You have probably been bombarded with sales reps wanting to convince you that AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) can greatly assist your business.  Here are some things you should know about AI, and how it relates to Auto Shop Writer.

1). AI is in it’s infancy no matter what you hear.  When you look at an AI engine, the first notice is that you should NOT trust the information to be accurate without further verification.  At it’s current stage, AI is generally guess work because it is based on patterns detected when scanning data, and the computer is trying to make sense of all the information it sees.  It will get better, but right now it is not generally ready for prime time.

2). Much of the information AI provides is quite generic.  It may have some very good answers, but generally the responses are pretty broad.

3). AI is not free.  To use the services, you will have to create an account and pay for “tokens”.  You are charged for the size of the question, and the size of the response.  A very specific question may be brief where a general question could be long, and costly.

How good is AI ?  Many large corporations now are using AI for their tech support.  When you go online, or call in, you are likely speaking to a “digital assistant”.  How good are the responses ?  When you have a very specific need, can you get the proper answer / solution ?  Probably not.  That is because the systems are still in the learning process, and don’t have enough data to give you good answers.  However, getting to a person who can resolve your problems may be quite frustrating, if not impossible.

With all of this in mind, we do have the ability to add AI capabilities to Auto Shop Writer ( and have done so for testing purposes ).  A while back we added the F3 key to let you ask a question of Microsoft CoPilot and it will then display the answers in your web browser.  It’s not a specific, single page, response, but it helps you find what you need, shows you other relevant articles on the subject, and is cost free.

Currently we are testing a more direct AI interface with some of the major providers ( Google, ChatGPT, OpenAI, and DeepSeek ).  In each case we can ask specific questions and get back responses that are readable, saveable, and printable.  Our interface works fine and we can do it with a function key from anywhere withing the program.  You can even copy the responses into your online notebook ( in the program ).  

Our results have not been surprising.  When it relates to the work you do, the information is generally not specific enough to be useful.  We can ask it how to perform an oil change on a 2022 Honda Civic Sport and it will give us very general instructions ( jack up the car, collect the tools, move a capture pan into place, remove the drain plug, remove the oil filter, wipe the surfaces clean, replace the oil plug, install a new filter, refill the oil ).  However, the critical information ( like where the components are found, which parts to use, any special notes on accessing those parts, etc ) are missing.  Thus, as we test the various services, we are seeking one that can give you excellent responses, and so far, we haven’t found them.

At this point, we will not be activating the AI specific capability.  You would end up investing money on an AI account, and feel it wasn’t worth it because the information is not accurate enough or specific to your needs.  We will continue to work in this area, and test the various AI resources ( there are many ).

The point of this is to let you know this is an area we can, and will, implement for you, but we want to be sure what we put in place is valuable to you.  

PLEASE READ THIS FULL BULLETIN:

A new update has posted and it is 12.51.11.  If your DPP fees are current through the first quarter of 2025, it will appear on your computer on January 8th in the PM.  ( If the fee is not current, when received, your system will download the update ).

The changes here are based on client input ( and changing needs ).  In addition, some of our interfaces needed small updating due to the other providers modifications to their data or programs.  Here are a few things to note:

In some cases, configurations of the Technician’s Worksheet were not responding to the same “lines per page” number that is used for Invoices.  You can go to Tools -> Setup -> Worksheet and enter the best number of lines for worksheets, and it does not need to match invoices.

Several years ago we implemented a feature where the retail price was printed on invoices when the selling price was discounted.  This occurs with Level 1-4 pricing.  That may not be desirable in your situation.  You can now go to Tools -> Setup -> Invoices and set a Default to have it show, or not.  Even if you default to Yes, when the print dialog comes up ( where you can select Invoice, Estimate, etc and other factors ), you can change that on the fly and uncheck the box so it doesn’t show on that particular invoice.  BTW, did you know that you can use the Retail button on the Workorder Parts screen to set a retail price to any value ( even if it is something different in Inventory ?

Some people are using the Special Label feature to break out oil, or tires, or whatever.  ( You can also use the sort code for this … create your own codes ).  The Totals report gave a $$$ amount but not the quantity of times it was charged.  We added the quantity which we know will be helpful since this is sometimes used for reporting special tax items.

When making labor entries the prompt for recalculating always came up, and the default was Yes.  First, we changed the default to No in case someone just hit the enter key.  Secondly, we did some fine tuning so now it should only come up when a change is detected.  This also eliminates any chance of overriding a fixed labor charge setup in the glossary …

Along the way there were other touch ups and internal changes.  We are awaiting a major update to our core engine which will allow us to bring you even more exciting features in the coming months.

Every once in awhile we hear “Oh, I’ve had issues with that for the longest time”.  When problems are reported they are usually resolved within hours, or at most a few days.  However, we can’t fix anything if we don’t. know about it.  PLEASE email support@masterlinksoftware.com with any issues you are encountering.