Warranty claim software for PBS Systems dealerships
Quick answer: Forge is warranty claim software for dealerships running PBS. PBS v10 already sends a claim to the manufacturer's portal. Forge decides what is in it — the published operation, the allowance, the coverage, and a correction narrative an adjudicator will accept — before it ever leaves the store.
PBS is unusually open for a dealership management system: its partner API documentation is public, and PBS publishes that v10 can send warranty claims to a manufacturer portal directly. That closes the plumbing question and leaves the harder one, which is what the manufacturer does with a claim once it arrives.
What warranty work runs into on PBS Systems
Drawn from what PBS Systems publishes about its own platform, cited at the foot of this page.
Submitting a claim and being paid for it are different problems
A direct submission path is worth having, and it settles how a claim travels. It does not settle what is in the claim: whether the operation is the published one, whether the time is the published allowance, whether coverage or an open campaign applied, or whether the narrative satisfies the manufacturer's rules. Those are decided on the OEM's side, against the OEM's rulebook.
The rulebook is not in the DMS, on any system
Published labor times, coverage windows, campaign requirements, and narrative rules belong to the manufacturer and change on the manufacturer's schedule. No dealership management system carries them, which is why an administrator on the most modern DMS available still looks them up by hand, one repair order at a time.
Allowances nobody claims because nothing rejects
Handling, sublet, tow, rental, diagnostic time, and the paid administrative operations some campaigns publish are claimed only if somebody enters them. A claim missing them pays out normally, so the shortfall never surfaces as an error, a rejection, or a line on a report.
A service desk that is already short on time
PBS reviewers are consistent about where the system costs them time, and it is the service counter rather than the claim. There are no keyboard shortcuts for generating a work order or adding a regularly used labor line, so write-ups run long, and one parts manager describes fixed operations as "way too much mouse moving and clicking vs key board commands." Warranty lookup work lands on top of that. The question is not whether your administrator could check every published allowance by hand. It is what else stops while they do.
A smaller vendor ecosystem cuts both ways
PBS's openness is real and its third-party ecosystem is smaller than the largest vendors'. That means fewer tools built specifically around PBS, and it also means the pragmatic path onto a PBS store is a tool that does not need to be built into it at all. Reading the repair order works the same on every system.
How Forge works alongside PBS Systems
The workflow Forge runs in production today. Onboarding PBS Systems follows it: the document changes, the claim work does not.
- 01
Skip the integration path entirely
Print or export the repair order and drop it into Upload. No Partner HUB account, no serial number, no partner questionnaire, no queued write waiting on your dealership's server. The integration route PBS publishes is real and it is simply not on the critical path to getting started.
- 02
Forge decides what the claim should say
The published operation and its allowance are looked up rather than assumed, coverage and open campaigns are checked against the VIN, and the technician's account is rewritten into a correction the manufacturer will accept without changing what happened. This is the step no dealership management system performs, because the rulebook is not theirs to hold.
- 03
Forge finds what the repair earned and nobody entered
Handling, sublet, tow, rental, diagnostic time, and the paid administrative operations some campaigns publish are surfaced from the repair order. These never reject, so a claim missing them pays out looking perfectly healthy — which is exactly why they go unnoticed for years.
- 04
Then it goes out the way your store already sends it
Forge can file through the OEM portal itself, or hand the finished claim to your administrator to send from v10 the way your store sends it today. On a system that already submits directly, most stores want the second: Forge does the deciding, PBS does the sending, and nothing is written back into the DMS.
PBS Systems repair orders at a glance
What PBS publishes about its own platform, and what a warranty claim still needs on top of it.
| What PBS publishes | What it settles | What is left over |
|---|---|---|
| Direct warranty submission in v10 | How a claim reaches the manufacturer's portal from inside the DMS. | Whether the claim is coded and evidenced the way the manufacturer requires before it gets there. |
| Public Partner HUB API | That repair orders, customers, vehicles, appointments, and parts invoices can be read and updated by a partner. | Nothing PBS has to build for Forge. Intake is the repair order, so no API access is needed to start. |
| Partner credentials scoped to dealerships | Which stores a partner may touch, decided by the dealer's own agreement. | The manufacturer's rules, which are outside the DMS on every system. |
| Fixed operations modules | How the repair is written, dispatched, and invoiced. | What the repair is worth in warranty, which is published by the manufacturer and looked up per claim. |
PBS Systems terms
The vocabulary a warranty administrator on PBS Systems works in.
- PBS v10 APEX
- PBS Systems' current dealership management platform, covering accounting, sales, service, and parts.
- Partner HUB
- PBS's public partner API documentation, covering customers, vehicles, appointments, parts invoices, and repair orders.
- Partner credentials
- The account PBS issues an integrator, which determines which dealerships that partner may interact with.
- 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, on every system.
- System of record
- The system that owns the truth about the repair. On a PBS store that is PBS, and Forge does not change it.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is warranty claim software for PBS dealerships?
- On a PBS store it is the deciding rather than the sending. PBS v10 already carries a claim to the manufacturer's portal, so the plumbing question most vendors answer is one your DMS answered for you. Forge works the layer PBS does not: which published operation the repair supports, what allowance it earns, whether coverage applied, and whether the narrative will survive adjudication.
- PBS can already submit warranty claims to the portal. Why add anything?
- Because submission is the part that already works. What decides whether a store is paid properly happens before it: whether the operation claimed is the one the manufacturer publishes, whether the time is the published allowance, whether coverage or an open campaign applied, and whether an allowance beside the repair was ever claimed. Those are checked against the manufacturer's rulebook, which is not in any DMS.
- Does Forge use the PBS Partner HUB API?
- Not today, and a store does not need it to start. Forge's intake is the repair order, so nothing has to be provisioned, credentialed, or scoped on the PBS side before your administrators are working. PBS's API is genuinely open compared with its competitors, which makes a read connection a reasonable thing to look at later rather than a prerequisite now.
- Does Forge have a PBS store live today?
- No, and PBS stores are the ones we most want to hear from. A store that already submits directly is the cleanest possible test of whether the deciding is where the money actually is: the sending is handled, so anything Forge recovers is recovered purely by getting the claim right. If you run PBS and your warranty schedule is not where you think it should be, that is a conversation worth having with us early.
- What would onboarding our PBS store involve?
- Repair orders so Forge learns your layout, and recent paid claims with their outcomes so it learns what your manufacturer actually pays for. What it does not involve is any part of the integration path PBS publishes — no Partner HUB credentials, no serial number, no partner questionnaire, and no waiting on a queue. That path stays available if you ever want repair orders pulled automatically; it is not a prerequisite.
- We are a Canadian store. Does that change anything?
- It changes which portal matters, which is the thing worth being precise about. Forge runs manufacturer portals in production today and the ones it runs are US; a Canadian franchise files through its own portal with its own rules. That is a portal to onboard rather than a different product, and it is the first thing we would scope with you. Tell us the brand and the market and we will tell you honestly where that sits.
- Does Forge write anything into PBS?
- No. PBS stays the system of record. Forge reads the repair order and prepares the claim; it does not reprice a job, post to a schedule, or push a claim back through the DMS. If your store already submits from inside v10, that path keeps working exactly as it does now — Forge works on what the claim contains before it travels.
- Would our warranty administrator still approve claims?
- Yes, if you want that. Forge can file once a claim passes the pre-submission checks, or hold every one for your administrator, and your store sets which. On a system that already submits directly, the review step is usually where stores want Forge: the claim is checked and drafted, and a person still says yes.
Sources
Forge has not onboarded a PBS Systems 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.