Automotive & Spare Parts

A mixed container is the exact case where allocation matters most and the correct basis is unavailable. Why quantity allocation destroys a clip's cost, the split-delivery defect to work around, and why demurrage always lands after you start selling.

Customers return because you know their car, and that knowledge lives in a folder that gets lost and a mechanic who leaves. How far a registration-prefix convention gets you, and the declined-work note that is worth more than any discount.

The one place serial tracking pays back in the first month. Read the serial and you know when it sold, who supplied it and whether the claim is live — and six failures from one purchase order becomes a claim against your supplier.

Thirty vehicles, each individually costed, individually aging, each carrying unfinished paperwork. Item-per-vehicle is the model that works — and if credit is how you actually sell, this covers the yard and not the business.

An internal workshop has nobody querying the bill, which is why fleet stores leak more than commercial ones. Cost per vehicle without a vehicle record, tool custody that works, and the honest position on service scheduling.

A 38% landed uplift turns a 30% markup into a loss, and that is the ordinary imported container rather than a bad one. Three customers at three prices, and the supplier price list we can add so every invoice checks against an agreed rate.

Most workshops make their money on parts and believe they make it on labour — and the two answers recommend opposite investments. How to get an overhead-per-hour figure, and what to charge when a customer brings their own parts.

"Will this fit a 2014 Probox" is a database query executed by a man who has done it for eleven years. Why fitment is a licensed data product rather than a feature, what searchable fields genuinely buy you, and when to run a catalogue alongside.

The hardest inventory problem in Kenya, and not because of volume — the same alternator carries four names, so stock is counted three times and one person holds the mapping. What fixes it, in what order, and the vehicle record this does not have.

A job card runs as a project here, which gives you parts at stamped cost, labour hours and a real margin per job from day one. Vehicle history across visits is the piece we can add on top, and it is worth scoping early.