PENCILWRENCH

Joe McCue remembers the moment well. He was on a customer visit at a Mercedes-Benz dealership on Long Island when staff informed him that one of their technicians wanted to meet with him.

When the technician walked up, he pulled McCue into a bear hug. Until Pencilwrench, he hadn’t been allowed to work on warranty jobs. He was skilled in the shop, but writing in English, his second language, made the documentation side of warranty work a challenge.

“They wouldn’t let me touch warranty jobs until Pencilwrench,” McCue recalls him saying, with eyes watering. “Now I can feed my family.”

Such stories illustrate Pencilwrench’s role in redefining how repair stories are written, giving dealerships confidence in their claims and technicians more time to focus on repairs.

Founded in 2013, it stands a step above the rest in the market. While most fixed-ops software focuses on the service drive—digital multipoint inspection tools and service lane check-in solutions—Pencilwrench is the only platform designed to solve a technician’s most significant pain point.

Where Claims Get Lost

McCue knows the pain point first-hand. Before founding Pencilwrench, he spent decades as a technician and service manager, watching good repairs fall apart on paper. “Every service manager deals with this daily,” he says. “Half their techs either can’t write a proper story or don’t want to. That means incomplete documentation, denied claims and lost hours.”
Pencilwrench closes these gaps. Its point-and-click workflow lets technicians document the diagnostic steps they follow to identify the issue and the repairs that resolve it, creating a clear record OEMs require for warranty reimbursement. It also supports service-scheduling teams. On-screen prompts guide service advisors and business development center representatives through the right line of questioning to capture the reason for the customer’s visit. That clarity gives technicians a solid direction from the start.

“On average, dealers tell us we’re giving back 50 hours a month—a full week of technician time that can be spent generating revenue instead of wrestling with paperwork,” McCue says.

These advantages were clearly seen at Port Orchard Ford in Washington. Rick Harrison, the service manager, mentioned that his shop is booked almost 20 days out. Technicians struggle to write comprehensive reports in such tight schedules. Pencilwrench helped his team capture previously missed operational details with the required speed and accuracy.

Authenticity That Matters

For McCue, what makes Pencilwrench unique is its authenticity. “We didn’t invent this in a boardroom,” he says. “This came from real shop floors, from the frustration of watching good techs lose hours—and dealerships lose revenue—because of documentation.”

That authenticity makes Pencilwrench especially relevant today, with warranty reimbursement battles intensifying at the state level. By capturing every diagnostic step and repair, Pencilwrench standardizes the process across the shop floor, ensuring every invoice is clear, professional and defensible—leading to fewer denials, fewer chargebacks and more predictable revenue.

“Our mission is simple,” McCue adds, “Let technicians do what they do best—fix cars—and give dealers peace of mind that their stories and revenue are protected.”