CaseSL-2026-001
ClientLingenfelter Auto Spa
LocationBrighton, MI
Delivered14 days async
StatusShipped Apr 2026
Case study · Brighton, Michigan · Founding rate build
Replaced a monthly subscription with something they own.
—Paint Protection Film (PPF)
—Colored PPF
—Ceramic Coating
—Window Tint
—Vehicle Customization
—Colored PPF
—Ceramic Coating
—Window Tint
—Vehicle Customization
7891 Lochlin Drive
Brighton, Michigan 48116
(810) 355-2458
lingenfelterautospa.com
Founding-rate one-time CRM build by Septim Labs · Apr 2026
Brighton, Michigan 48116
(810) 355-2458
lingenfelterautospa.com
Founding-rate one-time CRM build by Septim Labs · Apr 2026
01 — What we replaced
Urable worked. Until the monthly invoice started adding up.
Matt Celotto, owner. His complaints, in order of how often he brought them up.
Urable charged every month regardless of how the shop ran. A slow month in winter still generated the same invoice. There was no off switch.
Monthly cost$200 / mo
The customer-facing experience was whatever Urable decided it was. Matt couldn't change how customers booked, how estimates looked, or how confirmations were phrased. The shop ran on someone else's UI.
Roadmap control0%
QuickBooks Online sync was manual. Jobs closed in Urable had to be re-entered in QBO. Two systems, same data, double the work — and the two never quite matched when it was time to look at the numbers.
QBO syncManual
SMS reminders were either off or generic. A luxury PPF client dropping off a Porsche Taycan got the same automated text as a window tint job. The tool didn't know the difference.
Reminder qualityGeneric
At the end of every year, Matt owned nothing. If Urable raised prices or shut down, the shop's appointment history, customer records, and estimate data would be inaccessible. Twelve months of paying — and nothing to show for it in the asset column.
OwnershipNone
"I didn't hate Urable — it did the job. But I was paying $200 a month for something I'd never own, and every time I wanted it to work differently, the answer was wait for the next update."
Matt Celotto — Owner, Lingenfelter Auto Spa, Brighton MI
02 — What we built
Twenty features. One system. Theirs.
Organized into four functional areas. Every feature was driven by what Matt's shop actually does, not by what a generic shop platform assumed.
Bay scheduling
- Appointment calendar per bay
- Job type + duration presets
- Drag-to-reschedule
- Technician assignment
- Capacity view by day
Customer flow
- Customer portal, magic-link auth
- Self-serve appointment booking
- Structured estimate + approval
- Automated SMS reminders (Twilio)
- Automated email confirmations
Money
- Stripe Connect payment processing
- QuickBooks Online bidirectional sync
- Invoice generation from estimate
- Deposit collection on booking
- Payment status per job
Reporting
- Revenue by service type
- Job profitability per technician
- Aging receivables dashboard
- Customer lifetime value
- Monthly vs. prior-period comparison
"When a client logs in and sees their car's status, their estimate, and a payment link — all in one place — that's the kind of thing I could never get from an off-the-shelf tool without paying for it every single month."
Matt Celotto — Owner, Lingenfelter Auto Spa, Brighton MI
03 — How we shipped it
Fourteen days, async-only, $2,000 one-time.
No on-site visits. No discovery deck. Matt and the Septim Labs team communicated entirely by message. Build updates went out over Loom. The shop never closed for a demo.
Day 01
Intake and scope lock
Matt described how the shop runs — service types, typical job duration, how he invoices clients, how QBO fits in. Scope locked to 20 features in a single async document. No discovery call needed.
Day 03
Auth and database live
Supabase schema up with customer, job, and estimate tables. Magic-link auth working. Stripe Connect connected to Matt's existing Stripe account.
Day 06
Scheduling and customer portal
Bay calendar working. Customers could book via the portal and receive an SMS confirmation through Twilio. Matt reviewed the first Loom and approved the layout without changes.
Day 10
Estimates, invoicing, and QBO sync
Structured estimate builder live. Approval flow tested end-to-end. QuickBooks Online bidirectional sync wired — jobs close in the CRM and appear in QBO automatically.
Day 13
Reporting and final review
All five reporting dashboards wired. Matt reviewed and signed off. One round of refinements on the profitability view — done in hours, not a sprint cycle.
Day 14
Delivered. Repository handed over.
Full codebase in Matt's GitHub. Runbook included. Urable subscription cancelled. No recurring fee to Septim Labs. The system is his.
04 — What it does for the shop
The math is simple. The savings are real.
One subscription cancelled. One one-time invoice paid. Everything after that is margin the shop keeps.
Urable subscription
$200/mo
Cancelled the day the CRM went live.
Annual savings
$2.4k/yr
$200/mo × 12. No escalation clause. No seats fee.
Build cost (one-time)
$2k
Founding rate. Code and database owned outright.
Payback period
10mo
Every month after month 10 is pure savings.
"I paid $2,000 once. I own the code, I own the database, and I don't owe anyone a monthly fee. That's a different kind of deal than anything else out there."
Matt Celotto — Owner, Lingenfelter Auto Spa, Brighton MI
Stack
Five production tools, zero vendor lock-in.
Each piece was chosen because Matt's shop can replace it independently. No proprietary glue, no Septim-only runtime.
05 — The invoice
One number. One time.
The actual founding-rate engagement. Posted as reference for shops evaluating a similar move away from subscription tooling.
Scope·····························CUSTOM CRM, 20 FEATURES
Duration·····························14 DAYS ASYNC
On-site work·····························NONE — REMOTE ONLY
Discovery fee·····························$0
Build + delivery·····························$2,000
Source code·····························YOURS — DAY 1
Recurring fee to Septim·····························$0 / FयाEVER
TOTAL · ONE-TIME$2,000
Want a CRM like Lingenfelter's?
Septim Deploy is a two-week async build at $499 — scoped to your shop, your stack, your ownership. No recurring license.
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