Using the Right Reports to Maximize Profitability at Your Auto Shop
They say if you don’t run your business effectively, your business will run you. In the automotive industry, you need to see the whole picture—including your inventory of parts, the efficiency of your operations, an overview of how your technicians are working, and more—to improve your shop’s profitability and ensure your business will be sustainable for years to come.
Luckily, R.O. Writer has a variety of built-in reports that can help you manage day-to-day operations in your shop. Keep reading to explore how you can use R.O. Writer reporting tools like the Summary Report, Sales By Operation, Management Analyzer, and others to stay organized.
Using R.O. Writer Reports to Manage Day-to-Day Operations
Summary Report
If you’re already using R.O. Writer to optimize your business, the Summary Report is likely your first stop when looking for daily sales numbers. This feature lives at the top of the list in your reporting module and shows a summary of all sales for a date range of your choosing. This report also includes how many repair orders have closed and whether your parts and labor are marked up sufficiently.
When using this feature, look for the car count, average R.O., and gross profit to view a split between how much of your total sales were parts, how much was labor, and what your shop’s profits were in these specific areas.
Sales By Operation
The Sales By Operation report tells you what sales you’re missing, what has been working, and totals for each category of labor operation. Using this report, you can break down labor operations to the R.O. level to see if anything went wrong or if you need to make changes to your pricing.
Declined Services, Sales by Technician & Lost Sales
There are a few different reports that will tell you if your technicians are performing accurate and detailed inspections.
The Sales by Technician report will help you determine whether the right technicians are being assigned the right jobs for your business to run as efficiently as possible. You can use this report to see how profitable your technicians are and ensure each technician’s strengths are utilized to maximize their effectiveness.
The Lost Sales report will tell you all sales lost within a date range of your choosing. The Lost Sales by Technician report will show you exactly how effective your technicians are during their inspections. It will also tell you if your service writers are selling at the counter or if there are missed sales opportunities.
The Declined Services report will show all declined services including labor declined and closed for any date range you select.
Management Analyzer
If you’re a manager or business owner, R.O. Writer’s Management Analyzer tool can help you see what small changes have a big impact on your shop’s bottom line each month.
Using this reporting tool, you can set a date range and narrow the report by Profit Centerre and individual Service Writer to pull numbers for a specified period. You can also adjust the numbers to view how your shop profits will change if you increase your average R.O. by a certain number or if your parts margin improves, and see what other small changes can make large impacts over time.
Central Service
Central Service Reports like Daily Sales, R.O. Profit, and Taxes and Cores show you all sales reports, profit data for repair orders, and information about parts feeds added to parts on repair orders within a specified date range. With cloud reporting, you can also review a history of repair orders from anywhere, at any time.
How R.O. Writer Can Make Tasks Easier
If you aren’t using great reporting tools to manage day-to-day operations at your shop, you run the risk of leaving money on the table.
R.O. Writer is the most feature-rich shop management solution on the market, but that doesn’t mean it’s complicated to use. Our expert team is here to ensure you get the most out of your shop management software with quick customer support, webinars, videos, newsletters, and online help and documentation.
Want to learn more? Log into our customer portal for everything from tracking the status of existing support tickets to training tutorials on how to optimize your R.O. Writer software.
