Five numbers every auto repair shop should track weekly

Daily sales tells you what happened. It does not tell you why the shop missed—or exceeded—the number. A packed parking lot can hide idle bays. Strong technician efficiency can coexist with weak productivity. A healthy posted labor rate can conceal an effective rate being pulled down by discounting and job mix.

A useful operator scorecard connects five numbers: productivity, efficiency, effective labor rate, WIP age by wait state, and the complete cost of comebacks. No single number diagnoses the shop. Together, they show whether the constraint lives at the counter, in dispatch, in the parts pipeline, or in production.

The first distinction: productivity is not efficiency

If a technician clocks eight hours, bills six, and spends five hours working on sold jobs, productivity is 75% while efficiency is 120%. That combination says the technician moved the assigned work quickly, but two hours of the paid day did not become billed production.

Before coaching speed, inspect the upstream system: Was approved work ready? Were parts at the bay? Did an estimate wait on authorization? Did dispatch leave a gap? The scorecard exists to turn a number into the next operational question.