For collision and body shops
Collision shop software with real body shop key control.
A Tesla repair order runs three weeks and touches nine people: estimator, teardown, body, paint, reassembly, calibration, QC, detail, delivery. GuestLot keeps one time-boxed custody window across the whole RO, alerts on Service Mode exits and after-hours movement, and closes into a record you can hand an adjuster.
Week three of an RO
Nine people have driven it and the file says nothing about any of them.
The car came in on a hook after a left-rear impact. It sat in teardown for four days waiting on parts, went through body and paint, came back for reassembly, and now it needs ADAS calibration and a road test to verify the radar. In between it moved to the overflow lot twice and left your fences twice — once for a sublet alignment, once for a Tesla Service Center part. The log shows each exit and return with a timestamp; it does not track where the car went, and says so.
Every one of those movements was correct. None of them is documented anywhere except a whiteboard and whatever your production manager remembers. Then the owner picks the car up, opens their Tesla app, sees the trip history, and calls to ask why their car went to an address in the next county on a Tuesday.
That call is the one this product exists for. Not because anyone did anything wrong, but because you had a perfectly good explanation and no way to produce it, and the insurer on the other side of the claim wanted something better than an explanation.
RO 24-1188 · Model 3 · left rear
The road test is a logged, expected event. The unexpected Service Mode exit is the one that texts somebody.
Service Mode, honestly
No software can flip Service Mode. Ours tells you when it flips back.
This is the single most oversold capability in the Tesla shop market, so here is the plain version.
- Tesla’s Fleet API has no command. A technician enters Service Mode on the car’s touchscreen, standing at the vehicle. Anyone claiming remote control of it is describing something that does not exist.
- GuestLot reads the telemetry signal and raises an alert when the car exits Service Mode unexpectedly — the failure mode that actually costs you, because a car that drops out mid-calibration wastes a bay and a scan tool.
- Pro adds a Service Mode checklist on the job so the tech confirms state at the car instead of assuming it from a screen across the shop.
- Valet Mode locks the frunk and glovebox and caps the car at 70 mph. It is never the default on a collision ticket, and it does not gate Service Mode either way. Full comparison: Valet Mode vs Service Mode.
Shipped defaults for a collision ticket. Road test is a first-class geofence, not an exception.
Evidence, not adjectives
What changes when a claim starts.
A shop holding a customer's vehicle is a bailee, and when a car leaves worse than it arrived the practical burden of explanation lands on the shop. Nothing on this page prevents that. What it changes is whether you are explaining or showing.
- Collision disputes with and without a custody record
Owner sees unexplained trips in their Tesla app
You reconstruct three weeks of production from a whiteboard.
Every lot exit and return, plus the road test inside its fence, each with a timestamp.
Adjuster asks about the odometer delta
Intake photo of the cluster, if somebody took one.
Check-in snapshot, closed snapshot, and the miles between them.
Car drops out of Service Mode mid-calibration
A tech notices an hour later and the bay is burned.
Alert the moment the state changes, on the record with the time.
Damage is discovered at delivery
Nine people, three weeks, and nobody wants to be the one who moved it.
A movement history nobody can edit after the fact.
Owner asks when your access ended
It probably ended. The key is in the cabinet somewhere.
Access-ended-at is printed on the receipt they already have.
GuestLot does not prevent theft or damage and none of this is legal advice. It produces the record you would otherwise be assembling from memory under pressure. See garage keepers liability and customer car damaged at a shop.
Collision work runs on the Pro plan
- Collision and mechanical workflows with the RO on the record.
- Service Mode checklist and Service Mode exit alerts.
- Road test geofence and a 25-mile odometer threshold.
- BenchNote — VIN decode and NHTSA recall check at intake.
- Custody windows measured in weeks, not hours.
- Flat per location. A shop cycling 60 Teslas a month pays the same $349 as one cycling six — the math is on pricing.
Questions
From collision and body shops
Can GuestLot put the car into Service Mode?
No, and no software can. Tesla's Fleet API has no set_service_mode command — Service Mode is entered on the car's own touchscreen by a technician standing at the vehicle. What GuestLot does is read the telemetry signal and alert you if the car leaves Service Mode partway through a repair.
Road tests are part of the job. Will every one of them fire an alert?
No. A collision ticket ships with a 25-mile odometer threshold and a road test geofence alongside lot, overflow, and Tesla Service Center. Test drives inside that policy are logged as ordinary events. Alerts are reserved for after-hours exits and drift past the threshold you set.
What does this give me when the insurer asks what happened?
A closed, timestamped record: the check-in snapshot with odometer and battery, every lot exit and entry, Supercharger sessions, when your access started, and when it ended. Nobody can edit it after hand-back, including us, which is exactly what makes it worth anything in a claim.
Keep reading
For EV repair shops
Independent mechanical work, diagnostics, and road tests.
Tesla Fleet API for shops
What the API returns and what it flatly refuses to do.
Garage keepers liability
What the coverage is and what evidence carriers ask for.
vs KeyTrak
Key cabinets track a key. This tracks the car.
Security and limits
Every Tesla limit that touches a collision ticket.
Pricing
Standard $179, Pro $349, per location per month.
Three weeks of custody. One record.
Fourteen days, no card. Put your next Tesla RO on it and see what the file looks like when the car goes home.