Getting your customer list out of TechMan

One column matters. The rest change what the product can do for you, and each one says which.

RegistrationRequired

The only column we cannot work without. It is what the MOT and vehicle records are looked up on. A column called reg, vrm, plate, registration or vehicle no. is recognised automatically.

Customer nameOptional

Puts a name on the row so you know who to ring, and lets a message open with it rather than with nothing.

Mobile numberOptional

Without it we can find and price the work but cannot send the text. A landline in this column is worse than an empty one — if your export has both, send the mobile.

Email addressOptional

The alternative to a mobile for customers who never answer a text.

Your own referenceOptional

Customer or account number, if your system has one. It is carried through untouched so a row you look at here can be found again in your own system.

TechMan is a cloud system, so all of this happens in the same browser you take bookings in. There is no database file on a machine in the back office to dig out.

The thing you are looking for is a report. TechMan's reporting suite is included on every price tier including the cheapest, and their own page says every report in it is downloadable in a PDF or CSV format. So if you can get a report on screen that shows your customers and their registrations, you can get it into a file we can read.

Worth knowing before you start: TechMan documents importing a customer list from a competitor's system into theirs at some length, and documents getting one back out nowhere at all. That asymmetry proves nothing on its own, but it does mean nobody outside their support desk can tell you the exact report name — and that if twenty minutes of clicking gets you nowhere, that is the product, not you.

The route with a documented ending: whatever report you land on, there is a download button and it offers CSV. Work backwards from that.

1. 1

   Step 1. Sign in to TechMan and find the reports screen. TechMan's own product screenshot titles it "System Reports".

   The screen title comes from TechMan's own marketing image. The navigation to reach it is blanked out in that image, so we cannot tell you which menu it hangs off — look for Reports or System Reports in the main navigation.

   strongly indicated, but not directly confirmed

2. 2

   Step 2. Open the Customer Reports group first, then Sales Reports if that comes up short.

   Those group names are legible in TechMan's own screenshot, alongside Labour, Product/Stock and Accounting. Fair warning: their reporting page describes customer reporting in terms of sales and profit by customer, and returning-customer data by postcode — which reads like sales analysis rather than a plain list of people. If that is all you find, go to route 2.

   strongly indicated, but not directly confirmed

3. 3

   Step 3. Set the date range as wide as it will go. You want everyone who has ever been in, not this month's.

   Every reporting screen we have seen defaults to a short window. If yours offers no range at all, that is fine — say so when you send us the file.

   not verified — look for this rather than clicking exactly this

4. 4

   Step 4. Check the report has a registration column before you spend any longer on it. If it has not, it is the wrong report.

   Registration columns do exist in TechMan reports: a 2023 release note records the Work In Progress report gaining Registration, Make and Model. Work In Progress itself only covers current jobs rather than your whole book, so it is not the one you want — it just proves the column exists somewhere.

   not verified — look for this rather than clicking exactly this

5. 5

   Step 5. Download it as CSV rather than PDF.

   TechMan's reporting-suite page, word for word: "There is a multitude of reports for users of TechMan to understand and report on with all being downloadable in a PDF or CSV format." If your screen only offers PDF, send the PDF — we can read it, it is just slower.

   checked against their documentation

This is not the fallback it looks like. The only written instruction anybody has ever published for getting a customer list out of TechMan is Garage Hive's migration documentation from 2022, and what it told its incoming customers to do was ring TechMan and ask. If a competitor trying to win your business could not find a self-serve route, twenty minutes of your clicking may not either.

1. 1

   Step 1. Ring TechMan on 01604 666720 and ask them to run a full extract of your customers and vehicles, including registrations.

   That number is on TechMan's own contact page. Use the phone rather than email if you can: the two addresses printed in their privacy policy both read as @www.techmangms.com, which looks like a slip and is likely to bounce. Their website contact form is the other written route.

   checked against their documentation

2. 2

   Step 2. Tell them plainly what it is for: "the data I would need to import into another garage management system". You do not have to be leaving to ask for it.

   Garage Hive's own 2022 migration page for incoming TechMan customers, quoted from the Internet Archive: "You will need to contact Techman directly for them to perform the data extract for you, simply inform them that you need the data required to import into another garage management system and they will send you a file." That is a competitor describing a rival, four years ago, so treat it as a strong hint rather than gospel — but it is the only published account of this that exists anywhere.

   strongly indicated, but not directly confirmed

3. 3

   Step 3. Ask for it as a data extract under your contract with them. Do not call it a GDPR request.

   This is about which door you knock on, and it matters. GDPR portability is a right individuals have over data about themselves. Your customer list is your data, you are the controller of it, and TechMan holds it as your processor — so the entitlement comes from your agreement with them, not from the GDPR. Ask under the wrong heading and you get a correct answer to a question you did not mean to ask, a month later.

   checked against their documentation

4. 4

   Step 4. Whatever comes back, open it and check the registration column is actually populated before you file it away.

   Worth doing even if you never send it to us. TechMan publishes nothing about returning a garage's data at the end of a contract, and the afternoon you are leaving is the wrong afternoon to find out what an extract contains.

   not verified — look for this rather than clicking exactly this

Not every download in TechMan lives on the reports screen. Their 2023 release notes record a download-search-results control being added to the Payment Search screen — so search screens have download buttons too. If there is a customer or vehicle search anywhere in your copy, this is worth two minutes.

1. 1

   Step 1. Find a customer or vehicle search screen and run the widest search it will accept.

   not verified — look for this rather than clicking exactly this

2. 2

   Step 2. Look on the results for the same download control the Payment Search screen has.

   The Payment Search download is documented in TechMan's own March 2023 update post. Whether the same control appears on a customer or vehicle search is us reasoning from that, and nothing more.

   not verified — look for this rather than clicking exactly this

CSV. TechMan's own documentation says every report offers it, and it is what our importer reads best.

If the only button is PDF, send the PDF. Registrations are straightforward to pull out of a table in a PDF; it is just slower and slightly more likely to need a second look from you.

Do not convert anything to be helpful — no printing to PDF, no pasting into a tidy new spreadsheet, no screenshots. Whatever the system produced is always easier for us than a cleaned-up version of it.

If in doubt, send whatever came out. We would rather untangle an oddly shaped spreadsheet at our end than have you spend an evening reshaping one at yours.

Look for a vehicle-side report rather than a customer-side one. In every system of this shape the customer record and the vehicle record are separate things, and the registration lives on the vehicle — so a report built around customers may only show you customers.

If nothing joins the two, send two files: one of customers, one of vehicles. As long as both carry the same customer or account number we can join them at our end.

If neither exists, ring the number above and ask specifically for customers and vehicles with registrations in one extract. It is an ordinary request and it is your data.

A file of customers with no registrations is not usable — the whole product is a lookup keyed on the plate. A file of registrations with no customers is completely fine. If you can only get one of the two, get that one.

Send the file back to the email you are already talking to us on, and you will get your own list — every MOT run out, every advisory written up twice, every service due on mileage, priced at your rates.

If you would rather not do the export at all, we will do it with you on a screen share. Half an hour, you drive and we read the menus. That is also the version of the pilot that runs ninety days rather than sixty, because it starts with your real list in it.

There is no card at any point during the pilot and nothing set up to renew. We ask about paying at the end of it, if you want to carry on.

See what it finds, on twenty of your plates

Everything marked “checked” above comes from one of these. Everything not marked is us reasoning, and is labelled as such.

• TechMan — Reporting Suite (the PDF/CSV sentence, and the report categories) — the vendor's own page
• TechMan — Reporting — the vendor's own page
• TechMan — March 2023 updates (Work In Progress gains a Registration column; Payment Search gains a download) — the vendor's own page
• TechMan — Contact (the phone number) — the vendor's own page
• TechMan — Pricing (reports are on every tier, including Starter) — the vendor's own page
• Garage Hive's TechMan migration page, July 2022, via the Internet Archive — a competitor's instructions, since deleted — a third party, not the vendor

• MAM Autowork OnlineMAM Software, part of Kerridge Commercial Systems
• Garage HiveGarage Hive, built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
• Any other systemEverything else, including a spreadsheet and a card index