Most garage owners know roughly how busy they are. Far fewer know, week by week, how many hours they sold, what each hour actually earned, or how much of the work found on health checks turned into jobs. KPIs (key performance indicators) are just a handful of numbers that answer those questions. Pick the right ones, work them out the same way every week, and you’ll spot a problem while it is still small. This guide covers ten KPIs worth tracking: what each one is, a simple formula, what moves it and how often to look. It doesn’t give targets, because the only useful target is one built from your own figures.
How to use this guide
Two rules make KPIs useful rather than a chore:
- Same definition every time. If you count car count by invoices one week and by bookings the next, the trend means nothing. Write your definitions down.
- Look at the trend, not the single week. One bad week is noise. Four weeks heading the same way is a signal.
Some of these numbers come straight from your garage management software. Others you count yourself from the records it keeps. For each KPI below, there is a note on where the figure comes from in AutoChain, and which ones you track yourself.
1. Car count
What it is: the number of vehicles you worked on and invoiced in the period.
Formula: count of vehicles invoiced this week. Count each car once, even if it had two jobs.
What moves it: marketing, MOT and service reminders, how many bookings you can take, no-shows, and how quickly work moves through the bays.
How often: weekly.
In AutoChain: there is no car count report. The dashboard counts jobs by status for today or the current week, including completed jobs, which is a useful starting point, but it counts jobs, not cars. Count vehicles yourself from your invoices if you want the exact figure.
2. Average invoice value
What it is: how much a typical customer spends per visit.
Formula: total invoiced sales in the period ÷ number of invoices in the period.
What moves it: how well advisories are followed up, whether health checks are done on every car, your labour rate, your parts pricing and the mix of work (an MOT-heavy week drags it down).
How often: weekly, compared with the last four weeks.
In AutoChain: business analytics show average job value for any date range. That is per job rather than per invoice, so if you batch several jobs onto one invoice the two figures will differ. Pick one and stick with it.
3. Labour hours sold against hours available
What it is: how much of the time you pay technicians for ends up on an invoice.
Formula: hours invoiced ÷ hours available. Available hours are the hours your technicians were on site and able to work, after holiday, sickness and training.
Many garages split this into two parts. Productivity is the hours spent working on cars divided by the hours available, and shows time lost to waiting for parts, moving cars or empty bays. Efficiency is the hours invoiced divided by the hours worked, and shows whether jobs are done within the time you charge. Use whichever definitions suit you, as long as they stay the same.
What moves it: gaps in the diary, parts delays, cars waiting for authorisation, jobs that overrun, and labour that is done but never charged.
How often: weekly, per technician and for the workshop as a whole.
In AutoChain: technician analytics compare hours booked with hours invoiced for each technician. With job clocking, technicians clock on and off each work item, and the Live and Completed tabs show the time actually worked. Clocked hours are not part of the analytics reports, and hours attended (time in the building) are not recorded, so for the full productivity and efficiency split you record attended hours yourself.
4. Labour rate achieved
What it is: what each hour of labour actually earned, after discounts, goodwill and overruns.
Formula: labour revenue ÷ hours invoiced.
What moves it: discounting, jobs charged at less than book time, menu prices that are too low for the time they take, and the mix of standard and specialist work.
How often: monthly, or weekly if you are working on it.
In AutoChain: business analytics show labour revenue for any date range, and technician analytics show hours invoiced, so you can divide one by the other. The guide on how to set your garage labour rate explains how to compare the result with the rate you need.
5. Parts margin
What it is: how much of your parts sales you keep after paying for the parts.
Formula: parts profit ÷ parts revenue × 100, where parts profit is parts revenue minus what the parts cost you.
What moves it: your markup, supplier prices, customer-supplied parts, parts given away on goodwill, and parts fitted but never charged.
How often: weekly or monthly.
In AutoChain: business analytics show parts revenue and parts profit for any date range. Divide one by the other for your margin. The figure is only as good as the cost prices behind it: AI invoice scanning reads each supplier invoice and records what you paid against the job, instead of someone typing the costs in.
6. Health check conversion
What it is: how much of the work found on vehicle health checks the customer goes on to approve.
Formula: value of work approved ÷ value of work identified × 100. You can also count items rather than pounds, but value tells you more.
What moves it: how clearly findings are explained, photos and measurements, how quickly the check reaches the customer, and whether urgent and advisory items are flagged honestly.
How often: weekly, and per technician or advisor if you can.
In AutoChain: there is no conversion rate report. Each health check records which items the customer accepted or declined, so you can count this yourself from your checks. The guide on vehicle health checks customers approve covers what improves it.
7. Comebacks
What it is: vehicles that come back because a job wasn’t fixed first time, or something was disturbed during the work.
Formula: comebacks in the period ÷ jobs completed in the period × 100. Count the comeback against the week of the original job if you can.
What moves it: diagnosis time, parts quality, road tests and final checks, and technician workload.
How often: look at every comeback as it happens, and at the total weekly.
In AutoChain: there is no comebacks report. Keep a simple log yourself, with the registration, the original job, the technician and the cause, and use an internal note on the job so the history stays with the vehicle.
8. Booking lead time
What it is: how far ahead a customer would have to book for a standard job.
Formula: the number of working days from today to the first free slot for a typical job, such as a service. Check it on the same day each week.
What moves it: demand, how many technicians you have, holidays, and long jobs tying up bays.
How often: weekly.
What it tells you: too short and you may need more work coming in. Too long and customers may go elsewhere, and it may be time to think about another technician or bay.
In AutoChain: there is no lead time report. Check the calendar yourself, where the day view shows each technician’s booked hours. The dashboard’s predicted revenue from scheduled work also shows how full the rest of the week looks.
9. Customer satisfaction
What it is: how happy customers are after the job.
Formula: the average score your customers give, plus the share who are happy, neutral and unhappy.
What moves it: communication, fixing it first time, the car being ready when promised, a clean car and a clear invoice.
How often: weekly, and read every comment from an unhappy customer.
In AutoChain: Customer Intelligence sends a 0-10 satisfaction survey automatically after an invoice is paid, then groups customers as happy (9-10), neutral (7-8) and unhappy (0-6). It shows the reasons customers give, the response rate, an employee leaderboard with average scores, and revenue at risk from unhappy customers.
10. Debtors
What it is: money customers owe you, and how long they have owed it.
Formula: total unpaid invoices, split by age (for example, not yet due, then each month overdue).
What moves it: payment terms, taking payment when the car is collected, account customers, and how quickly you chase.
How often: weekly. Cash is the number that closes garages.
In AutoChain: invoices are tracked as paid, unpaid and overdue, and the aged debtors report shows who owes what. Sending invoices with a pay-online link lets customers pay by card, and the invoice is marked paid automatically.
Put it on one page
You don’t need a complicated dashboard. A sheet with one row per week and one column per KPI is enough. Fill it in at the same time every week, ideally first thing on a Monday, and keep it to the numbers you will actually act on. If you are just starting, begin with car count, average invoice value and debtors, then add the others one at a time.
When a number moves, ask why before you act. A drop in average invoice value might be a bad week for health checks, or it might just be a week full of MOTs.
Checklist
- Write down how you define each KPI, and keep the definitions the same
- Set up a one-page sheet with a row per week and a column per KPI
- Count vehicles invoiced each week for your car count
- Work out average invoice value, or use average job value consistently
- Record available technician hours after holiday, sickness and training
- Compare hours invoiced with hours available for each technician
- Divide labour revenue by hours invoiced to get your achieved labour rate
- Work out parts margin from parts profit and parts revenue
- Count health check work approved against work identified
- Log every comeback with its cause
- Check how far ahead your first free slot is on the same day each week
- Review satisfaction scores and the aged debtors list every week
Where AutoChain fits
AutoChain reports a good share of these numbers directly. The garage management dashboard shows revenue from completed work, predicted revenue from scheduled work and jobs by status (scheduled, checked in, awaiting parts, in progress and completed) for today or the current week, and with the multi-site add-on you can filter it by site. Business analytics cover labour and parts revenue, average job value and parts profit for any date range. Technician analytics compare hours booked with hours invoiced. Customer Intelligence covers satisfaction scores and revenue at risk, and the aged debtors report shows who owes you money. For car count, health check conversion, comebacks and booking lead time, there is no report: you count them yourself from the jobs, health checks and calendar that AutoChain keeps. For more on the money side, see the garage invoicing and analytics page.