FREE PARTS & INVENTORY
MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

Every shop owner knows the feeling. A tech needs a part. You check the shelf — empty. You thought you had three in stock but two went out last week and nobody updated the count. Now the car sits on the lift while you wait for a rush delivery that costs twice as much. The customer gets frustrated. The bay sits unproductive. And you eat the express shipping cost because it was your mistake.

Parts and inventory management shouldn't be this hard. But when your shop management software doesn't include proper inventory tracking — or charges extra for it — you end up managing parts with spreadsheets, memory, and hope. That's not a system. That's a liability.

Shop Commander includes end-to-end parts and inventory management as a core feature. Not a paid add-on. Not a third-party integration. A fully built-in system that tracks every part from the moment you order it to the moment it's installed on a customer's vehicle — with cost tracking, margin analysis, and a full audit trail the entire way. And it's free.

Shop Commander's parts catalog is built for how real shops work. Every part gets a full record: part number, description, brand, category, vendor, and type (part, fluid, hardware, chemical, or shop supply). You can classify parts as core stock (always on hand) or job parts (ordered per job), so your team knows what should be in inventory and what gets ordered as needed.

Each part tracks real-time stock levels including quantity on hand, reserved quantity (allocated to active ROs), reorder point, reorder quantity, and max stock. When stock drops below the reorder point, Shop Commander generates an automatic low-stock alert so you never run out of the parts you need most.

Parts margin is where shops make or lose money, and most shops don't actually know their margins because tracking is too manual. Shop Commander automates the entire cost-to-price chain.

Every part tracks cost and retail price with automatic markup percentage calculation. The tiered parts markup matrix automatically applies markup based on cost ranges — so a $5 filter might get 200% markup while a $500 compressor gets 40%. Configure the tiers once and every part is priced consistently.

When a service writer manually overrides a price (maybe giving a loyal customer a break), the system creates a markup override audit record with the original price, new price, the user who changed it, and the reason. This protects you from margin erosion that happens invisibly when writers discount parts without accountability.

The markup analytics report shows approval rates by markup percentage bracket. If customers approve 95% of work at 50% markup but only 60% at 100% markup, you have data to optimize your pricing strategy. Most shops guess at this. Shop Commander measures it. Read more in our guide on how to make more money running your shop.

Shop Commander includes full purchase order management with a lifecycle that tracks every order from draft to reconciliation:

• Draft — create the PO with line items and vendor assignment
• Submitted — PO sent to vendor, awaiting delivery
• Partial — some items received, others still pending
• Received — all items received, quantities confirmed
• Reconciled — vendor invoice matched, costs confirmed
• Cancelled — PO cancelled with reason

Purchase orders link directly to repair orders, so you can trace which parts were ordered for which job. The receiving workflow tracks quantities received with cost reconciliation — and if the received cost differs from the ordered cost, the system flags the discrepancy so you catch pricing errors before they hit your margin.

ETA tracking gives your team visibility into expected delivery dates, so service writers can give customers accurate timeline estimates. Vendor invoice numbers are recorded for reconciliation with your accounting.

Every parts vendor your shop works with gets a full profile in Shop Commander: name, contact info, phone, fax, email, website, account number, payment terms, credit balance, and supplier type. Each vendor record includes a dedicated sales rep section with the rep's name, phone, and email — because when you need a rush order, you need that number fast.

Default lead times per vendor help your team estimate delivery dates when creating purchase orders. If Vendor A delivers in 24 hours and Vendor B takes 3 days, that context matters when a car is sitting on the lift waiting for a part.

Vendor records link to all associated purchase orders and return orders, giving you a complete history of your relationship with every supplier. Which vendors ship fastest? Which ones have the most cost discrepancies? Which ones process returns without hassle? The data is there.

Shop Commander goes beyond basic inventory tracking with features designed for how real shops operate.

Parts Kits let you bundle parts that commonly go together. A brake kit might include pads, rotors, hardware, and brake cleaner. Apply the entire kit to a line item with one click instead of adding parts individually. Create, edit, and manage as many kits as you need.

Core Charges are tracked per repair order with deposit and return workflows. When a customer buys an alternator, the core charge is documented. When the old core comes back, it's tracked. No more lost core credits because nobody wrote it down.

Part Cross-References map equivalent part numbers across different brands. If Brand A's filter #12345 is the same as Brand B's filter #67890, your team can find the right part regardless of which brand number they search for.

Part Failure Tracking logs warranty failures with install date, failure date, odometer data, and links back to the original repair order. Over time, this data reveals which brands fail most often — invaluable intelligence for choosing reliable parts. This integrates directly with Shop Commander's warranty management system.

The complete inventory audit trail logs every stock movement with before/after quantities, adjustment type (receive, allocate, deallocate, deduct, manual, return), reason, and user attribution. If stock numbers don't add up, you can trace exactly what happened and who did it.

The real power of Shop Commander's inventory system is that it lives inside the same platform as your repair orders, inspections, and scheduling. Parts aren't tracked in a separate system that your team has to remember to update. They're tracked on the repair order itself.

Every part on an RO tracks: part number, description, vendor, brand, quantity, cost, price, and markup. Parts follow a status workflow — Needed → Ordered → Received → Installed → Returned — so your team always knows where every part stands. Order tracking includes tracking numbers, order method, vendor, and order notes.

When a tech uses a part from inventory, stock levels update automatically. When a part is ordered for a job, the PO links to the RO. When a part is returned, the inventory adjusts and the return is documented. There's no gap between "what we ordered" and "what we installed" because it's all in one system.

This integration also powers AI job suggestions — the AI can factor in which parts you have in stock when recommending additional services, making it more likely the work can be completed same-day.