Sunday night, laptop on the kitchen table
Every Sunday evening the owner opens the garage management system, exports the week's invoices, opens last week's spreadsheet, and starts copying. How many cars? How many labour hours were sold? What was the parts margin? How much is owed by account customers? How does this week compare with the same week last year?
It takes an hour or two. Some weeks it does not get done at all, and by the time a problem shows up in the monthly accounts, it has been happening for weeks.
The numbers exist, but in several places
The garage management system has invoices and jobs. The accounts package, such as Xero, QuickBooks or Sage, has payments and costs. The factor portals have what you bought. The booking diary shows how full next week is. Each has its own reports, none of which show the few numbers the owner actually cares about together.
Reports built into the management system are often either too simple or so detailed that nobody reads them. So the owner builds their own, by hand.
Definitions cause trouble too. Does "cars through" count a car that came back for a comeback? Does labour sold include diagnostic time given away? Is parts margin measured before or after returns and surcharges? If the answers change from one Sunday to the next, the trend line means nothing, however carefully the numbers were copied.
What building figures by hand costs
| Number | Why it matters and why it slips |
|---|---|
| Cars through | Shows demand, but is counted differently week to week |
| Labour hours sold | Core of garage income, hard to extract |
| Parts margin | Needs cost prices that are often missing |
| Average invoice | Shows whether extra work is being offered |
| Money owed on account | Lives in the accounts package, checked rarely |
| Next week's bookings | Needs the diary, not the invoices |
Hand-built figures are also inconsistent. The same number calculated two different ways on two different Sundays makes trends meaningless.
The quiet cost is decisions made late. A slide in average invoice value, a factor whose prices crept up, or an account customer who stopped paying on time are all visible in the data weeks before they show up in the accounts, but only if somebody looks at the data every week in the same way.
How we build a weekly report that assembles itself
- We agree with you the handful of numbers you want, and exactly how each is calculated, so it is the same every week.
- Data is read automatically from your garage management system, accounts package and, where useful, your diary and factor portals.
- Each week the report is built with this week, last week and the same week last year side by side, plus a simple trend line.
- It arrives by email on the morning you choose, with a link to a dashboard for anyone who wants to look deeper.
- Unusual movements, such as a sharp drop in average invoice or a rise in money owed, are highlighted at the top.
- Numbers can be split by technician, advisor, job type or site if you have more than one.
We keep the report short on purpose. A page of numbers that gets read is more use than a dashboard with fifty charts that nobody opens.
Monday morning instead of Sunday night
On Monday at seven, the report is in the owner's inbox. Cars through were steady, labour hours sold were down, and the average invoice dropped. At the top it notes that work declined rose over the week. That points to a conversation with the advisors about how extra work was offered, not a vague feeling that the week was quiet.
Sunday evening is free again.
- The same numbers calculated the same way every week
- Trends against last week and last year
- Unusual movements highlighted
- No spreadsheet to build
Are you building your own figures by hand?
- You spend time each week copying numbers into a spreadsheet.
- Some weeks the figures are not done at all.
- You find out about problems from the monthly accounts, weeks late.
- Numbers are calculated differently from week to week.
- You have more than one system and none shows the whole picture.