Labdog - our Time Management Computer
When a vehicle comes into our shop with a running or starting problem, the first thing we look at is the basics, battery, sparkplugs, secondary ignition fuel quaility those kinds of things. There is no sense running a OBDII diagnosis if the spark plugs are worn out. Eight years ago we realized that we needed to do the same with our business, there is no sense starting a campaign to attract new customers if the productivity of your current vehicles is 50%. Time - Do you use a time management business model for your auto repair shop? Do you know the productivity of each vehicle make worked on in your shop? Better yet, do you have a procedure to increase the productivity of less than profitable vehicle makes? When a technician says to you "I worked on this car Oh, about an hour, how much should I charge?" What's your answer?
Management is the ability to make adjustments, the more immediate the adjustment, the more immediate the improvement. To know how much time to charge for a repair, you need to know how much time was used in the repair. At P.A.T. each of our technicians has used a hand held time computer to track time spent on a repair to .01 of an hour. All of this time data is then entered into our Labdog software. Job time tracking is now part of our software entered directly into our software, the hand held computers are still used, as back up.
Can your shop compete with a shop that is using an intelligent time management system?
If you would like to discuss computers, our software, our time tracking computer or Security Spy software send Jim Wakefield an email or access our forum.