Setting Up Suprata for an Auto Glass Shop

Auto glass looks like any other service business until you price your first windshield. Then it gets specific very quickly:

• Every part has a national number and a list price. Customers, insurers and fleets all expect you to price from NAGS, not from a number you made up.
• Labor is quoted in NAGS hours, and insurers check it.
• A lot of the work is paid by insurance, through claims administrators such as Safelite, LYNX or HSG, and the claim has to match what you did.
• Parts timing drives the schedule. You can't book the install until you know the glass will be there.
• Safety is part of the job. Cameras behind the windshield may need recalibrating, urethane needs time to cure before the car is driven, and you want proof of all of it.

Suprata's Auto Glass workflow handles all of this. It is a set of guided screens that walk a job from the phone call to the paid invoice. Underneath, it's the same jobs, estimates, invoices and appointments as the rest of Suprata, so your reports, accounting and customer history keep working exactly as they do for any other job.

This guide sets it up. Plan on about an hour, most of it deciding prices. It assumes you've done the basics in Setting up Suprata for a service business: company settings, taxes and your staff.

Before you start: what you need

The parts catalog and insurance billing, switched on by Suprata support. Suprata looks up vehicles, glass parts, NAGS list prices and labor hours, and sends insurance claims to the administrators, through the AutoGlass Upstream Provider. You don't sign up for it or connect it yourself: Suprata support sets it up for your shop (Step 2).

You can do everything else in this guide before that's on. The estimate screen just can't find glass until it is, so do the pricing and workflow steps now and the first job is ready the day it's switched on.

Auto Glass on your plan. The workflow is an add-on. If you don't see Auto Glass in your left menu after setup, contact us and we'll check your plan.

Step 1 — Turn it on

If Auto Glass was on your plan when you first signed up, the setup wizard asked for your job type name, labor rate and glass discount. That already did this step for you.

Otherwise, go to Workflows → Workflows & Job Types in the admin menu. Point a job type at Auto Glass. Most shops call it simply "Auto Glass"; some split "Auto Glass - Mobile" and "Auto Glass - In Shop". The first time you do this, Suprata creates everything the workflow needs:

• three job forms: vehicle, insurance claim and install record;
• price-list categories: Auto Glass › NAGS Glass, NAGS Hardware & Kits and Glass Labor & Services;
• your standard service items: labor, urethane kit, the three kinds of calibration, mobile fee, disposal, chip repair and deductible lines;
• the hold reasons "Waiting for Parts to Arrive", "Pending Payment" and "Waiting for Insurance".

It's safe to do more than once; nothing gets duplicated.

From now on, booking a job of that type opens the guided Auto Glass screen instead of the plain work order.

Step 2 — Ask Suprata support to switch on the catalog and insurance billing

There's nothing to connect on your side. Contact Suprata support and ask for the auto glass parts catalog and insurance billing to be turned on. Support sets up the whole link for you:

• the sign-in to the AutoGlass Upstream Provider, so lookups and claims work from day one;
• which of your locations the work is billed from;
• matching the people on your team who handle claims, because every claim has to name the person who handled it;
• which of your services are the calibrations, the urethane kit and the mobile fee, so insurers see them with the right service codes;
• how your insurers pay you (electronic transfer or check), so payments can be matched to deposits;
• instant updates, so you hear within minutes when an insurer accepts, rejects or pays a claim, and when a referral arrives.

Have a few answers ready and it goes quickly: who handles your insurance claims, which location you bill from, and how your insurers usually pay you.

How to tell it's on: book a test Auto Glass job and look up a VIN. If the vehicle comes back with a catalog match and you can pick glass on the estimate, you're connected. If not, contact support rather than changing anything in your settings.

Step 3 — Price glass, hardware and labor

Open Workflows → Auto Glass Settings; Steps 3 to 7 all happen there. Start on the Pricing tab. These are your default prices. They're used for customers who pay themselves, and for any insurer or fleet without its own agreement (Step 4).

The box at the bottom of the tab shows a worked example with your numbers. Read it before you save; it catches a typo like 250% faster than anything else.

NAGS prices are always today's. Each time a part is added to an estimate, Suprata fetches its current NAGS list price and updates that part in your price list. You never maintain glass prices by hand.

Step 4 — Payer agreements (insurer and fleet pricing)

Insurance networks and fleet customers usually have their own pricing: "NAGS less 30%, labor $55, kit $20". Put each one on the Payer agreements tab:

• Choose who it is for: an insurer or administrator, or a fleet account.
• Enter only the prices that differ. Any box you leave empty uses your default.
• Give it a start date (and an end date if the agreement expires). When a contract renews at new rates, create a new agreement dated from the renewal. Old jobs keep the prices they were quoted.

When someone chooses who pays on a job, the estimate re-prices itself to match. The person quoting sees which agreement applied.

Step 5 — Price list, insurers and warehouses

Price list tab:

• Where things go in the price list: the three categories from Step 1 are already chosen. Change them only if you already have a category layout you prefer. Use Manage categories to arrange them.
• Taxes on glass and parts / labor and services: choose the tax categories that apply. Many states tax glass but not labor. Check yours.
• Order glass from: your main glass distributor. It's pre-filled when a technician orders a part, and they can still change it.
• Warehouses technicians see first: if you have a shop and a few vans, pick the shop. Technicians can still show every warehouse.
• Your own parts and services that show in the estimate search: pick the categories that hold your non-NAGS items, such as rain-sensor gel pads or moulding adhesive. Keeping unrelated items out of this search makes quoting faster.
• Standard items on every glass job: should all show Ready. If any say Missing, press Create anything missing.

Insurers tab: press Refresh the list to bring in the insurance companies and administrators you can bill. Then tidy it up so it matches how your team talks:

• Rename one to what your staff call it (the Shown as column). "State Farm" is easier to pick than a legal entity name.
• Hide the ones you never bill, so the payer list on a job stays short.
• Link each one to its payer agreement from Step 4, so the estimate re-prices itself when that insurer is chosen.
• Add one by hand if someone you bill isn't on the list.

If Refresh the list brings back nothing, insurance billing isn't switched on yet. Contact Suprata support (Step 2).

Step 6 — Decide how jobs move along

Workflow tab. The defaults suit most shops, but these are worth a real decision:

• Approval. Choose how a customer can approve: in person (with a signature if you want one), by a link they get by text or email, or by an insurance authorization number. Keep all three unless you have a reason not to.

• When ordered parts arrive. Send the job to scheduling when everything is received is the safe default. Allow booking as soon as purchasing has a ship date fills your calendar faster, but you'll occasionally rebook when a truck is late.

• Insurance claims are sent After the install is complete (recommended). Sending at approval only makes sense if your administrator asks for it.

• An insurance claim counts as paid. Choose When the insurer accepts it (confirmed against the bank later) or Only once the money is matched to a bank deposit. The first keeps jobs from sitting open for weeks. The second is stricter. Ask your bookkeeper which one they want.

• Require before and after photos to finish an install. Leave this on. Photos settle more disputes than anything else you'll keep.

• Flag a job as running late when it sits on a step longer than… These times feed the board and the "running late" alerts. The defaults are:

• a day for building the estimate, scheduling and the install;

• two days for approval;

• four hours for deciding where parts come from, and for billing finished work;

• 30 days for payment.

Step 7 — Messages, safety and compliance

• Customer messages: texts that go out at the right moments: parts arrived, appointment booked, technician on the way, work complete with the safe drive-away time. The first four are on by default. Read the wording and make it sound like you.
• Safety: list the urethanes you actually use, the lowest temperature each can be used at, and the safe drive-away time at each temperature, straight from the manufacturer's sheet. The install checklist uses these to tell the technician, and the customer, when the car can be driven.
• Compliance: the calibration disclosure, the work authorization and the calibration-declined form. Have whoever handles your legal or insurance matters read the wording once. It's saved with every signature, so what the customer saw is always on file.

Step 8 — Give your team the right access

Four permissions matter, set on each role:

• Use Job Workflows — anyone who books or works glass jobs. Roles that could already work jobs got it automatically.
• Manage Workflows — the owner or manager who changes these settings.
• Manage Insurance Billing — whoever reviews and sends claims and matches insurer deposits. Nobody has this until you give it.
• Manage Purchase Orders — whoever approves and sends orders to your glass vendors.

Common mistakes

Pricing every insurer at your retail default. If you do network work, the network's rates are in your agreement. Without a payer agreement, the estimate quotes your retail price and the claim is short-paid. Set up agreements before the first insurance job, not after the first short pay.

Waiting for the catalog before doing anything else. Pricing, payer agreements, the workflow settings and your messages don't depend on it. Do them while support switches the catalog on, and your first real job is ready the same day.

Not telling support about a new claims person. Every claim has to name the person who handled it, and support matches your claims staff when it sets you up. Someone who joins later isn't matched until you tell us. Let support know before their first insurance job, not after a claim is refused and the car has left.

Changing a job type back to "no workflow" to fix one job. You don't need to. Every guided job has a link to the standard job page, and edits made there are picked up by the workflow.

Setting the margin warning with no costs in the price list. The warning needs costs to work from. Enter your cost on your own parts. NAGS parts get their cost when you receive them on a purchase order.

Where to go next

• Running an auto glass job from start to finish — what each step of the guided screen does.
• Billing accounts: fleets and other payers — setting up fleet customers.
• Purchase orders: from request to receiving — how ordered glass gets to the job.
• Reading the Auto Glass Performance dashboard — your numbers, once the jobs start flowing.