How to set up MOT reminders for your garage in 2026

Most UK garages leave money on the table on MOT reminders. Not because owners do not care, but because the manual systems break under the weight of daily work. This is a practical guide to setting up reminders that actually work, whether you build it yourself with free APIs or use a workshop tool that does it for you.

I will not pretend SMS reminders are revolutionary. They are not. They are basic plumbing every workshop should have, and most do not have a working version of.

Why most garages lose MOT revenue

The simple answer: customers forget. The DVSA's own data shows roughly one in four cars is presented for MOT within seven days of the expiry date, often after the certificate has already lapsed. By the time the customer remembers, they Google "MOT near me" and the nearest garage with availability wins the work. Half the time that is not the workshop that did the MOT last year.

Your existing customer base is the cheapest pipeline you have. Reminding them is the single highest-ROI marketing activity in the industry. A reminder costs pennies. The MOT plus the inevitable advisory work it generates is worth £40 to £200.

Why manual reminder systems break

I have seen four versions of "we do reminders" in workshops, all of which silently fall over.

1. Diary at the front desk. Receptionist marks the date a year forward when MOT is done. Works for the first six months. Fails when the receptionist leaves, takes a holiday, or just gets busy on the day a reminder was due.

2. Spreadsheet of customers. Owner exports the spreadsheet every Sunday night, manually sends 30 reminder texts. Works for six weeks. Fails when the owner has a bad week.

3. Postcard service. External provider charges 50p per card. Margin lost. Postcards arrive too late or too early. Customers ignore them.

4. Inside the workshop software. Variable quality. Some send only email (low open rate). Some send only on the exact day of expiry (too late). Some forget to handle customers who had MOT done elsewhere this year.

The system that works is automated, runs daily, and adapts to actual MOT data not your CRM entry.

SMS vs email vs postcard: what converts

I do not have proprietary conversion data, and I would not trust anyone who quotes specific numbers without showing their working. Here is what is broadly observable across UK workshops:

• SMS gets read. Open rates in the 90-percent-plus range are standard for transactional text. The downside is cost (around 3p to 5p per message at volume) and the GDPR consent bar is higher.

• Email is cheap and easy. Open rates for transactional emails (which MOT reminders qualify as if framed correctly) sit around 40 to 60 percent. Lower than SMS, free at the volumes a single workshop runs.

• Postcard still works for older demographics. Cost is the killer, plus the time lag. If you have a customer base that is genuinely over 65, it might be worth running them on postcards in parallel.

Most successful workshops I know use email as the default channel, with SMS as an upsell or for the 14-day "your MOT expires next Friday" final reminder.

GDPR and marketing consent (the part most workshops get wrong)

UK GDPR treats MOT reminders as legitimate interest in most cases, because the customer is an existing service customer and the reminder is directly related to a vehicle they brought to you. You do not strictly need a separate marketing opt-in for "your MOT is due" if the customer is already in your service relationship.

What you do need:

• A clear privacy notice the customer can read (linked from your website footer is fine)
• A working opt-out method in every reminder ("Reply STOP to opt out")
• A real internal process for honouring opt-outs (do not just delete from one list and forget the other)

If you start sending broader marketing ("we have a special on tyres this month") to that same list, you cross into needing explicit marketing consent under PECR. Easy fix: keep MOT reminders separate from offers.

How to build it yourself using the DVSA MOT API

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency publishes a free public API that returns MOT history for any UK registration. Documentation is at history.mot.api.gov.uk. You sign up, get an API key, and call it with a registration. It returns expiry date, test history, advisories, and failure reasons.

The basic workflow:

1. Every night, your script reads the list of vehicles you have serviced in the last 13 months.
2. For each, call the DVSA API and record the latest MOT expiry date.
3. Filter to vehicles where expiry is between 14 and 28 days from now and you have not already sent a reminder for this expiry.
4. Send the reminder via your email or SMS provider.
5. Log that you sent it so you do not send it twice.

If you have a developer or a technically confident owner, this is a weekend project. The API is free, well-documented, and stable.

The catch: you have to maintain it. Provider API keys rotate, SMS provider credentials change, email deliverability drifts, opt-out lists get out of sync between your workshop system and your reminder system. The build is easy, the maintenance is forever.

How Autera handles MOT reminders

Autera pulls MOT expiry from the DVSA API automatically every time you create a job (and refreshes it daily for active customers). The MOT reminder runs as a scheduled job 14 days before expiry, sends an email (or SMS on plans that include it), and logs the send against the customer record.

Opt-outs are honoured at the customer level, so a STOP reply removes that customer from MOT reminders without affecting their other workshop communications.

What you do not have to do:

• Maintain an API key with the DVSA
• Run a scheduled task on your own server
• Worry about deliverability across SMS providers
• Reconcile opt-out lists between two systems

I do not think MOT reminders are a reason to choose a workshop tool on their own. But if you are already shopping for one, the difference between "MOT reminders included" and "rig it up yourself" is real, and it shows up in real revenue across a year.

A note on advisory follow-ups

The single most underused workflow in UK independent garages is the advisory follow-up. MOT comes back with three advisories. You note them on the receipt and hand the customer the keys. Nine months later they have forgotten and they bring the car to whoever happens to be nearest.

You can run advisory reminders on the same plumbing as MOT reminders. The trigger is just "60 days after MOT with at least one advisory, send a reminder to book the work in." Conversion is harder to predict here because the customer has to want the work done. But every workshop I have talked to that runs advisory reminders says they are the highest-margin reminders they send.

Where to start

If you have a current workshop system, check whether it already has MOT reminders. Half of them do, most are turned off by default because the system needs an SMS or email provider connected. Connect the provider and turn it on tonight.

If your current system does not have reminders or you cannot find the toggle, the DVSA API is genuinely the right answer for a technical owner. It is one of the better-built government APIs and the documentation is decent.

If you would rather not maintain the plumbing, Autera includes it on every plan from £29 per month. Email reminders, MOT expiry tracking, opt-out handling, advisory follow-ups. Free for 14 days.

Either way, the worst answer is no reminder system at all. The cars are out there. They need their MOT. The question is who they remember when the certificate is two weeks from expiring.

Autera handles all of this automatically. Try free for 14 days → or see a demo.