By Edward MacFawn, President of BiT DMS, an MRAA Platinum Partner

When boat sales slow in the winter, your first instinct may be to shift gears and find new ways to generate revenue. However, your dealership may already have money sitting on the table and your DMS may be just the tool you need to find those hidden gems.

Uncollected revenue could be in a completed repair that has not been invoiced yet, an open work order waiting on a final part, a warranty claim that has not been submitted or a special-order item that a customer has not picked up. By themselves, these items may not seem like much. Add them up across your entire dealership, however, they can represent a considerable amount of delayed cash.

The offseason is an ideal time to find these bottlenecks and move more work from “almost finished” to paid.

Review Every Open Work Order

Begin by reviewing open work orders in your DMS by age, status and assigned employee. Do not assume that every open order represents work actively underway. Some may be waiting for parts, customer authorization, technician notes or a final invoice. Others may have remained open because responsibility for the next step was unclear.

For each work order, determine:

• What is preventing it from advancing?
• Who is responsible for the next action?
• When should that action be completed?
• Has the customer received an update?

Assigning an owner and deadline to every stalled order can help your team finish work, invoice customers sooner and free service capacity.

Close the Gap Between Completion and Payment

Completing a job does not instantly improve cash flow until the dealership invoices the customer and collects payment. Look for boats that are ready but have not been picked up, completed jobs awaiting final paperwork and invoices that have yet to be sent. Make sure technician notes, parts used and additional authorized work have been recorded before the invoice is prepared.

Then establish a consistent process for notifying customers, collecting balances and documenting follow-up. Embedded text messaging within your DMS can be particularly useful for sending follow-up messages, pickup notifications and addressing questions that might otherwise delay payment.

Audit Outstanding Warranty Claims

Warranty work can keep technicians productive, but incomplete documentation and delayed submissions can postpone reimbursement. Review open warranty repair orders in your DMS and determine whether each one contains the required labor entries, parts information, photos, serial numbers and manufacturer documentation. Identify rejected or returned claims that still require correction.

Your team has already performed the work. Submitting complete claims promptly helps turn that labor and those parts into collected revenue.

Check Parts and Special OrdersCash can also become tied up in parts ordered for jobs that have stalled, been canceled or never been scheduled. In your DMS, review special-order parts, parts reserved for open work orders and items that customers have not collected. Contact customers as necessary, return eligible items and make sellable inventory available again.

This also helps uncover repair orders that cannot move forward because a received part was never connected to the job or communicated to the service team.

Follow Up on Outstanding Balances

Use your DMS’s Aged Accounts Receivable report to identify unpaid invoices, declined payments and balances that require follow-up. Prioritize larger and older balances, but do not ignore small amounts that accumulate across many accounts. Give one person responsibility for each balance and record every contact attempt. A consistent process is more effective than relying on someone to remember to make another call.

Make It a Repeatable Process

An offseason cleanup can release cash, but the greater benefit comes from preventing these bottlenecks from building up again. Set a regular schedule for reviewing aging work orders, completed but un-invoiced jobs, warranty claims, special-order parts and unpaid balances. Track the total dollars associated with each category and how long items remain there.

Generating more offseason business is important. Before investing all your energy in finding the next sale, however, make sure the work your dealership has already performed is documented, invoiced and collected. You may find that one of your most accessible sources of offseason cash is already inside your dealership.

About the Author

For more than 21 years, Edward MacFawn, President of BiT DMS, has helped boat dealers and marine service centers increase profitability by bringing greater efficiency, visibility and control to their operations. Drawing on his background in finance and operations, including experience with KPMG and Honeywell, Edward has focused BiT on solving the real-world challenges that affect marine businesses every day.

Under Edward’s leadership, BiT has helped dealers connect sales, service, parts, inventory, slips/storage and customer communication through one integrated system. He spearheaded what industry reporting identified as the first web-based marine dealer management system in 2013 and later championed embedded two-way text messaging within the DMS. These innovations have helped marine businesses reduce administrative friction, improve customer responsiveness and make better decisions using more accurate, accessible information.

Today, Edward continues to guide BiT in developing practical technology around the way boat dealers and service centers actually work. His mission remains clear: Give independent marine businesses the tools to operate more efficiently, serve customers more effectively and build stronger, more profitable companies without sacrificing flexibility or personal service.

Editor’s note: MRAA publishes partner-contributed articles to provide marine retailers with practical education, subject-matter expertise and industry perspective. MRAA maintains editorial oversight of partner-contributed content and may edit submissions for clarity, relevance, AP style, search visibility and alignment with MRAA’s dealer-first educational standards. Recommendations should be considered alongside each dealership’s goals, processes, team capacity and business needs.