Frequently Asked Questions

Crovalt Shop OS is an AI-powered shop management platform for independent auto repair shops. Repair orders, AI diagnostics, scheduling, invoicing, Stripe Terminal payments, QuickBooks Online sync, and a customer portal — in one subscription.

Built for 1–10 bay independent shops who are tired of stitching Mitchell 1 + QuickBooks + a separate card terminal + an SMS add-on just to run a day.

When a vehicle comes in with DTCs or a customer complaint, Crovalt runs a two-phase diagnostic pipeline:

• Phase 1 (fast context)— We pull vehicle profile, active NHTSA recalls, OEM TSBs matching the DTCs, and your shop's own repair history for this vehicle and symptom. Typically under 5 seconds.
• Phase 2 (AI reasoning) — A vector search against repair-outcome embeddings finds similar cases, and Claude Sonnet ranks probable causes with confidence scores, predicted parts, and estimated labor hours. Typically 10–30 seconds.

You see partial results the moment Phase 1 completes, and Phase 2 populates in the background. Results feed directly into the RO — one click adds predicted parts and labor as line items with markup applied.

Yes. We handle migrations two ways:

• Guided CSV import — Upload customer and vehicle exports from your current system. Our wizard walks you through column mapping and previews the import before anything is written.
• Hand-migration (included)— Our team will take your Mitchell 1, Tekmetric, or Shopmonkey export and migrate it for you in under 48 hours. Book a demo and we'll walk through your current data.

Yes. Crovalt integrates with Stripe Terminal for card-present payments at the counter and on mobile readers, plus Stripe Checkout for online payment links (email/SMS to the customer). Standard Stripe processing rates apply.

Payments are recorded against the invoice automatically, reconcile to QuickBooks Online, and surface on the dashboard in real time. You can accept card, cash, check, or a Stripe payment link — and split tenders if needed. BNPL options (Affirm, Klarna, Afterpay) can be enabled per shop.

Yes — and it's one of the deepest integrations in the category. Crovalt syncs:

• Invoices with line-item fidelity (ItemRef, qty, unit price, tax code)
• Payments applied to invoices
• Refunds as RefundReceipts
• Stripe processing fees booked as QBO expenses from balance transactions
• A clearing-account pattern so payouts reconcile cleanly at month end

Failed syncs are queued with exponential backoff; dead-letter items are surfaced in-app for manual review. No more guessing why your books don't match.

Network data sharing is opt-in and fully anonymized. No shop names, customer info, or identifying details are ever exposed. What gets shared is the outcome of a repair — which probable cause was correct, what parts were used, how long the job took — tied only to vehicle year/make/model/engine and the DTC or symptom.

The network intelligence layer is in beta. It grows more valuable as more shops join. Early shops on the platform are locking in their pricing and getting network insights credited to their shop as the data matures.

No per-tech seat fees. Every plan is one flat shop rate:

• Starter — Up to 3 bays, 5 technicians
• Professional — Up to 10 bays, unlimited technicians
• Enterprise — Unlimited bays, multi-location, API access

Annual billing saves about 15%. See full pricing.

Crovalt runs as a browser-based web app and can be installed from supported browsers as a PWA. Core workflows survive brief connectivity drops and sync back up when you reconnect. The dashboard, RO board, and customer search cache locally so your team can keep moving.

Dedicated Stripe Terminal readers buffer transactions locally and settle when the connection returns.