Over the years we have observed many good practices that can really help your business process and profitability.


1: LABOUR

We have a special time management application that can capture every minute of the day and charge them against jobs or down time. With it you can genuinely employ a mechanic for 40 hours of work a week and bill it out.


  1. Add the code LAB + Initials for each mechanic, into the Products Register
  2. Charge by the minute instead of the hour. For example $90 per hour is $1.50 per minute. This way when working out how much time to charge it is exactly the number of minutes taken. Include in the charge any paperwork or research. You can always adjust later if you feel it necessary.
  3. Review the sales report weekly to see what has been billed in labour



In this report example Labour is only showing as making 20.31% of the months profit.

This is low and shows a billing issue.


2: NON STOCK ITEMS



Sales of Non Stock Items are unavoidable. They should represent suppliers orders for parts.


3: SET HEADINGS AND CATEGORIES CORRECTLY

A correctly setup Products Register is a valuable diagnostic tool.

Improve report results by modifying Categories and Headings located at Platform > Products Register > 



Fix Headings


Fix Categories

Allocate categories to their correct Headings.



Results



This report now tells us our ratios and areas we may consider improving.

For example:


  • Margin on fluids is low
  • Non Stock Items (Parts) are being undersold
  • 29 Invoices had freight charged of 235 invoices. That is only about 10%.
  • Average margin is sitting at 54.5%
  • Average item billed on an invoice is $20.55
  • Labour makes up 38% of billing
  • $19,579 of labour has been billed. 
  • The month had 23 work days at 8 hours per day of billable time. $19,579/184 hrs = $106 average per hour
  • Average labour charge per invoice = $83.00


Note: If $10.00 had been billed extra per invoice, this would result in $2,350 extra profit a month ($28,200 p.a. NET PROFIT INCREASE)


4: CASH SALES

Avoid using Cash Sales as the account to create a Job/Invoice for

Invariably it requires someone to remember the customer and although they may pay, in our experience a lot do not and it adds administrative stress trying to work it all out.

Cash Sales is ONLY for people who pay right now, as soon as we have generated the invoice.

It takes very little time to add the customer's name, vehicle, odometer, wof due, cell phone, and email and the rewards outweigh the time saving 20 times.