At five to ten minutes per supplier invoice, manual entry doesn't look expensive — until you multiply it. 150 invoices a month is 12+ hours of skilled staff time spent retyping numbers that already exist on a PDF. And every keystroke is a chance for a transposed digit that throws your stock values and supplier reconciliation out. Here's the honest comparison.
| Feature | Data Entry Pro | Alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Time per invoice | ~15 sec review + hands-free entry | 5–10 minutes of typing |
| Monthly time at 150 invoices | About 1 hour of reviews | 12–25 hours |
| Cost at $35/hr staff time | From A$79/month flat | A$420–875/month in wages |
| Typos & transposed digits | No — extracted digitally from the PDF | Inevitable at volume |
| PDF attached to every bill | Yes — automatic | Depends who's typing |
| Back orders created | Yes — automatic on part-deliveries | Frequently forgotten |
| Evenings & weekends | Works anytime — queue a batch and walk away | Someone stays back to catch up |
Count your monthly supplier invoices (your MechanicDesk bill history will tell you).
Multiply by 6 minutes — that's your current monthly data-entry cost in staff hours.
Start the free trial, drop in 10 real invoices, and time the difference yourself.
Data Entry Pro's AI extracts every line item and checks the lines add up to the invoice total, and you review the extracted data before anything is entered into MechanicDesk. Humans typing at speed make more errors, and those errors are silent — a wrong digit just sits in your books.
At A$35/hour staff cost, the Starter plan (A$79/month) pays for itself at roughly 23 invoices a month. Most workshops process far more than that.
We recommend a quick review of the extracted data before processing — it takes seconds. The automation also has built-in safety checks that abort rather than enter questionable data into MechanicDesk.
That's the point. Data entry is the lowest-value work in the workshop. The same person can chase parts, book jobs, follow up customers, or reconcile accounts — things software can't do.
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