Labor Presets
What Are Labor Presets?
Labor presets are saved labor line templates your service advisors can pick from when building a Repair Order. Instead of typing the description, hours, and rate from scratch every time, a preset fills all of that in with one click. You can customize any preset before saving the RO — the preset is just a starting point.
Go to Presets in the sidebar to manage your labor presets. Each preset you create belongs to your shop only. CSM also ships a starter list of common shop-wide presets that any shop can use — those are shown with a “Shop-wide” badge and cannot be edited, but you can create your own versions alongside them.
What a Preset Stores
Name and Category
Give the preset a descriptive name (for example, “Brake Pad Replacement — Front”) and file it under a category so it is easy to find. Categories come pre-seeded with common shop divisions like Maintenance, Brakes, Engine, and more. You can add your own categories and sub-categories.
Hourly vs. Fixed Price
Each preset bills the customer in one of two ways. Hourly multiplies a set number of hours by a rate. Fixed price charges a flat amount regardless of hours — useful for packaged services like alignments or oil changes where a flat fee makes more sense. You set this when creating or editing the preset.
Labor Rate
Leave the rate blank and the preset will always use your shop’s default labor rate (set in Shop Settings). When your default rate changes, all presets with no rate set update automatically. Set a specific rate on a preset to lock it in — useful for special pricing on specific services.
Tech Pay Hours
Shops often pay technicians a different number of flat-rate hours than what is billed to the customer. The Tech Pay Hours field captures what the technician is credited, separate from the billed hours. This feeds the Technician Dashboard and Flag Hours reports but never changes what the customer is charged.
Using Presets on a Repair Order
On the Labor tab of a Repair Order, click + Add labor line and pick a preset from the dropdown. The description, hours, rate, and pricing mode all fill in. You can then adjust any field for that specific job without changing the saved preset. Presets can also be selected during the Scheduling intake stage for jobs you know in advance — the details carry straight onto the Repair Order when it is created.
Concern Catalog
Separate from labor presets, the Concern Catalog is a library of customer complaints — the problem in the customer’s own words, like “grinding noise when braking.” These are captured on the Tech tab of a Repair Order, not on the Labor tab. The concern drives the RO name automatically.
CSM ships with over 250 platform-wide concerns covering the most common vehicle complaints, organized by system (Engine, Brakes, Electrical, etc.) and symptom type. Your technician sees a brief prompt for each concern — a hint about what to check. You can also star your most-used concerns as favorites so they appear at the top of the picker, and add custom concerns specific to your shop from Account Settings → Presets → Concern Settings.