Parts Counter Person Job Description: Duties and Responsibilities

The duty list for this job is public.

O*NET's task statements for parts salespersons — the federal occupation the counter titles map to — include reading catalogs or computer displays to find part numbers and prices, working out which parts are needed from old parts or customers' descriptions, filling orders and keeping stock.

Unpacked, the daily work runs on three tasks.

Identify the replacement part from an inspection of the old part, from the customer's request, or from the customer's description of the malfunction; fill customer orders from stock; and place an order when the requested item is not on the shelf.

The desk goes by several names.

O*NET's job-titles file links Parts Advisor, Parts Counterperson, Parts Counter Person and Automotive Parts Counter Associate to one occupation — 41-2022 Parts Salespersons — so a posting for the same desk can carry any of the four names.

A federal definition agrees with the task list.

DOL regulations define a 'partsman' — the term the dealership overtime exemption uses — as an employee employed for the purpose of and primarily engaged in requisitioning, stocking, and dispensing parts.

Requisition, stock, dispense: the regulation's three verbs are the stocking half of the counter job, and keeping stock is the half the customer never sees.

One boundary is worth knowing at the start: the counter job is not the department-head job.

O*NET links Parts Manager and Auto Parts Manager to first-line supervisors of retail sales workers and to supply chain managers — not to the parts salesperson code.

Where the desk sits changes the customers: parts and tire retailers, dealership parts departments and wholesale distributors each run a version of it.

The parts counter person career guide covers the role end to end — settings, pay and the routes in.

The lookup is the center of the job, and O*NET words the task exactly: "Read catalogs, microfiche viewers, or computer displays to determine replacement part stock numbers and prices."

A part reaches the counter in one of three ways, per the same task list: an inspection of the old part, a customer's request, or a customer's description of the malfunction.

The walk-in who hands over a worn brake pad and the caller who reads a number off a nameplate are running the same task from opposite ends.

Quoting is the lookup plus two answers: the price and the availability.

The task list pairs the price lookup with filling orders from stock and placing orders when requested items are out of stock, so the quote answers both questions at once — what it costs and whether it is on the shelf today.

Accuracy is the skill the rest of the counter runs on.

The stock number the counter person selects is what the sale, the order and the stock record all carry, so a catalog misread follows the part from the invoice to the shelf and back.

The setting decides who walks up.

BLS's 2025 employment figures put 46% of parts salespersons at automotive parts, accessories and tire retailers, 22% at automobile dealers and 19% in wholesale trade — so both windows exist, in different mixes, across the trade.

At a retail counter the customer brings the problem to the desk: the worn part in one hand, or a description of the symptom in the customer's own words.

The lookup starts from the description-to-part task — inspections of old parts, customers' descriptions of malfunctions.

Selling to shops runs through the wholesale side of the trade, where 19% of parts salespersons work, and through dealership parts departments, whose customers include the dealer's own service department.

NADA's 2025 dealership data shows how mixed that book is: $93.42 billion in dealership parts sales for the year.

That total includes wholesale ($24.54 billion), customer mechanical work ($24.21 billion), warranty work ($16.67 billion), internal shop work ($8.55 billion), counter sales ($4.32 billion) and an $11.00 billion other line.

One counter can price a walk-in's battery, pick a technician's warranty job and fill a body shop's wholesale order in the same hour.

The task list behind those windows is a single federal one — lookup, quote, fill, order — what changes is who is on the other end and which line the sale posts to.

Postings that say parts counter sales are naming the selling half of this: the quote, the fit, the price and the completed order.

Behind the lookup sits the stockroom half of the job.

Keeping stock is in the federal task list, and the partsman definition puts stocking and requisitioning next to dispensing as the job's core verbs.

That one phrase covers work that is physical and bookkeeping at once.

Receiving incoming parts into the system and putting them away where the system says they live is half of it.

Counting what is on the shelf against what the system says should be there is the other half.

When a requested item is out of stock, the task list says the counter person places the order — and the special order's trip from supplier to customer still runs through the same desk.

Returns come back over the same counter: a wrong lookup, a changed repair plan, a defective unit.

The counter person matches the returned part to the original sale, checks its condition, and sends it where the store's policy sends it — back on the shelf, back to the supplier, or written off.

Cores are the used half of a parts sale.

When a supplier sells a remanufactured or rebuilt unit — an alternator, a brake caliper, a steering gear — the old unit is the core, and the invoice may carry a core charge that waits on its return.

Handling cores is counter work: take the old unit in, confirm it is the core the invoice expects, and, where the invoice carried one, post the credit that releases the charge.

Returns and cores are where the paperwork meets real parts — the record and the shelf have to agree.

A posting can say parts counter person, parts counter clerk, parts counter sales, auto parts counter or parts advisor — whatever the wording, the federal task list above is the checklist to read the posting's duties block against.

The sample below is an example built around the O*NET task list for parts salespersons and the DOL partsman definition.

The position summary and the receiving, shelf-count and returns-and-cores lines are illustrative additions, not federal wording, and it is not a posting from a named employer.

Position summary: the parts counter person is the department's point of sale and point of supply — greeting customers and shop callers, identifying the right part, quoting price and availability, completing the sale, and keeping the stock behind the counter accurate.

Qualifications stay light in this trade.

BLS says parts and retail sales jobs usually have no formal education requirement, though some employers prefer a high school diploma or equivalent.

The optional credential is ASE's P2 Automobile Parts Specialist: certification takes a passed Parts test — 75 scored questions in 90 minutes — plus two years of parts counter work experience.

Hands-on repair experience does not count toward the two years, and ASE's school-and-training substitutions do not apply to the Parts Specialist category.

ASE certification is voluntary across its programs, and how ASE certification works covers the whole system — so what any individual employer requires is that employer's own rule.

Compensation is each employer's own plan; for scale, BLS OEWS put the national median for parts salespersons (SOC 41-2022) at $18.57 an hour ($38,630 a year) in May 2025, across 270,070 jobs.

When a posting leans entirely on register and phone work with no catalog talk, ask in the interview how much lookup and stock work the counter actually owns.

Career information, not legal or licensing advice. Certification details change; confirm current requirements with ASE.