One price for the whole workshop

Most workshops send their first estimate the day they start. Set your labour rates and parts markup, add the jobs you do most as standard jobs, and invite your team. You can upload a few old quotes and PISTON reads your prices out of them for you to check.

No. PISTON runs in the browser on a computer at the front counter, a tablet in the workshop or a phone. Everyone signs in at your own address.

Yes. Import a supplier price list from a spreadsheet and PISTON adds your parts margin on top. Trade and fleet customers can have their own margins through price levels.

Yes. The switching from SAM page covers what SAM lets you take with you, the dates to watch in your SAM agreement, and how we help you move.

They get a link by email. It opens the estimate on their phone, where they tick any recommended work they want done and accept it with their name. You see it in PISTON as soon as they do.

It stays on the vehicle. Next time that car comes in, the declined work is there to offer again, with the price it was quoted at.

Yes. A technician clocks on against a line on the job, and PISTON compares the hours with what was quoted. Over time it shows you which jobs take longer in your workshop than you charge for.

Yes. Type a rego and PISTON fills in the vehicle from CarJam: make, model, year, VIN, colour, fuel, body and engine size, the last odometer reading, and the WoF, CoF and rego expiry dates.

Yes, three ways. Share your form as a link from Facebook, your Google listing or a QR code on the counter. Put it in a frame on your website. Or add it with a short script, so it takes on your website's own fonts and colours. Each enquiry lands in PISTON with the rego and the car, ready to quote or book in.

No. We don't aggregate them, benchmark them or sell a report about them.

Yes, all of it, at any time. There's a button in your account that downloads a zip of spreadsheets: customers, vehicles, estimates, jobs, hours, invoices and payments.

The account closes and nothing is deleted straight away. Come back and it's where you left it. We will tell you before anything is removed for good.

Only the things you send them: the estimate, the reminders you turn on, the invoice and its follow-ups, all from you. We never market to your customers.

If you have saved a card, it is charged the day your trial ends and on the same date every month after that, and you carry on without doing anything. If you have not, PISTON closes until you do. Nothing is deleted for 30 days, and it all opens again the moment a card is on file. We email you when the clock starts and again before the end of it.

Yes. One technician or twenty, front counter and office included, the price is the same. Everyone gets their own login and you choose what each of them can see.

In New Zealand, yes: $129 plus GST, so $148.35 on the invoice. You're claiming it back anyway. In Australia it's NZ$129 a month and that's all: we're a New Zealand business, so there's no GST to add. Your bank may charge a small fee for paying in NZ dollars.

By card, on the same date each month, the one your trial ran out on. We charge the card you saved through Stripe, and the invoice arrives already marked paid, so there is nothing for you to do with it. We cop the card fee, so the total on the invoice is what leaves your account.

No. A card is the only way to pay us, which is why PISTON locks when the trial ends and there's not one saved. It keeps the whole thing to one monthly charge you never have to think about, and it's the reason there's no invoicing chase between us.

However you already get paid. Your bank details and payment terms go onto every invoice, so a direct credit needs nothing set up, and when the money lands you record the payment against the invoice: bank transfer, cash, cheque or card, in part or in full. PISTON works out what is still owed and the reminders stop on their own. Connect your own Stripe account as well and the invoice page offers a card beside the bank details, with the money going to you rather than through us. Stripe's fee is 2.7% + 30c a payment in New Zealand, and 1.7% + 30c in Australia; you choose whether to wear it or add it to what your customer pays, and they see it before they pay.

Yes, and it is included. Connect your organisation and a sent invoice shoots over to Xero on its own as authorised, under your numbering. Payments recorded in PISTON go over to Xero too, and the payments Xero's bank feed reconciles come back, so the invoice closes itself and the reminders stop chasing somebody who has already paid. Drafts never leave. You pick which account codes sales and payments post to, and nothing is sent until you have picked them.

Yes. Any time, from your account page. You keep access to the end of the month you have paid for, and your data is yours to take with you if you want it.

Not on you without warning. If it ever changes, you will hear about it a month ahead.

The invoice stays unpaid and we tell you. You have 14 days to sort it out before it's late, and another 14 after that before PISTON closes, long enough for a card that expired over a holiday. Updating it on the Account page settles what's owing.