Flat Rate Efficiency Sheet
Repair OrderWhat book said, what the clock said, and what went on the ticket.
The book says 2.4 hours and the tech took 3.1, and those two numbers are on the same repair order without ever meeting. A shop can bill exactly to book all month and still lose, because the clock ran long on every ticket and nothing anywhere adds that up.
Book hours against clock hours is your efficiency, and no accounting package has ever printed it. This puts it beside the money half — what each ticket should have billed at your door rate against what it actually did — so a week that looks fine on the invoices has nowhere left to hide.
About this tool
Flat Rate Efficiency Sheet: what it solves
A repair order carries two facts that never meet. The customer is billed book hours at the door rate, which every accounting package can check. The tech takes however long they take, which none of them record against the book. The Flat Rate Efficiency Sheet sets the two side by side: what each ticket should have billed against what it did, and what book said the job takes against what the clock said it took. The second is the shop’s efficiency, and it is the number that decides whether a week that billed correctly actually paid. It works the shop’s own rate over the same tickets on both sides rather than averaging the per-ticket percentages, which would weight a twenty-minute job like a full day. A comeback is treated as what it is — no bill and no book time, but clock hours the shop ate — rather than as a ticket that came in short. It sets no target efficiency and knows nothing about what any other shop runs; what a good number looks like is different in every bay and anybody quoting you one is selling something.
Two facts on every repair order that never meet
The customer is billed book hours at your door rate. Every accounting package can check that, and it is what people mean when they say a shop bills correctly.
The tech takes however long they take. None of those packages record that against the book.
So a shop can bill every ticket exactly right, all week, and still not have paid for the bay. The door rate was correct. The book time was correct. And the job that books at 1.8 took four hours, which is the number nobody wrote down next to it.
This sets the two side by side, per ticket and for the week.
The efficiency figure is the one that decides the week
What book said the job takes, against what the clock said it took.
That ratio is your shop’s efficiency, and it is the number that turns a correctly billed week into a week that paid or a week that did not. It is not in your accounting, it is not on the repair order, and it is not in the flat rate guide.
It works the rate over the tickets, not across the percentages
This is technical and it changes the answer, so it is worth a minute.
Averaging the per-ticket efficiency percentages weights a twenty-minute job the same as a full day. Fifteen quick tickets that ran ahead of book and three big ones that ran badly behind produces a comforting average and a week that lost money.
This sums the book hours and sums the clock hours and divides once, over the same tickets. That is what the shop actually ran at. The gap between that figure and the simple average tells you something on its own — a wide one means your good numbers are on your small jobs.
A comeback is what it is
No bill. No book time. Clock hours the shop ate.
Treating it as a ticket that came in short is the tempting shortcut and it hides the thing you most want to see. A comeback is not a job that went slowly. It is time spent with no revenue against it at all, and it belongs in the arithmetic as exactly that.
Counted properly, a run of comebacks shows up as what it is: hours disappearing with nothing on the other side of them.
What it replaces
The sense that the week was busy and the month was not good, with no way to connect the two. Or the efficiency number from a management system, computed by averaging percentages, which flatters a shop that does a lot of small work.
You set your door rate once. Each week is the tickets, with book hours and clock hours on each.
Who it is for
Repair shops, body shops, marine and equipment service — anywhere work is quoted from a flat rate guide and performed by a person whose actual hours are the shop’s real cost.
What it will not do
It sets no target efficiency, and knows nothing about what any other shop runs. What a good number looks like is different in every bay — it depends on your work mix, your equipment, your techs’ experience and what kind of jobs come through your door. Anybody quoting you a figure for the trade is selling something.
It does not evaluate a technician. It reports what tickets did. Whether a slow job was the tech, the vehicle, a missing part or a wrong diagnosis is not something the arithmetic can see, and a number presented as a verdict on a person is how a shop loses good people.
It does not price a job. That is a different sheet.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. The arithmetic runs in your browser. Ticket data and hours stay on the machine you typed them on. Close the tab and it is gone.
Yours would be built the same way.
This one runs on made-up data. The version built for your business runs on yours, and you own it outright. Builds start at $1,300. That is a floor, not a quote. What yours costs is agreed before any work begins. The first conversation is free.