Repair Shop Metrics & KPIs: What to Track in 2026

Track numbers that change a decision

A metric earns its place only if you can name the decision it changes. Most repair shop dashboards are dense with numbers nobody has ever acted on — total jobs this month being the classic. It goes up when you are busy and down when you are not, and it tells you nothing you did not already know from standing in the shop.

Five numbers cover most of what an owner actually needs.

1. Margin per job, by repair type

Revenue per job is nearly useless on its own, because the expensive repairs are expensive largely in parts. What matters is what is left after the part cost: labour revenue minus part cost, grouped by repair type.

This is the number that reveals a shop is busy and unprofitable at the same time. It is common to find that the repair a shop does most is the one it makes least on, and that a quieter category carries the business. You cannot see that without part cost recorded per job.

Decision it changes: what you promote, what you price up, and what you politely decline.

2. Turnaround time — and the tail, not the average

Average turnaround is a comforting number that hides the problem. Customers do not experience your average; they experience their own repair, and complaints come almost entirely from the slowest tenth.

Track the distribution and watch the tail: how many jobs took more than twice the promised time, and what they had in common. Usually it is one part supplier, one repair category, or jobs booked in on a particular day of the week.

Decision it changes: which supplier to replace, and what to promise at intake.

3. Technician output, measured on collected work

Measure output as labour collected per technician per period, not jobs closed. Counting jobs rewards taking easy work and avoiding hard work, and every technician works out the incentive within a month.

Pair it with rework rate: the share of a technician's jobs that come back under warranty. Output without rework rate rewards speed at the cost of quality, and the cost lands later, on someone else's week.

Decision it changes: who to train, who to promote, and how to set commission.

4. Receivables by age

The total owed to you is less informative than how long it has been owed. Money outstanding for two weeks is a normal trade credit; the same amount outstanding for three months is, realistically, a loss you have not written down yet.

Bucket receivables by age and watch the oldest bucket. If it is growing, the shop is financing its customers, and doing so at a scale nobody consciously agreed to.

Decision it changes: whether to keep extending pay-later, and to whom.

5. Till variance

The daily difference between counted and expected cash is the shop's honesty check. Not because staff are assumed to be stealing, but because variance is the only signal that catches unrecorded sales, missed deposits and mis-keyed payments — all of which corrupt every other number on this list.

Track it as a running series rather than a daily pass or fail. A shop that is consistently a few pounds out has a process problem; a shop that is exactly right for weeks and then significantly short has a different problem.

Decision it changes: whether you can trust the other four metrics at all.

What to ignore

Frequently asked questions

What KPIs should a repair shop track?

Five cover most decisions: margin per job by repair type, turnaround time distribution with attention to the slowest tenth, technician output measured as collected labour paired with rework rate, receivables bucketed by age, and daily till variance. A metric is worth tracking only if you can name the decision it changes.

Why is total revenue a poor metric for a repair shop?

Because it rises with expensive parts that carry little markup. A shop can grow revenue substantially while making less money, if the growth comes from high-part-cost repairs. Labour revenue after part cost is the number that reflects what the shop actually earned.

How should technician performance be measured?

By labour actually collected per technician, paired with rework rate — the share of their jobs that come back under warranty. Counting jobs closed rewards taking easy work and avoiding hard work, and measuring speed alone rewards it at the cost of quality.

Why does till variance matter if you trust your staff?

Because variance catches unrecorded sales, missed deposits and mis-keyed payments, not just theft. Those errors corrupt margin, stock and revenue figures alike, so till variance is effectively the check on whether every other metric can be trusted.