OPVantis makes its public debut at the ABAT Trade Show, September 18–19 in Allen. Three things are running at Booth 512: a timed round where you find what a fictional shop is losing, a twelve-question diagnosis of your own floor, and a live walk through the platform.
Most of the software this industry runs on tells you what happened after the file closes. By then the car is late, the labor is unbilled, and a standard everybody agreed to has quietly slid. We organize the work around the three ways that happens.
Parts on the shelf nobody logged. A supplement aging on an adjuster nobody is chasing. A vehicle waiting on a decision nobody owns.
Labor performed and never billed. Returned parts that never come back as credits. Paint materials out the door untracked.
A quality check nobody documented. A task that lived in somebody's head. An SOP that says one thing while the shop does another.
Underneath is one connected record per repair: production, parts, quality, customer and carrier communication, and live profit, visible to every role at the same time. Estimators, technicians, parts, the front counter and the director stop working from four versions of the truth.
A timed round where you find what a fictional shop is losing. Three tracks, because a body tech and a painter shouldn't have to play a manager's game:
Live leaderboard across both days. Finals Friday at 4:00 on a board nobody has seen.
An operational diagnosis of your shop, scored from your answers and nothing else. No inputs from us, no sales pitch stapled to the result.
It takes about three minutes and you walk away with the score whether or not you ever talk to us again.
Whatever you actually want to see, on a real screen, at whatever depth you want to go. Bring a real repair order and we'll run it against your own numbers.
Or book a slot ahead so you're not waiting on a tablet.
Four of the ten lines in every estimate are ones you should take off your own estimate, not ones to push harder on an adjuster. That's deliberate. The fastest way to lose the nine good lines on a sheet is to send one bad one. Every reveal carries the same note: these are demonstration scenarios, and you verify against the current OEM procedure for the specific vehicle.
One car, one question, an on-screen keypad. Then the real number counts up with its math on the screen: the shop profile, the stall gross profit per day, the rental, the unbilled labor. A booth game that can't show its math loses the room.
The Auto Body Association of Texas has spent years doing the unglamorous work this industry needs and rarely funds: educating legislators, organizing shops that compete with each other into a single voice, and holding the line that a repair either restores the vehicle to pre-loss condition or it doesn't.
Their Right to Appraisal legislation, Senate Bill 458, was approved unanimously by both chambers of the 89th Texas Legislature and took effect September 1, 2025. It guarantees that either the insured or the insurer can invoke an independent appraisal when there's a dispute over the amount of loss. ABAT got it there in part by organizing Collision Day at the Capitol, where nearly thirty industry professionals spent a day in Austin meeting legislators face to face.
This trade show is ABAT's, not ours. We're glad to have a booth in it.
OPVantis was built by a collision director who still runs a high-production shop in Houston and serves on the ABAT board. The platform came out of a working shop rather than around one.
That's also why the demo isn't a slide deck. If something on the screen doesn't match how your floor actually runs, we want to hear it. That feedback is most of the reason we're in the hall.
Estimating and repair planning, leadership, ADAS, alternative revenue streams, office staff development, technician training and emerging repair techniques. Individual seminars or a Full Weekend Access pass.
Painters, estimators and body technicians compete head to head for prizes and coverage. Worth watching even if you're not entering.
In the Hospitality Suite, right as the exhibit hall winds down on Saturday.
The day before the show, at The Golf Club at Twin Creeks.
Program details belong to ABAT and can change. Check abat.us for the current schedule, seminar pricing and registration.
The stall that never clears. The supplement nobody chased. The labor that never made it onto the invoice. Tell us what's costing you and we'll show you whether OPVantis touches it. If it doesn't, we'll tell you that too. Booth 512, Friday and Saturday. Book a slot or just walk up.
