Measure technician productivity and efficiency
Three hour totals from one period give the three figures that decide your labor rate — worked out in your browser, without sending anything.
United Kingdom: its currency is used for the value of the hours never invoiced. The ratios themselves are the same everywhere.
Hours of one period
A month works well. Take all three totals for the same technicians and the same period.
Hours booked to a job or repair order in the same period.
Hours charged to customers: clocked hours billed, plus the time flat rates were sold for.
Value of the hours not invoiced
Result
United KingdomOverall efficiency
–
hours invoiced ÷ paid attendance
- Productivity clocked on jobs ÷ attendance
- –
- Efficiency invoiced ÷ clocked on jobs
- –
- Clocked, not invoiced
- –
- Paid, not on a job
- –
- Value of the hours not invoiced
- –
Enter the three hour totals to see which share of the paid hours ended up on an invoice.
In Werkstattsystem, time tracking on each work item of an order records the hours per job; for work without a flat rate, the tracked hours go onto the invoice draft at your labor rate. Orders in Werkstattsystem
How the three figures relate
Each figure answers a different question, and the third is the product of the first two.
- Productivity = hours clocked on jobs ÷ paid attendance. How much of the time you pay for lands on a job at all? Missing parts, unclear jobs and waiting for an approval pull it down.
- Efficiency = hours invoiced ÷ hours clocked on jobs. How much of the work done is charged? Rework at your own expense and jobs quoted too tight pull it down; flat rates that beat the clock push it above 100%.
- Overall efficiency = hours invoiced ÷ paid attendance = productivity × efficiency. It is the share of paid time that earns money, and it belongs in your labor rate.
An example with round numbers
One month, round figures chosen to show the arithmetic — not an industry benchmark: 160 hours of paid attendance, 128 hours clocked on jobs, 120 hours invoiced.
- Productivity: 128 ÷ 160 = 80%. 32 paid hours never reached a job.
- Efficiency: 120 ÷ 128 = 93.75%. 8 clocked hours were not charged.
- Overall efficiency: 120 ÷ 160 = 75%. 40 of 160 paid hours earned nothing — and your labor rate has to carry them.
Three ways the measurement goes wrong
- Contract hours instead of paid ones. Attendance means the hours actually worked and paid in the period, after vacation, sickness and training — not the hours in the contract.
- Invoiced hours from the wrong period. Count the hours of work done in the period, not the hours on invoices that happened to be issued in it.
- One figure instead of three. Overall efficiency tells you that something slipped, not what. Productivity points at how the floor is organized, efficiency at pricing and rework.
Questions about productivity and efficiency
What is the difference between productivity and efficiency?
Productivity asks how much of the paid time lands on a job; efficiency asks how much of the time on jobs is charged. A technician can be busy all day and still inefficient — on rework nobody pays for.
Which figure belongs in my labor rate?
Overall efficiency: the share of paid attendance that ends up on an invoice. Your labor rate has to cover every paid hour from the hours you actually sell. The button under the result carries the figure into the labor rate calculator.
Why can efficiency be above 100%?
Because a flat rate sells a fixed time whatever the clock says. A technician who finishes a job sold as two hours in an hour and a half is above 100% on that job. Far above 100% month after month can also mean the clock is not running on every job.
What is a good figure for a garage?
This page gives no benchmark, because none was found that is published for each market together with its method. Measure your own figures over several months and watch the trend: a falling productivity points at the organization of the floor, a falling efficiency at pricing and rework.
Where do I get the hours from?
Paid attendance from payroll or your time sheets, clocked hours from your job cards or repair orders, invoiced hours from your invoices. In Werkstattsystem, time tracking on each work item of an order records the hours per job; attendance is not recorded there.
Is anything I enter sent or saved?
No. The calculation runs in your browser, and nothing you type is sent or stored. The figure the button hands over travels in the part of the address after the #, which browsers do not send to the server.
From the guide
- Recording working time: what applies in the garage
- Capacity planning: how many hours you can actually give away
More about Werkstattsystem
This calculator does arithmetic on the figures you enter. It says nothing about the rules on recording working time in your country.
Werkstattsystem records the hours on every job and, for work without a flat rate, puts them on the invoice draft at your labor rate: see all features and the plans.