The “Who Pays for What?” scanning and calibration survey from Collision Advice recently showed that ALLDATA continues to be the most popular choice among body shops (73.4%) for researching OEM repair information and procedures.

It also revealed how often shops are being compensated for dozens of collision-specific procedures and materials, from seat calibration to sound-deadening.

The Who Pays for What? scanning and calibration survey ran from Oct. 1-31, 2021 and asked body shops nationwide to report how often they’re paid for a variety of shop repair procedures and shop supplies by the eight largest auto insurers.

In 2021, 59% of respondents said they research OEM repair procedures “all or most of the time,” compared to 42.7% in 2015, according to the report. As vehicles become increasingly complex, this trend reflects the industry’s focus on the absolute necessity of following OEM procedures for safe and accurate vehicle repairs, and to limit liability.

Since the Who Pays For What? survey launched in 2015, ALLDATA has been the top choice of auto body shops for online OEM repair information. For 2021, 73.4% of respondents say they use ALLDATA compared to 52.8% who use OEM information websites and 46.44% who use I-CAR.

When it comes to billing the labor time required for OEM repair information research, 20% of shops are paid “always” or “most of the time,” a significant increase from just 6% in 2015.

Anderson noted in the report that he’s “…starting to see a few shops with an employee doing nothing but scanning vehicles and researching OEM repair procedures. I think it will be interesting to watch this moving forward.” Another trend he called out is shops billing for their labor time based on the number of pages of OEM procedures they had to research.

The survey also asked, “Whether or not this location bills for the time to research OEM repair information, do you add a separate line-item charge to cover subscription fees for OEM repair information?” Approximately 42% said they have never passed along a charge for OEM subscription fees, 30% charge only when using websites for which they don’t have an annual subscription, and 23% always (or almost always) include a subscription fee charge.

The percentage of shops saying they have never charged for subscription fees dropped to 42% in 2021 from 51% in 2020 and 57% in 2019. In other words, more shops are including fees for subscriptions to help recoup costs.

For more information on ALLDATA, visit alldata.com.