Warranty claim software for Tekion dealerships
Quick answer: Forge is warranty claim software for dealerships running Tekion. It reads Tekion repair orders, reconciles the dealer operation codes on them to the manufacturer's published operations, and checks the claim against OEM labor times, coverage, and allowances before it is filed. Forge works alongside Tekion rather than replacing it.
Tekion is a straightforward system to get a repair order out of, so the interesting question on a Tekion store is not intake. It is what happens on the manufacturer's side of the claim, where the labor time is published, the coverage is decided, and the allowances a store never claims sit unclaimed.
What warranty work runs into on Tekion
What we see on repair orders Forge reads out of Tekion stores.
Dealer operation codes and manufacturer codes are not the same thing
A Tekion repair order carries the store's own shorthand operation codes on the job, and the manufacturer's operations in a separate table. They are two different vocabularies printed a few lines apart, and advisors do not always key them consistently: the same job can carry a dealer code from one repair and a manufacturer code from another. Whatever prepares the claim has to reconcile the two rather than trust whichever it read first.
Diagnostic jobs that show worked time and nothing claimed
Warranty diagnostic jobs routinely print actual hours with no flagged hours and no manufacturer operation attached. The technician spent the time and the store has not claimed anything for it. Those lines are easy to skip past precisely because they look incomplete, and they are one of the more reliable places a store is leaving diagnostic time on the table.
Jobs that spill across pages and repeat their header
Every page reprints the header block, and a job that runs past a page break reprints its operation row on the next one. That is helpful for a person and a trap for anything counting: read it literally and one job becomes two, with the labor either duplicated or split between them.
Three hour figures per technician, only one of which is the claim
Actual, assigned, and flagged hours print side by side on the technician row. They answer different questions — what was worked, what was allocated, what is billable — and claiming the wrong one is either an under-claim or the kind of over-claim that shows up in an audit rather than a rejection.
The manufacturer's rulebook still lives outside the DMS
Published labor times, coverage windows, open campaigns, and the allowances that sit next to a repair are the manufacturer's, not the DMS vendor's. A store on a modern system still has an administrator looking those up by hand, one repair order at a time, and still under-claims the ones nobody thought to look for.
How Forge works alongside Tekion
No wiring project, and nothing written back into the DMS.
- 01
Intake is the easy part here, so it is quick
Tekion prints a clean, well-structured repair order — jobs lettered, hours tabulated, the technician's account in its own block. Drop it into Upload and Forge has everything it needs on the first pass. On some systems this step is where the work is. On Tekion it is not, which is why the rest of this list is where the value sits.
- 02
Forge reads the job structure as Tekion prints it
Jobs, dealer operation codes, the manufacturer operation table, the technician's actual, assigned, and flagged hours, the technician story, and parts are read as separate fields. A job that spilled across a page break stays one job.
- 03
Forge reconciles the codes and checks the claim
Dealer shorthand is reconciled to the manufacturer's published operation, the labor time is looked up rather than assumed, coverage and open campaigns are checked against the VIN, and the allowances the repair supports are surfaced — including diagnostic time sitting on a job with nothing flagged.
- 04
Review it against a repair order you can actually read
The same legibility that made intake quick makes the check quick: your administrator can hold the draft next to the original and verify it line by line without decoding anything. Clean claims file or hold for approval, your store's choice, and your existing submission path in Tekion is left exactly as it is.
Tekion repair orders at a glance
What a Tekion repair order gives you, and what still has to be reconciled before a claim is filed.
| On the repair order | What it tells you | What still has to happen |
|---|---|---|
| Job per letter | Each job carries its own concern, causes, labor, technician, and parts. | Nothing — this is the part Tekion makes easy, and it is why intake on a Tekion store is quick. |
| Dealer operation code | The store's own shorthand for the work, keyed by an advisor. | Reconciling it to the manufacturer's published operation, which is what actually gets paid. |
| Manufacturer opcode table | The OEM's own codes for the job, printed separately from the dealer's. | Checking the two agree, because advisors do not always key them consistently. |
| Actual, assigned, flagged hours | What was worked, what was allocated, and what is billable. | Claiming against the published time, and evidencing any overage from the punch data. |
| Diagnostic job, zero flagged hours | Time was worked and nothing has been claimed for it yet. | Deciding whether the manufacturer pays for that diagnosis, and claiming it if so. |
| Technician story | The narrative in the technician's own words. | Rewriting it into what the manufacturer will accept, without changing what happened. |
Tekion terms
The vocabulary a warranty administrator on Tekion works in.
- Job
- Tekion's unit of work on a repair order, lettered, with its own causes, operations, technician, and parts.
- Dealer operation code
- The store's own shorthand for a job. Local to the dealership and not what the manufacturer adjudicates against.
- OEM opcode
- The manufacturer's published operation for the work, printed on the repair order separately from the dealer's code.
- Flagged hours
- The billable time on a job, as distinct from the actual hours a technician was clocked on it.
- Technician story
- The technician's account of the repair. The raw material for the correction narrative a manufacturer will accept.
- System of record
- The system that owns the truth about the repair. On a Tekion store that is Tekion, and Forge does not change it.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is warranty claim software for Tekion dealerships?
- Warranty claim software for a Tekion store reads repair orders and prepares warranty claims for the manufacturer. Forge reconciles the dealer operation codes on a Tekion repair order to the manufacturer's published operations, checks labor times, coverage, and allowances, and either submits the claim or holds it for your administrator. Forge works alongside Tekion rather than replacing it.
- We already submit claims from inside Tekion. Why add Forge?
- Because submitting is not the part that costs a store money. What costs money is the picking and the checking that happen 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 sitting next to the repair was ever claimed at all. Forge does that OEM-side work and leaves your submission path alone.
- Does Forge replace Tekion?
- No, and it does not try to. Tekion stays your dealership management system and your system of record. Forge reads repair orders out of it and works the manufacturer's side of the claim, which is the side that decides what the repair order is worth.
- Do we need Tekion's partner API program to use Forge?
- No. Forge's intake is the repair order, so nothing has to be provisioned, approved, or paid for on the Tekion side before your administrators are working. There is no integration ticket to file and no dependency on a partner queue. A Tekion store can be running the same afternoon it decides to try this.
- Why do dealer opcodes and OEM opcodes both appear on a Tekion repair order?
- Because they answer different questions. The dealer code is the store's own shorthand for the job, keyed by an advisor, and the manufacturer's operation is what the claim is actually adjudicated against. Both print on the document, a few lines apart, and advisors do not always key them consistently, so the two have to be reconciled rather than read as interchangeable.
- Can our administrator review what Forge drafts before it files?
- Yes, and on a Tekion store that review is unusually easy to run, because the repair order is legible enough to sit next to the draft and check line by line. Forge can file as soon as a claim passes the pre-submission checks or hold every one for approval; your store sets which. Claim ownership stays in-house on either setting.
- We are migrating from CDK to Tekion. Should we wait?
- No, and a migration is one of the better moments to have this in place. Forge reads both, so the warranty desk keeps one process while everything underneath it changes, and the stores that have moved and the stores that have not are not running different workflows in the meantime. The claim work does not change at cutover, because it was never a function of the DMS.
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