Time to get organized

[RWI]

Hi all, I have been a member for a while but not really involved. My business has been struggling for a while, I have recently taken a 2 day business success class which while it did give some direction it also left me with a whole lotta questions. I am ready for change and determined to get my numbers up, here's what I have so far

 

Let me start with a little background. I own a specialty shop that caters to the transportation industry (Limousines, bus's). We have a regular mechanical department that handles all of the standard day to day type repairs which I have a pretty good idea on how to manage. We have always done custom work such as interior fabrication and the like but on a very small scale. We hired a new tech to work in this area and want to grow it, here's where I get stuck

 

I have never tracked my numbers and after taking this class I have finally realized that this is a big mistake. I use a business program called Big Business which is really like a very powerful, customizable version of quick books. I use Identafix for mechanical estimates and shop information.

 

1. how are you tracking tech hours? I idea at this point is to create a labor line item for each tech so that I can do report and monitor productivity. This however does not track actual hours worked just what was billed.

 

2. how do you track hours worked for a service such as an oil change, I'm thinking that would pay about .3 hours but don't really want to show a labor charge on the invoice but if I don't then I don't see how I can track it, this goes for all services.

 

3. On the custom work side it only gets worse. Generally I hand calculate materials and labor the best I can but when invoiced it would be very general such as new seat covers installed and a $ amount, I find that the more information on the invoice, the more questions it raises. Having an agreed $ amount for the job seems pretty standard for this type of work but makes it completely untrackable so I have no numbers to run through reports.

 

4. How do you charge if more then one employee is working on a single task either to speed it a long or in our case often parts are very large and require more then 1 guy. Customers seem to get upset if I try to charge labor on each employee, the other aspect again is how to track and invoice this, would you show labor line items for each employee?

 

[HarrytheCarGeek]

You can get lost on all the minutiae of record keeping and technical of the business.

 

I learned a while back that a dashboard with the necessary and relevant key performance indicators is all you need. An excel spreadsheet easily does the job.

 

Anyways, calculate your payroll for your staff at full time, then price out the target revenue you will need to cover all that labor, doing this will yield your pricing basis.

[sweitzerperformance]

There is shop management software that can do all of this for you. We use MyShopAssist, which is mostly directed at performance and custom work type shops, but there are many. Techs track all hours with a tablet, which is sectioned out as much as you want it to be. Helps to adjust your estimating as well as track efficiency.