Creating a New Vehicle Record Through the Greeter Station

The Greeter Station is designed to allow you to enter basic customer and service information. This function allows your technicians to meet customers before the actual service and gather vehicle and customer information to streamline the service. This information is sent to the bay stations and is accessed at a bay when the vehicle is being serviced. You can also process invoices at the Greeter Station just like you can at the Bay Invoicing Station. LubeSoft has two ways to process invoices, giving you a choice of the type of center you want to run.

• Bay/Waiting Room centers create invoices on the Bay Invoicing or Greeter screens and then send the invoices to the Cashier. A cashier at a separate terminal uses the Cashier Station menu option to ring out the customers. This type of center has one cashier console and one or more bay terminals.
• Drive-Thru centers create invoices on the Bay Invoicing screen. When the invoice is complete, the Cashier Screen automatically comes up. Drive-Thru centers have one or more terminals that have bay and cashier functions on each terminal.

When a vehicle ID entered does not match any ID on the system, the system assumes the customer is new. New customers are processed the same way at the Greeter Station and the Bay Invoicing Station except the Greeter Station has an additional screen, the Greeter Station Input screen.

Use the following steps to process a new customer:

1. On the Main Menu, select Lubrication Menu.
2. Select Invoicing Menu (1).
3. Select Greeter Station (2) to receive the following screen. This is the first screen of the invoicing process and is displayed until you start the greeter process. All vehicles currently being invoiced (before they are sent to the Cashier Station) are listed on the screen in ascending order by work order number.

4. Fill in the Enter New Vehicle ID field (and State or Prov field, if required) and press [Enter]. The vehicle ID is generally the license plate number of the vehicle, minus any spaces or dashes. For example, “1 ABC-32” would be entered as 1ABC32. The vehicle ID can be up to 13 characters long, including the state abbreviation.

• • The format of the vehicle ID is determined by the format set up in the Center Control File. If the vehicle ID is not in the format you specified in the Mask field on screen 6 of the Center Control File, you receive the following message: Vehicle ID does not fit template. Press [Enter] to accept the vehicle ID.
  • If you enter a character that is set to be always excluded, you receive the following message: You cannot use ! in a license number (where ! represents a character specified in the Exclude Always field in the Center Control File, which was entered as part of the vehicle ID).
  • You cannot create a second work order for the same vehicle ID if it has not been cashed out. If you try this, you receive the following message: Workorder already in progress for this customer. Press any key to continue.

5. You receive a **NEW VEHICLE ID** message on your screen.

6. At the OK to continue? prompt, do one of the following:

• • If the information is correct and you want to continue, type Y. Proceed to the next step.
  • If the vehicle ID is incorrect, type N. You return to the Greeter Station screen. If the customer has previously been serviced at your center, use [F2] to look up by name or [F3] to look up by VIN to find the correct vehicle ID.
  • If the customer is a repeat customer and the vehicle’s ID has changed, type C. When you are prompted for the old license number, enter it to continue as a repeat customer. This copies the history from the old vehicle ID and deletes the old vehicle record. For more information, see the Changing the License of a Repeat Customer article.

7. If you typed Y to continue, you will receive the following screen. You can determine how much vehicle information you want to enter on the Greeter Station screen. All the vehicle information is required at the Bay Invoicing Station. For this example, we will assume the vehicle is a 2001 Acura CL. Select one of the following choices.

• • You may choose not to enter any vehicle information. Press [Enter] at the Year prompt without typing any information to proceed directly to the Greeter Station Input screen.
  • You can enter the year, make, and model information and not the engine information. When entering this information, you can press the Up Arrow at any time to return to the previous screen. Press [Enter] at the Engine field without typing any information to proceed to the Greeter Station Input screen.
  • You can enter all vehicle information (year, make, model, and engine). Press [Enter] after the Engine field to receive the Greeter Station Input screen.

8. Type in all four digits of the year of the vehicle or leave blank to skip entering vehicle information at this time. Press [Enter] to receive a screen similar to the following.

9. Type the number that corresponds to the make of the vehicle, and press [Enter] to receive the following screen.

10. Type the number that corresponds to the model of the vehicle and press [Enter] to receive a screen similar to the following.

11. Type the number that corresponds to the engine type of the vehicle or leave blank to skip the engine selection at this time. Press [Enter] to display the Greeter Station Input screen.

The following list explains the function keys at the bottom of the screen.

12. The fields on this screen are defined in the following list.

ID

The system displays the vehicle ID of the vehicle you are entering into the system. (Display only)

Vehicle

The system displays the year, make, model, and engine size of the vehicle. This information only appears if you filled it in on the previous screens. (Display only)

Name

This field will read ** NEW CUSTOMER ** if no customer information exists for this vehicle. You can add the name information in the Name PopUp. (Display only)

13. Fill in the following information:

Description/Color

Fill in a brief vehicle description (up to 25 characters). Entering the vehicle color is suggested. The value entered in this field is displayed in the Veh Desc field on the Maintain Vehicle History screen.

Oil Preference

Specify the type of oil requested by the customer.

Services

Enter up to seven services requested by the customer. A brief description is automatically filled in by the system. The Job Items and AddOns are not shown, but they will show up at the Bay Invoicing Station. Press [F1] to bring up a list of all the valid inventory item numbers you can put in the Services fields. By default, the list starts at the Full Service category (FS). Select an item from the list and press [Enter] to fill it in automatically on the screen. Press [F7] and [F8] to scroll through the groups of items until you locate the item you want. Use the Up and Down Arrows to select the item, then press [Enter] to fill in the item’s part number and description into the Services field. To get out of the Help PopUp without selecting an item, press [Esc] [Esc].

14. To receive the OK to send to bays? prompt, press [Enter] on a blank Services line.
15. Do one of the following:

• To return to the Oil Preference field, type N.
• To send the information to the Bay Invoicing Station screen, type Y. You return to the Enter New Vehicle ID field on the Greeter Station screen.

For additional instruction on invoicing vehicles, see the following articles:

• Using the Greeter Station
• Processing a Repeat Customer Through the Greeter Station
• Processing a Repeat Customer Through the Bay Invoicing Station
• Processing a New Charge (Fleet) Customer
• Processing a Repeat Charge Customer
• Creating a Manual Vehicle for Vehicles Prior to 1980
• Creating a Manual Vehicle for Vehicles not Currently in the ESM
• Changing the Vehicle ID of a Repeat Customer
• Changing the License of a Repeat Customer
• Using the PopUp Menus