Into each life some rain must fall, some days be dark and dreary.

I’m fairly certain Longfellow didn’t have access to computers or databases, but he surely knew what we were going through. We spent the Memorial Day weekend restoring 2.4 million records to the servicesheet.com database from backups. It appears to have been a free-floating, random database corruption that caused the loss of all the records in one table. We’re not really sure WHAT happened, but we haven’t experienced it again. It sure made us sick to our stomachs and ruined the whole weekend.

UPDATE: September 30, 2005
We just completed switching database platforms to ensure nothing like the preceding ever happens again. With almost 4.5 million records now in that same table, we can’t afford to lose any data for any period of time, no matter how short.

Why should paying customers have all the fun? We created a demo account so that anybody can see the awesomeness that is servicesheet.com. Of course, it would be pretty silly to sign up and pay for something you could already get for free. So, we had to cripple the demo in the following ways:

• We can’t check the vehicle you entered for open recalls, and we can’t verify the VIN number either.
• When I said “all the tasks are still there” what I meant to say was “they’re all still there, but some are blacked out on the PDF.”

That’s about it though. Everything else works like in the paid version. If you’d like to see the full system in action, please feel free to sign up for a 30-day free trail with no strings attached.

We introduced a feature to prevent service advisors (aka service writers) from generating a service sheet for a vehicle older than a specific year, which you can set. By default, the year is set at 1985, meaning any bike older than that triggers the following message:

The service writer can’t continue past that screen without the manager password. As you already know, there’s no such thing as “just a maintenance” on an older bike so this feature enables service managers to get involved early in the process and set reasonable expectations.

If your service writers are skilled at directing customers with older bikes toward an I&R, or you have other ways of preventing older bikes for being scheduled for “just a maintenance”, you can turn this feature off by setting the “Oldest Bike Year” to 1981, the oldest bike currently accounted for in the system.

Have you ever seen this screen?

If you have, then you can skip this article right now. If not, read on. You’ll only see that screen if you enter a bike into the system that we haven’t accounted for. If we haven’t accounted for it, it’s due to one of two things:

• we goofed
• you goofed

Let’s say you are checking in a 1998 Fat Boy®, but instead of the this correct-looking VIN:
1HD1BML10WY123456

you enter this:
1HD1BWL10WY123456

The first thing you’ll get is this:

Invalid VIN, please verify

If you look the VIN over and it still looks correct to you, go ahead and click “Verify”. You will probably get this message next:

We do not recognize this VIN as valid. If this IS a valid VIN, and you submit it a third time, the ServiceSheet.com administrators will be alerted so that they can research why it is failing.

If you click “Verify” here without making any changes to the VIN you will get the bounty screen, the one with the hot sauce bottle, pictured above. Please print that screen, or at least write the bounty code down. At the same time you received that screen, we were notified that a VIN was entered for a bike that we don’t know about. We will research it to see if it’s a real bike, and if so, we’ll call and make arrangements to send you your bounty. Currently (05/2005), the bounty is your choice of $10 or a bottle of our ServiceSauce. The bounty can change at any time, but you will definitely get the bounty that was offered at the time you received the message.

Of course, everybody knows that Harley-Davidson never built a model with a 3-letter model code of BWY, so when we research it and find out the VIN you entered is invalid, we’ll just send you the bill. [Just kidding - you just won't get the bounty, but we probably will call and make sure that everything is OK and give you a hard time.]

Please note: the bounty is for paying customers only – no demo or trial accounts please.

We have integrated H-D Net functionality into servicesheet.com for Authorized Harley-Davidson dealerships. This allows us to retrieve recall information for the vehicle you are servicing and also make sure the VIN you entered is for a bike that H-D actually built. If you don’t have an H-D Net account, that’s okay, everything still works. But if you do have one, this is a handy little feature to have.

We recommend setting up a dedicated H-D Net account strictly for servicesheet.com. No need to give out one of your regular employee accounts. Your dealership security manager can add the account to H-D Net. The only thing we need access to is the safety campaign history.

That is the only section of H-D Net we need access to for servicesheet.com. If you’d rather not share that with us, that’s fine too, but you’ll be missing out on some sweet functionality. We promise that we’ll only use your username and password to access H-D Net for YOUR benefit when you are logged in, never for anything else. Please take a look at our privacy policy if you have any concerns.