Warranty claim software for Dealertrack dealerships
Quick answer: Forge is warranty claim software that works alongside Dealertrack DMS. Dealertrack sells a Labor Time Guides add-on that populates a claim's structured fields; Forge reads the technician's narrative no field check can see, judges whether it supports the operation claimed, and surfaces allowances nobody entered. Stores without the add-on get both halves.
Worth knowing before you compare anything: the warranty tooling Dealertrack is known for is sold separately. Labor Time Guides is an add-on, alongside Service Dispatching and Service Price Guides. So the first question is not what Forge adds to your DMS. It is which of these two stores you are, because the answer changes what you are missing.
What warranty work runs into on Dealertrack
Drawn from what Dealertrack publishes about its own platform, cited at the foot of this page.
Half of Dealertrack stores are doing this by hand and do not say so
Labor Time Guides is an add-on. A store that has it can search and populate a claim with billing time, failed part data, and operation codes; a store that declined it is looking those up manually, one repair order at a time, on a system its own vendor markets as having solved the problem. Before comparing any warranty tool, find out which store you are. The two have very different gaps.
Structured fields check each other, not the repair
Where the add-on is in place, it is good at the things a database can compare: does this operation code exist, does this failed part belong with it, is this billing time the published one. What it cannot do is read what the technician wrote and judge whether the story supports the claim. That is where a correct-looking claim gets rejected or, worse, gets paid and then charged back.
The technician's story is the part nobody audits
Manufacturers adjudicate against the narrative as well as the codes, and their narrative rules are their own: what has to be stated, what counts as a cause, what a correction must show was verified. A DMS field check is blind to all of it, so the store's only defence is an administrator reading every repair order carefully, every time, at the end of the month.
Allowances that are never claimed because nobody went looking
Handling, sublet, tow, rental, diagnostic time, and the paid administrative operations some campaigns publish sit next to a repair rather than inside it. Nothing rejects when they are missed. The claim pays, the store banks less than the repair was worth, and no report anywhere shows the gap.
An open platform still leaves the OEM side to you
Dealertrack's integration program certifies third parties to exchange data with the DMS, which is genuinely useful and solves a different problem. The manufacturer's published labor times, coverage windows, campaign rules, and narrative requirements are not in the DMS to be exchanged. Someone still has to look them up per repair order.
How Forge works alongside Dealertrack
The workflow Forge runs in production today. Onboarding Dealertrack follows it: the document changes, the claim work does not.
- 01
Keep whatever you already pay for. Add the repair order.
Print or export the repair order and drop it into Upload. Nothing in Dealertrack changes, nothing has to be certified, and any add-ons your store already licenses keep doing exactly what they do today. Forge starts from the document, which is where the technician's account of the repair lives.
- 02
Forge reads the half a field check cannot
A labor time guide compares fields to other fields, and only if you bought one. Forge reads the technician's narrative either way, so the question stops being whether this operation code exists and becomes whether this story supports this operation. That is the comparison a database cannot make and an adjudicator always does.
- 03
Forge prices the repair against the manufacturer's rulebook
The published operation and its allowance are looked up rather than assumed, coverage and open campaigns are checked against the VIN, and handling, sublet, tow, rental, and diagnostic allowances are surfaced where the repair supports them. None of that lives in the DMS to be looked up from.
- 04
Your administrator judges the exceptions
Clean claims file or wait for approval, whichever your store sets, and anything questionable arrives with the reason attached rather than as a rejection three weeks later. Nothing is written back into Dealertrack, which stays the system of record for the repair.
Dealertrack repair orders at a glance
What Dealertrack publishes about its own warranty tooling, and what is left over.
| In the DMS | What Dealertrack publishes | What Forge adds |
|---|---|---|
| Labor Time Guides (add-on) | Sold separately. Where licensed, claims are populated electronically with billing time, failed part data, and labor operation codes. | Checks whether the operation picked is the one the repair supports, and whether a published allowance was missed entirely — with or without the add-on. |
| Manufacturer interfaces | Brand-specific interfaces carry warranty claim, parts ordering, and financial traffic to the OEM. | Prepares what goes into that traffic: the coded claim and the narrative behind it. |
| Opentrack integrations | A certification program for third parties to exchange data with the DMS. | Nothing to certify. Forge's intake is the repair order, so it needs no place in the DMS at all. |
| Technician narrative | Captured on the repair order. | Read and rewritten into a correction the manufacturer will accept, without changing what happened. |
| Allowances beside the repair | Claimed if somebody enters them. | Surfaced from the repair order, including the ones a busy desk never goes looking for. |
Dealertrack terms
The vocabulary a warranty administrator on Dealertrack works in.
- Dealertrack DMS
- Cox Automotive's cloud dealership management system, built on an open platform for third-party integrations.
- Opentrack
- Dealertrack's third-party integration and certification program, the sanctioned route for a vendor to exchange data with the DMS.
- Labor Time Guides
- Dealertrack's in-DMS lookup that populates a claim with billing time, failed part data, and labor operation codes. Sold as an add-on, so not every Dealertrack store has it.
- OEM integration
- Dealertrack's brand-specific manufacturer interfaces, carrying warranty claim, parts, and financial traffic.
- Causal part
- The part that caused the failure. The manufacturer adjudicates against it, so it has to agree with the operation claimed.
- Correction narrative
- The written account of what was done and verified. Adjudicated alongside the codes, and not something a field check can validate.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is warranty claim software for Dealertrack dealerships?
- It depends on which Dealertrack store you are. Dealertrack sells Labor Time Guides as an add-on: with it, a claim's structured fields are populated for you; without it, your administrator looks those up by hand. Forge reads the technician's narrative no field check sees, judges whether it supports the operation claimed, prices the repair against published allowances, and surfaces what nobody entered — in both cases.
- We have the Labor Time Guides add-on. What does Forge do that it does not?
- Labor Time Guides populates a claim with billing time, failed part data, and operation codes, which is a structured field check and a genuinely useful one. It cannot read what the technician wrote, judge whether that story supports the operation claimed, or notice that an allowance the repair qualified for was never claimed at all. Those are the failures that cost a store money quietly, and they are what Forge is for.
- We do not have the Labor Time Guides add-on. Does that change things?
- It widens the gap Forge closes rather than narrowing it. Without the add-on there is no in-DMS labor-time lookup at all, so your administrator is searching published times by hand on top of everything else. Forge does that lookup, the coverage and campaign checks, the narrative, and the allowances — so a store without the add-on gets more out of this, not less, and does not have to buy anything from Dealertrack first.
- Does Forge need Opentrack certification to work with our store?
- No. Opentrack is Dealertrack's program for third parties that exchange data with the DMS, and Forge does not exchange data with the DMS. Intake is the repair order itself, so a Dealertrack store can start without a certification, an integration ticket, or a vendor conversation.
- Does Forge have a Dealertrack store live today?
- Not yet. Worth knowing what that does and does not mean. The manufacturer-side work — the published allowances, the coverage rules, the narrative an adjudicator accepts — is identical on a Dealertrack store, because it belongs to Ford or Toyota rather than to Cox Automotive. What is genuinely new is one document layout. That is the smallest part of the job and the part we have learned three times already.
- What would onboarding our Dealertrack store involve?
- Mostly it is us learning your desk, not us learning Dealertrack. Send repair orders so Forge reads your layout, and recent paid claims with their outcomes so it learns what your manufacturer actually pays for rather than what the policy manual says. Notably absent from that list: anything from Cox Automotive. No partner application, no certification, no integration ticket, and no line item on a DMS invoice.
- How quickly could a Dealertrack store be running?
- There is no wiring project, no field mapping, and no IT ticket, so the timeline is set by how fast you can send repair orders rather than by a vendor schedule. The work that would normally make this a quarter-long project — building and maintaining a two-way connection into the DMS — is work Forge deliberately does not do.
- Does Forge write claims back into Dealertrack?
- No. Dealertrack stays the system of record, and Forge does not push claims, payments, or edited fields into it. Your existing manufacturer interfaces keep carrying whatever they carry today. Forge works on what goes into a claim before it is filed, which is the part no DMS-side connection would improve.
- Would our warranty administrator still control what gets filed?
- Yes. Forge can file a claim once it passes the pre-submission checks, or hold every one for your administrator to approve first, and your store sets which. The point is not to take the desk out of the loop; it is to hand your administrator drafted, checked claims to judge instead of blank forms to fill in.
Sources
Forge has not onboarded a Dealertrack store yet, so what this page says about the system is cited rather than asserted. Check it.
Contact
Let's get you set up.
Tell us about your dealership and your current warranty workflow. We'll reach out within one business day to schedule a personalized walkthrough.