Two numbers, one ratio
Paid hours are the hours you pay each technician, whether or not they are working on a cart. Billed hours are the labor hours charged on repair orders: customer pay, warranty, and internal work. Divide billed hours by paid hours, for each technician and for the shop, every week.
Shops use different names for this measure, such as productivity, proficiency, or efficiency. The name matters less than measuring it the same way every time.
An example
A technician is paid for 40 hours in a week, and the repair orders show 28 hours billed. The ratio is 70 percent: 12 paid hours produced no billed labor. At your posted labor rate, those 12 hours are revenue the shop paid for and did not collect. These numbers are an illustration, not a benchmark.
Where the hours go
- Waiting on parts that were not on the shelf
- Carts parked while the shop waits for customer approval
- Diagnosis time that never makes it onto the repair order
- Comebacks redone at no charge
- The best technician pulled into scheduling, parts runs, or training
- Uneven scheduling: a crush on Monday and slack by Thursday
How to close the gap
Measure for four weeks without changing anything, so you have an honest baseline. Then pick the largest cause on the list and fix that first. Common fixes include stocking the parts the bay uses most, getting approvals by text before work begins, writing diagnostic time onto every order, and moving non-technical tasks to someone else.
Set a target from your own baseline, and review it every week with the service manager.