I just spot checked 10 shops and 1 out of 10 of them are tracking their labor costs in Shopmonkey, and the one that is, is pretty inconsistent so the profitability numbers are all thrown off.
I’m guess they’re either not tracking it at all and putting in some blanket assumptions or tracking it outside of Shopmonkey. What do ya’ll do or what would you tell those shops?
Very curious to know about this as well. For those of you who do track profitability, what are your thoughts on the current functionality? Is there a specific workflow that works best to get consistent numbers on your reports?
I was actually just going to make a topic on this. I am one of those shops that have yet to enter loaded tech costs and track it in SM. From my understanding, there is not a report to look at that shows the actual GP$ after parts and loaded tech costs? Are guys using the tech commission report then going to profitability report and doing math from there? I would think that entering loaded tech costs, there would be a spot that gives me accurate GP$ amounts for the week or month. I could be completely missing something as well, any info would help, thank you. To add to this topic that could get wild, after that, a spot for our fixed expenses, and we could accurately track our 20% net would be crazy. Some out there thinking but that would sure be neat. Basically be a rough P&L right internal in SM that we could track and edit ourselves
I see this trip up shops and even some of us here at Shopmonkey all the time. The confusion usually happens because our reports can show labor costs in two different ways, which just creates a little noise.
The simplest fix is to set every technician to Flat Rate in User Settings.
Just give your techs a “loaded” hourly rate (base pay + taxes and benefits) and flip that Flat Rate toggle to ON. Once you do that, the system handles the math for you (Tech Rate x Billable Hours) automatically. The best part is you get a real-time GP% on the ticket while you’re still building the quote. You don’t have to wait for a tech to clock out to see if the job is actually making money.
It also clears up the friction in the Technician Summary and Profitability Reports. Instead of bouncing between "Time" and "Order" labor costs, you get one source of truth for the dollars.
Your techs should still use time logs for their Efficiency stats (Actual vs. Billable), but by using Flat Rate for the financials, you’re separating the productivity tracking from the money. It’s a lot less of a headache and keeps your numbers consistent across the board.
Tracking labor based on Time Log hours is totally doable too. But for most shops, using billable hours as the baseline gets you those ballpark numbers much faster.
@Jesse — I hear you on the expense tracking! Having a built-in P&L for fixed expenses would be huge.
I would like the ability of tracking flat rate and hourly pay as we have both. We put a average cost on hours billed because people found a way to find out how much everyone was getting paid. So a better way of locking that up would be nice.
I would love to learn more! @ZBuff how do i get you to spot check our system? lol - but all seriousiness- we want to know every where we can improve.
You and @Highline.Dave should have a call 
He’s actually putting on a free webinar Monday 4/27 night at 5pm pst if you’re interested Webinar Registration - Zoom He’s not a Shopmonkey employee but a shop owner who has learned a bunch of stuff the hard way and wants to share it with others.
Yes, would love to help you, let me know!
