How ShopBrain works, in plain English.

ShopBrain helps a repair shop bring repair activity, part purchases, invoices, and returns into one place. It looks for missed costs, weak margins, vendor problems, and other opportunities that are easy to overlook during a busy week.

You enter a few shop details, then connect RepairDesk and choose how purchasing emails or invoice files will reach ShopBrain. The dashboard becomes more useful as real shop data arrives.

The dashboard is a quick health check. It summarizes recent shop activity, important findings, open recommendations, connection status, and areas that may need attention.

ShopBrain does not make up business activity. Tickets, orders, margins, and findings appear after you connect a source or import records and approve them.

RepairDesk supplies the day-to-day repair information, such as tickets, invoices, inventory, devices, customers, and purchase records. You connect it from Integrations using a RepairDesk API key, or the sign-in option when RepairDesk OAuth is available for your account.

No. The RepairDesk connection is read-only. ShopBrain reads the records needed for analysis but does not edit tickets, customers, invoices, inventory, or purchase orders in RepairDesk.

ShopBrain creates a private purchasing address for your workspace. Vendors can send order confirmations and invoice attachments to it, or you can forward existing purchasing emails there.

Yes. Choose “Use a separate purchasing email,” enter the address you already use, and turn on automatic forwarding from that inbox to the private ShopBrain address shown on the page. You never give ShopBrain the mailbox password.

ShopBrain can turn supported PDF, Excel, and CSV purchase documents into reviewable order lines. It looks for the vendor, invoice and order numbers, dates, SKUs, descriptions, quantities, prices, shipping, tax, discounts, and totals.

Imports is the waiting room for new purchasing information. It shows files and emails ShopBrain has received, what it could read confidently, and anything that needs a person to check.

A blurry scan, unusual vendor layout, or forwarded email can be misunderstood. Review keeps a questionable quantity or price from changing your margin reports without someone confirming it first.

Approved rows become vendor orders and part-cost records. ShopBrain then runs a fresh analysis so the new costs can be included in findings and recommendations.

ShopBrain keeps the invoice totals and spreads shipping, tax, and discounts across the purchased items. This creates a more realistic landed cost for each part.

Vendor orders show what the shop bought and what each line actually cost. Vendors groups those purchases by supplier so you can compare spending, returns, and performance over time.

These pages are organized views of the repair work and stock received from connected sources. They let you trace a finding back to the original ticket, sale, part, or inventory record.

It checks the shop’s confirmed records for patterns such as shrinking part margins, missing costs, repeat repairs, stale inventory, return losses, and vendor issues. It only uses the information available in your workspace.

An insight is something ShopBrain found that deserves attention. It explains what changed, why it may matter, how confident the finding is, and which records support it.

A recommendation is a practical next step connected to an insight—for example, review a supplier, correct missing costs, or check a group of repeat repairs. ShopBrain does not carry out the change automatically.

Part matching links a part bought from a vendor to the part used on a repair. Strong matches improve true job-cost and margin reporting. Uncertain matches wait for review.

The weekly brief is a short owner-friendly recap of the most important changes, findings, and recommended actions from the previous week.

Data quality points out what ShopBrain is missing or cannot confidently connect. Fixing those gaps makes cost, margin, vendor, and return findings more reliable.

Reports are organized summaries of operating performance that are easier to review over a period of time than individual tickets or orders.

No. ShopBrain calculates financial findings from confirmed records and checks the math before using it. AI helps read supported invoice documents and explain findings in everyday language; uncertain information is sent to review.

This area follows parts sent back to a supplier and records whether the shop received a refund, credit, replacement, or no recovery. That helps reveal losses that would otherwise stay hidden.

Yes. ShopBrain keeps links between findings and the supporting tickets, invoices, order lines, imports, and other evidence so an owner can review the details before acting.

You can record the decision and outcome. Future analysis can then show whether the issue improved, stayed the same, or returned.

Owners and managers can update shop details, locations, currency, margin targets, team access, security options, intelligence preferences, and billing.

Yes. Team settings lets an owner invite coworkers and control their role. Each person signs in with their own account instead of sharing a password.

A new workspace receives 30 days of full access. After the trial, the Full Access plan is $250 per month unless the subscription is cancelled before the first charge.

Stripe handles the checkout and card details. ShopBrain stores subscription and payment-status references, but it does not store complete card numbers or card security codes.

Each workspace is kept separate, access is based on the signed-in user’s role, source files are private, connection secrets are protected, and imported financial information is reviewed before it affects reporting.

Start with the Integrations and Data quality pages, which show connection and missing-data issues. If the problem continues, contact PB Digital with the page name and a short description—never send passwords, API keys, or full card details.