ABAT Community Learns of Game Changing Goals and Breakthroughs
by Alana Quartuccio
An exciting year for ABAT is underway! From goals at the Capitol to regional events, 2025 is definitely going to be one for the Texas auto body world books.
ABAT hosted a “game changing” themed virtual webinar event on March 11 to inform the membership about the “super exciting things we have planned for this year” in the words of ABAT Executive Director Jill Tuggle.
Tuggle and ABAT Lobbyist Jacob Smith provided an overview of the legislative goals surrounding the fair appraisal bill SB 369, filed by Sen. Schwertner in preparation of ABAT’s Capitol Day, which was set for late March. (Look for full coverage of this event in the May issue of Texas Automotive available online at grecopublishing.com).
Tuggle gave a heads up about upcoming events, including the Dean Griffin Memorial Skeet Shoot set for April 17, a hybrid meeting planned for May, the annual Women’s Night of Honor planned for June and the latest development for the 2025 Texas Auto Body Trade Show which will be held in the fall (September 12-13) at a new location – the Marriott Dallas Allen Hotel & Convention Center.
Giving members access to the best tools around is another mission of ABAT. They set out to do just that by inviting National AutoBody Research (NABR) team leaders Sam and Richard Valenzuela to give the ABAT community the very first look at their recently unveiled and newly revamped BillableGenie tool.
“Texas is the first association to see this,” revealed Sam Valenzuela about the breakthrough software that intends to level an otherwise “lopsided” industry due to “insurance companies having a competitive advantage over the body shops when it comes to accessing repair data.”
The previous version of BillableGenie involved a manual process of sending estimates to NABR to input into their database resulting in a collection of 20,000 estimates over an eight year time period. The new system is still in its infancy with a handful of body shops inputting data; however, it has already generated about 10 percent of what the original BillableGenie collected in just one month and a half, according to Sam.
“Once it’s installed, you don’t have to send anything to us; it does all the work,” he explained of the application. If every BillableGenie subscriber participates, he foresees having 1.3 million records of shop estimates available in the not-too-distant future.
“We are looking to help level the scales, so body shops can get access to and have more detailed estimate data than the insurance companies have,” he relayed. Insurance companies continuously claim they “won’t pay for that” and cite prevailing rates with little to no data to back that up. The new BillableGenie sets out to supply the body shops with access to data that can prove them wrong.
The missing key has been the absence of access to the shop’s side of the estimate, according to Sam. “Now, you can see what other shops are writing. This is a real breakthrough as this is the data that the industry has never been able to get to before. There has never been a systematic way of searching through thousands – and eventually millions! – of records based on keywords like insurance company, vehicle make or a specific labor rate.
“The more Texas shops using this, the more ammunition you have to push back when they tell you it’s not the prevailing practice,” he added. “You can find examples of repairs being written at shops in your surrounding area asking for that very same thing. You can call them out, hold your ground and back it up with real data.”
The tool can be “as powerful as you want it to be,” he suggested. Search functions allow shops to view data by OEM certifications, so shops can compare their estimates to other shops with the same certifications. DRP data can also be submitted provided a shop “does their homework to view their agreement carefully to make sure there are no restrictions.” This data gives program shops the opportunity to see if others on the same program are charging or getting paid for certain line items.
The Valenzuelas stressed that BillableGenie is a safe space for data. Shop business names and customer names will not be displayed. “We know that data is flying all over the place, but not here. The data comes here, and it stays here,” Sam assured.
The tools available via BillableGenie are designed to address the “we don’t pay that” or “that’s not necessary” word track mantra of the insurance industry so that shops “don’t leave money on the table,” Richard Valenzuela relayed.
“We didn’t create this system to be an easy button where it magically results in an insurance company paying for everything,” Sam stressed. “That’s fantasy land. Having data is important so you can show facts. If you don’t have that, you are just arguing with words. You have better odds for winning an argument with facts.”
Ultimately, one needs to collect from the customer, but “it would be a slow death for shops that don’t collect for their work and let insurers get away with it. At some point, truth has to prevail, and we can’t keep acquiescing to what we know is false when insurers say something is not a prevailing practice when you have the data to prove it.”
Sharing market data is good for the industry. “There is nothing wrong with sharing it. It facilitates transparency. There is no legal issue with sharing market data anymore than a gas station posting their price on the corner,” stressed Sam. The more users who contribute their data, the more information there will be available to show what is really happening in the market.
“ABAT has always been a big proponent for what these guys do,” stated Tuggle. “I love that Sam brought up that it isn’t an ‘easy button’ or quick fix. That comes up so often in our industry. Many may think they just join ABAT and we’ll fix the problem. The reality is that the only one who can fix our problems is ourselves. ABAT is a vehicle to get together, share wins and losses and find ways to work for our common goal.”
Tuggle pointed to the benefits of BillableGenie which include appraisal data that could be an aid in ABAT’s fight to get the fair appraisal bill approved during this legislative session.
“One of ABAT President Burl Richards’ biggest sticking points is being told ‘you’re the only one’ or ‘that’s not the prevailing rate.’ NABR heard that and tackled it head on. Like the baseball analogy, ‘you won’t swing at the same pitch the same way,’ this is another way to respond to a different pitch. This, along with what ABAT is trying to accomplish at the Capitol, shows we are moving in the right direction.”
Want more? Check out the April 2025 issue of Texas Automotive!