Busy all day, and the hours do not add up
Four technicians, a full diary, and every one of them looks flat out. Yet when you add up the labour hours on this week's invoices, the total is well under the hours you paid for. Somewhere between the clock on the wall and the invoice, hours went missing.
Maybe the diagnostic job on the hybrid took three hours and you charged one because the customer balked. Maybe the exhaust job ran long because the bolts were seized. Maybe a technician spent the afternoon moving cars and sweeping up because the next job's parts had not come. You cannot tell, because nobody records it.
Why sold hours and real hours never meet
Labour is priced from a guide, such as Autodata or HaynesPro times, from a fixed menu price for a service, or from the advisor's experience. That is the right way to price. The problem is that it is the only number you ever see.
Technicians are not clocked onto jobs because it feels like admin they do not have time for, and because paper time sheets are filled in at the end of the day from memory. So the real time spent never lands next to the time sold, and the gaps are invisible: seized fixings, comebacks, unpaid diagnosis, waiting for parts, and plain idle time.
What the gap hides
| Where hours go | Why you cannot see it now |
|---|---|
| Diagnosis written off or undercharged | The time is spent but only the repair is invoiced |
| Waiting for parts or approvals | The technician is paid and the ramp is occupied |
| Comebacks and rework | Done for free and never recorded against the original job |
| Menu-priced services that overrun | The price is fixed so the overrun is never seen |
| Non-job time | Road tests, shunting cars, cleaning, collecting parts |
Without this, pricing decisions are made on feel. The fixed price for a major service on a particular model might lose money every time, and nobody would know.
How we add clocking without adding paperwork
- Each technician gets a simple screen, on a workshop tablet or their phone, showing the jobs allocated to them today.
- They tap to start a job and tap to stop. If they stop for a reason, they pick it from a short list: waiting for parts, waiting for approval, road test, break.
- Non-job time such as cleaning or moving cars can be clocked to a general code, so the day adds up.
- Clocked time is compared with the labour sold on the job invoice from your garage management system.
- A weekly view shows sold hours against clocked hours by technician, job type, make and model, with the biggest gaps at the top.
- Jobs where clocked time is well over sold time are flagged for a quick look while everyone still remembers why.
We keep the clocking to as few taps as possible, because a system technicians skip is worse than none. If your management system already has a clocking feature that nobody uses, we look at why before building anything new.
What you learn in the first month
You start to see the patterns you suspected but could not prove. Diagnostic time on particular models is being given away. One fixed-price service runs over almost every time on a certain engine. Waiting for parts is costing more ramp time than you thought, which points back at how parts are ordered.
The conversation with technicians changes too. It is not about blame. It is about seeing that the half hour lost waiting for an approval call is real, and fixing the process that caused it.
- Sold hours and real hours side by side for every job
- Reasons recorded for stops and waiting
- Menu prices you can review with evidence
- Diagnostic time you can see and decide how to charge
Are hours leaking out of your workshop?
- Paid hours are well above invoiced labour hours, and you do not know why.
- Technicians do not clock onto jobs, or fill in sheets from memory.
- Diagnostic time is often written off at the counter.
- You set menu prices years ago and have not checked them since.
- Comebacks are fixed without being recorded against the original job.