How to get out of a TechMan contract

You are on TechMan, on a contract with months left on it, and you have had enough. Maybe the system has been slow for weeks and support says it is your internet. Maybe you added a module and found the clock had started again. Either way you want out, and you want your customers’ history with you when you go.

This guide is what to do, in order: what you actually signed, the three things to do this week, how to get your data back if they hold it, and how to change systems without the workshop stopping. It comes from garages that have done it, one of whom went to solicitors to get his own data back, and the mistakes they made are the ones this guide is here to save you.

What you signed: Partner, Flexi, and the clock that restarts

TechMan has recently started selling every plan two ways. The Partner plan is a minimum-term agreement: no upfront fee and a lower monthly price, and how long the term runs is not on their pricing page. Owners in the trade groups talk about three years. The Flexi plan is 30-day rolling, at a higher monthly price plus £199 to £1,300 upfront. Flexi is new this year. If you signed a while ago, you are on the committed plan, whatever it was called at the time.

On the committed plan, leaving early means paying what you would have paid to the end of the term, all at once. One owner was told 18 months’ fees, about £6,000, to get out. Another was quoted £4,000. And owners report that adding a module or moving up a tier mid-term restarts the term from that date, so a garage two years into three that adds one thing is back at the start.

The part that catches most owners out is this: a slow system is not a way out. When it is slow every day and support blames your internet, the natural assumption is that they have failed to deliver and you can leave. In the contract that is called a material breach, and the wording is built to make it very hard to prove.

One owner, whose story runs through this guide with his permission, found out the hard way. We will call him Mark. After months of the system being slow to the point of unusable, he stopped his Direct Debit until it was fixed. TechMan cut off his access the same day. When he asked in writing to end the agreement because the system was not fit for purpose, their answer, in writing, was that slowness does not meet the threshold for a material breach and the contract stood. The first answer to the slowness, by the way, had been his internet speed, a requirement nobody had raised at the point of sale.

Getting your data back

Your customers, their cars and years of history are the business. In a dispute with a software vendor they become leverage, and it is worth knowing how that plays out before it happens to you.

When Mark’s access was cut, the front desk took the hit. Cars were booked in for weeks ahead and nobody could see the registrations, so nobody could order the parts. The desk had handwritten notes of what the jobs were and nothing else. The vendor refused to release the data, citing internal policy, and released it after a solicitor’s letter gave them seven days. It came back complete, and the import into the next system was straightforward. The refusal, and the weeks it cost, are the story.

Two rights are in play, and they are different. Under UK GDPR your customers have a right to their personal data in a readable format. Your right to your own data, the jobs, invoices and history, is whatever the contract says. Read it for what it says about data when you leave; if it says nothing, that is your starting point, and it is not the vendor’s property either way. When you ask for the final export, ask for CSV or XML, not a file that only opens in their system, and ask in writing.

He is right, and the answer is not to argue with the export on the day. It is the monthly export above, so that on the day you move you have the freshest copy of your own data and months of your own backups to check the import against. What TechMan will export, and what it will not, is something the next vendor should tell you before you commit, not after.

The team will feel it before you do

An owner who is off the tools finds out how the system is doing second-hand. The week Mark lost access, he had a bad week. His front desk could not order parts, confirm bookings or tell a customer when the car would be ready, and the garage stopped. The same is true on a normal day: a system that is slow, or that the desk works around, costs the people who live in it first and reaches you last.

So when you look at the next system, put the desk and the techs in front of it, not just yourself. Ask to see a day on the desk, from the phone ringing to the invoice, on a garage like yours, and watch the people who will run it. That test is one of the five questions to ask before you sign up to any garage management system, and it is the one most owners skip.

The changeover, without the workshop stopping

What keeps owners on a system they have stopped trusting is the changeover: jobs lost between two systems, reminders not going out, the desk running slow for a month. That has happened to garages that switched badly. It does not have to happen to yours, because the whole thing can be planned before you commit to anything. This is how it works on GarageRevs.

• 1 Before the day, TechMan runs the garage as normal. On the demo call we look at what you have in TechMan, say what comes across and what it will not export, and agree the day you go live. Your customers, cars and history are brought in, the system is set up as your garage, and your front desk and techs are trained in person at your own counter, on your own customers and cars. Nothing changes for your customers.
• 2 The day you go live, on a date you chose. From that morning every new booking, job and invoice goes through GarageRevs. TechMan stays open for looking up old jobs and nothing else. The team have already used the new system on real customers, so the first day is a slow day, not a bad one, and the questions that come up come to us, seven days a week.
• 3 After, until the contract ends. Keep the TechMan login for reference until your term is up, keep paying it until then, and add nothing to it. Take one last export before it closes. Start to finish, the move itself is done inside 14 days, and you have 90 days to run it properly, month-end and all, with every penny back if it is not right.

What comes across, who does what and when, and what the first week is like, is on the moving-from-another-system page.

Five things to get in writing before you sign with anyone

Whatever you move to, hold it to the standard you wish you had held TechMan to. Get all five in writing before you sign:

• One number for the whole garage. Staff logins included, and set-up, training and the move from TechMan in the price, not on a separate invoice. TechMan puts £199 to £1,300 upfront on Flexi and spreads it across the term on Partner.
• No minimum term, and what happens when you add something. Month to month, and a straight answer to whether adding a module changes the term. If a vendor needs to tie you in, ask why.
• Your data out, without asking. A full export to CSV from inside the system, any time, no support ticket and no fee. If it is not in the terms, keep looking.
• Who trains the team, where, and whether it is in the price. TechMan’s page says 1-to-1 training is “included as part of your setup”, the setup being what the upfront fee pays for, and that it is delivered “remotely or on-site (for an additional fee)”.
• The Xero or QuickBooks link, working, on the demo. Every invoice and payment going across on its own, shown live. Not an export and an import someone does at month-end.

For the record, GarageRevs answers all five like this. One price a month for the whole garage, with set-up and the move from TechMan included. No minimum term and no exit fee. Export your data any time. Your front desk and techs trained in person, at your garage, at no charge. Xero and QuickBooks linked direct, shown working on the demo. Our guide to what UK garage software costs covers what the “from” prices leave out, across the whole market.

One last thing

Mark, the owner whose story runs through this guide, gave us permission to tell it. His reason: “If it saves one garage from making the same mistake, it’s worth it.”

Nobody enjoys changing systems, and most owners put it off a year longer than they should. Staying on a system you stopped trusting, on a contract that restarts every time you add to it, is worse. For where GarageRevs is the better system for an independent run as a business and where TechMan holds its own, read the TechMan comparison. If Garage Hive has been suggested as your next step, the Garage Hive comparison says where it wins and where GarageRevs does.

If you are on a TechMan contract and want to know your options, book a 15-minute demo and bring the contract. You leave the call knowing what comes across from TechMan, the day you could go live, and whether it is worth doing before your term ends or after.