Always In Control

Service pricing is critical to running any successful auto service business and has a big impact on your experience with the Openbay marketplace. Hopefully, this detailed rundown has given you confidence in the level of pricing control that you have as an Openbay service provider — and perhaps even some new ideas for using pricing to win more customers. If you’d like to feature your automotive service business on Openbay, check out our marketplace overview page to learn more and request a product demo. Thanks for reading!