Mustard Seed Coming soon

One system for the whole shop.

Scheduling, inspections, texting, repair orders, parts, the tech tablet, loaners, the time clock, training and coaching — and the books. In one place, talking to each other, with one login.

And it bends to your shop, not the other way round. Tell us how you actually run, and we make the system work that way — for you, without breaking it for anybody else.

Built from the ground up inside a working shop, by the person who owns it. Every screen has to survive a Monday.

Mustard Seed is auto repair shop management software — scheduling, digital vehicle inspections, repair orders, parts, invoicing and the accounting — for a single shop, or a group of a hundred and up.

See a little of it What's included

Nobody sets out to build one of these.

It started the way it always does. An improvement we needed went in as a request and nothing came back. Then another one. Bugs we reported stopped being bugs and turned into things we just knew to work around — and trained new people to work around too.

And somewhere in there the shop had quietly bent itself to fit the software. We were running the way the system wanted us to run, and calling it how we do things.

Then the loaner app went from $200 a month to $350 over about eighteen months. Never enough at once to be worth a phone call.

So we built our own loaner app. Just that one thing, to stop paying for it. It worked. And then a teammate asked what else we could build.

By then we were four shops paying seven companies:

The shop system$356a shop
The inspection app$500a shop
Online booking$199a shop
Call review$200a shop
The loaner app$350
Communication and training$625
Every month$5,995
$71,940 a year — and a few smaller ones left off this list.

And the parts still did not talk to each other. The inspection lived in one place, the ticket in another, the training in a third, and the books got typed in twice.

Every one of those companies was doing its job. Together they were a tax on running more than one shop, and none of it was going to get better on its own.

This runs our four shops now. Every day, on the same Monday you have.

Built around how a day actually goes.

Every screen has to survive a Monday. If one makes an advisor's day harder, the person who wrote it hears about it that afternoon — and it changes.

01

The day, in hours

Every number on the schedule is hours, not car counts. Booked, promised, carried over from yesterday, and free.

02

A list per person

Each teammate has an ordered list. Split a job, put something urgent in front of it, and the rest still adds up.

03

Nothing gets dropped

Unfinished work moves itself to today. A promised callback stays on the list until somebody actually makes it.

Your shop, your way — and we mean the software.

Every shop is different. Different rates, different margins, different arguments at the end of the month. Most systems make you work their way and call the gaps "best practice". We would rather build it your way — and a lot of it already bends without anybody writing code, because it was built by somebody who was sick of that answer.

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Price parts the way you thinkMargin, markup, cost plus, off list, a share of list, or a flat price. If you think in markup, you type markup — nobody makes you convert it in your head.
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Your endings, your roundingWant everything landing on .99? Or .49? Or straight? Your call, and it never rounds a price down behind your back.
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The same thing sold three waysA tire protection plan is a fee at one shop, a part at the next and a sublet at the third. All three are right. All three are supported.
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Fees that sit where you sayTick the lines a charge belongs on — parts, materials, sublet, labor. Leave sublet out of the sales tax if that is how your state works.
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Your rates and your matricesYour own labor rate list, your own matrices, your own rules for when each one applies — not a starter set you have to live inside.
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Add your own price levelsRetail, teammate and cost is where you start, not the list. Add a fleet level, a wholesale level, whatever you actually sell at.
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Per shop, or everywhereAny rule can name the shops it applies to. Name none and it means all of them — one group standard, with the one shop that does it differently still doing it differently.
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Settings, not source codeThe first shop's answers are stored as that shop's settings. Nothing about how one shop runs is baked into the software.

How this actually goes.

Nobody is going to hand you a login and a help centre and wish you luck. This is a small operation on purpose, and that is the advantage: you get the person who builds it.

You show us your shopHow you write a ticket. What you charge and why. The thing you and your service manager argue about at the end of every month. Bring the mess — the mess is the useful part.
We set it up your way firstYour rates, your matrices, your fees, your tax, your price levels, your order points — off your own numbers, not a demo file with somebody else's prices in it.
If it is not in there, we build itYou are talking to the person who writes it, not filing a request that joins a queue behind two hundred others. When something is genuinely how your shop works, it gets built.
And it stays yoursYour settings belong to your shop. The next shop that signs up gets their own — nobody's setup quietly changes because somebody else asked for something.

The honest limits

  • Anything that touches money gets built properly or not at all — the books have to survive somebody checking them.
  • If two shops want opposite things, both get it as a setting. Nobody wins by making the other one lose.
  • We will tell you when we think you are wrong. You are still the one who decides.

What we will not do is tell you your shop is doing it wrong because the software cannot do it.

No add-ons to make it work.

Most shops end up paying for the system, then paying again for the parts that make it usable. Inspections. Texting. The scheduler. A bridge to the accounting software. A second app for the techs. Here they are just part of it.

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Digital inspectionsPhotos and video from the tech's tablet, straight to the client's phone.
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The tech tabletIts own app, made for a tablet in a bay — not a website squeezed onto one.
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Texting with clientsTwo-way, tied to the ticket, with a record of who agreed to what.
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Phones and callbacksMissed calls surface. A promise made on the phone shows up as work.
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Scheduling and the boardThe calendar and the production board, in hours, per teammate.
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Repair orders and estimatesLabor and parts, split across more than one person on the same job.
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Parts on the ticketThe tech checks parts off. Used something else? Production knows before it ships.
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Client historyFollows the car and the person, not the invoice number.
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Talking to each otherMessaging built in, on the same screen as the car you are talking about.
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Time clock and hoursWho is clocked in, what they worked on, and what it added up to.
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Loaner carsWho has what, since when, and what it is costing you.
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The booksReal double-entry accounting inside the system — see below.
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One shop or two hundredEvery shop from one login, each with its own settings, rolled up by region and for the whole group.

And the people who fix the cars.

A shop is not a building full of tickets. Most of what decides whether next year is better than this one happens to the people — who is getting better, who is stuck, and who nobody has spoken to in a month. That side is in here too, and nowhere else puts it in the same system.

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ASE test prepPractice questions, scores over time, and who is actually ready to sit it.
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Continuing educationHours done, hours needed, and what runs out this year.
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CertificationsWhat each teammate holds and the date it lapses — before it lapses.
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CoachingWhat was said, what was agreed, and whether it changed. Not a form nobody reads.
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Call review for advisorsDid the car come in? Was the whole job sold, or just the broken part?
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Teammate recordsRoster, position, time off, reviews, hours — one place, not five.
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Special toolsWho has it, who owns it, and a proper way to ask for a new one.
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FacilitiesWhat is broken in the building, who was told, and whether it got fixed.
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Oil stickersPrinted off the ticket with the right mileage. No handwriting, no guessing.
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Client follow-upDeclined work and due services come back around on their own.

Every phone call, looked at.

The two questions nobody can answer at the end of a week: did the cars we were called about actually come in, and did we sell the whole job or just the part that broke? Calls are reviewed against both — and a promise made on the phone becomes a job on somebody's list until it is kept.

Built to go from one shop to a hundred.

Most shop software is written for one location and grows a "multi-shop" screen later, which is why group operators end up running four logins, a spreadsheet and a monthly export. This was multi-shop from the first table: every record carries its company and its shop, so scale is not a feature that gets bolted on — it is how the data is shaped.

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One login, every shopSwitch shops, or look at all of them at once. Nobody keeps four tabs open.
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Regions and groupsRoll shops up however your business is actually run, not however the software was written.
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Its own settings per shopHours, labor rates, teammates, sheets and pay — a group standard that any one shop can be given its own version of.
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Who sees whatA manager sees their shop. A regional sees their region. Nobody sees more than they should.
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Books that consolidateA P&L per shop, per region and for the group — from one ledger, not four exports stitched together.
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Compare shops honestlyThe same numbers measured the same way everywhere, so a league table means something.
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Add a shop without a projectA new location is a record, not an install, a migration and a week of somebody's life.
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No ceiling in the designNothing in here assumes a small number of shops. There is no tier where it stops.

The books are not a bolt-on.

Nearly every shop system hands your numbers to accounting software and stops there. So the P&L tells you parts profit was 44% and cannot tell you which lines made it 44%.

What that means day to day

  • Real double-entry books — chart of accounts, journal, post and lock a period.
  • Invoices, payments, money owed to you and money you owe.
  • Bank and credit card reconciling that has to balance before it closes.
  • P&L, balance sheet and cash flow, with last year beside this year.

And every number opens. Click a figure on the P&L and you land on the repair orders and the lines that made it. Not a report — the actual work.

Nothing is edited quietly.

Once an invoice is posted it cannot be changed — a correction is its own document. Every money change is stamped with who did it, when, and what it came from, in a record that would survive somebody checking. That is built into the foundation, not added later when it matters.

“Every tech is different. Some you can load up, some you can’t. You have to learn what their taste is.”

The idea the whole thing is built around.

Straight answers.

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What is it?A shop management system for an independent auto repair shop — the software your counter, your bays and your office all work in. Scheduling, client and vehicle history, estimates, repair orders, parts, invoicing and the books.
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Does it do digital vehicle inspections?Yes, and they are not an add-on. Photos and video off a technician's tablet, marked up, in a report the client reads on their phone. No extra product, no second login, no separate bill.
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Does it do accounting, or hand off to accounting software?It does the accounting. Real double-entry books — chart of accounts, journal, posting, period close, payables, receivables, bank and card reconciling, P&L, balance sheet and cash flow. No monthly bridge copying your numbers somewhere else.
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Will it work for a group, not just one shop?It was built multi-shop from the first table — every record carries its company and its shop. One login across the group, each shop with its own hours, teammates and settings, roll-ups by region and for the whole group, and access scoped so a manager sees their shop and a regional sees their region. There is no tier where it stops.
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Can it be set up the way MY shop works?That is the whole idea. Rates, matrices, price levels, fees, tax, rounding and order points are yours to set, and any rule can name the shops it applies to. Where a setting does not cover it, we build it — you are talking to the person who writes the software, not filing a request behind two hundred others.
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Is it for sale yet?No. It runs a real shop every day, and it is not open to other shops until the accounting side is finished and proven. Leave your details and we will come find you when it is.

Want to see it when it opens up?

It is being used every day in a real shop right now. It is not for sale yet. Leave us a way to reach you and we will come find you when it is.

See a little of it first