Blair Wright Group

All three shops side by side for the week so far, with the NZ industry average printed next to each booth figure so you can see where we sit rather than just whether the number moved.

Shop

The site. Click the name for that shop's dashboard.

Invoiced

Value invoiced out this week.

Target

The weekly revenue target. Hopper Street runs special projects with inconsistent volume and carries no target, so it shows a dash rather than a misleading zero.

Pace

Invoiced against where the target says we should be by this point in the week. It counts rostered days, so a public holiday does not make a short week look like a bad one. 100% is on track.

Jobs

Cars invoiced out this week.

Jobs/booth/day

Throughput: cars finished per paint booth per working day. Higher is better.

Booth cycle

Average booth hours each job eats out of an 8-hour day. Lower is better — it is the same measure upside down.

Recovery

Sold hours ÷ paid hours for the whole shop.

Effic.

Sold hours ÷ hours spent on finished work, for the whole shop. A task earns its sold hours when it is marked complete in iBodyshop, so starting a big job no longer spikes the week and finishing it no longer flattens the next one.

Hrs/day

Average paid hours per technician per day worked — time on site less the unpaid lunch. It says how long the shop's day is, which is the context for every hours figure above it.

Break

Average minutes on break per technician per day, both breaks together — the paid half-hour at 10 and the unpaid half-hour at 1:30. The entitlement is 60, so a shop sitting near 60 is simply taking what it is owed. Amber either side: over is floor time lost, well under means breaks are being skipped.

Skipped

Breaks nobody took, across the whole shop for the week. The paid morning half-hour and the unpaid lunch count separately. A handful is normal; a steady number is a scheduling problem and, for the unpaid lunch, one worth getting right.

Green beats the NZ industry line, amber is behind it. The paint booth is normally the binding constraint in a panel shop, so jobs/booth/day and booth cycle decide how much work the site can physically absorb — no amount of extra selling gets past a booth that is already full. Recovery then tells you whether the hours inside that capacity are earning.

How to improve this

The three shops side by side for the week.

1. Booth cycle sets the ceiling for everything else. Fix it first.
2. Take prep and de-nib out of the booth -- it is free and usually the biggest single win.
3. Use Pace, not Invoiced, to judge whether a shop is behind. Pace already allows for short weeks.
4. Recovery below 80% at shop level is a flow problem, not a people problem. Look at parts timing and job staging.

Watch for: Chasing jobs per booth per day without prep discipline creates redos, and a redo uses the booth twice.

Thirteen weeks of the figures that actually move week to week. The benchmark tab shows where we stand against the industry once a year; this shows whether what we changed last month is working.

The line

One point per week, oldest left. The dashed line is the target where there is one — 100% recovery, the 3.9 industry booth rate, a 2.4 hour cycle.

The arrow

The most recent six or seven weeks against the earlier six or seven, so one odd week does not decide it. Green is the direction we want, which on unclocked time and booth cycle means down.

The number

The most recent completed week.

Scale

The vertical axis fits the data rather than starting at zero. A recovery line between 63 and 87 would be a flat smear against a zero baseline. Read the values, not the steepness.

Why the benchmark ratios are not here: they come from a Xero P&L loaded as a single 12-month period, so they have exactly one data point each. Paint liquid cost and gross profit cannot be trended until we start banking the P&L monthly. These six come from daily job and labour data, which we have had all along. The current week is deliberately excluded — a part-finished week always looks like a collapse and people react to the shape before they read the axis.

Everyone across all three shops on one list, showing their whole figure instead of a per-shop slice. Someone who worked two sites appears once, marked ×2, with their full numbers.

Technician

The person, all logins merged. ×2 means they worked more than one shop in this period.

Sold

Sellable hours produced. Hours on internal company projects count 1:1 here, so nobody is punished for being pulled onto one.

Clocked

Hours clocked onto customer jobs.

Paid

Hours we paid them, from the roster — the paid morning break included, the unpaid lunch not.

Recovery

Sold ÷ Paid. The one that cannot be gamed, and the one to manage on. 100% means every paid hour earned its keep.

Effic.

Sold ÷ hours spent on finished work (internal projects included, work still in progress excluded). Output per hour actually spent on a car. A task earns its sold hours when it is marked complete, so a half-done job does not drag the figure down and does not spike it either.

Internal

Hours on company projects rather than customer cars.

Unclocked

Paid hours that reached no job at all. Turns red once it passes a quarter of their paid time.

Hrs/day

Average paid hours per day worked, across every shop — time on site less the unpaid lunch. Someone on 6 hours a day producing the same sold hours as someone on 9 is the better return, which is what the recovery column already reflects.

Break

Average minutes on break per day worked, both breaks together — the paid half-hour at 10 and the unpaid half-hour at 1:30, so 60 is the entitlement. Shown per day rather than as a total so part-timers and full-timers compare. Amber either side of the mark.

Skipped

Breaks not taken at all across the period, counting the paid morning one and the unpaid lunch separately. Amber past a fifth of their days worked. Worth reading next to Hrs/day: long days and skipped breaks together can mean the shop is behind — or simply that someone works through to get away earlier.

Sick / Annual

Days of paid leave across the group. Neither changes any other number here. A leave day produces no attendance record at all, so it never lands in the hours we divide by, and being away costs nobody their recovery. Shown because it is the missing context behind a quiet quarter — Henk had seven sick days in this one. Amber at five or more.

Read across, not down. High efficiency with low recovery means the person is quick but much of their day is not landing on a job — a clocking or workflow fix. Low on both means the jobs themselves are selling less than they take; check the jobs-losing-money list below. Over 100% recovery is normal and good: it means they beat book time on the work they were handed.

How to improve this

Every technician across the group, sold against paid.

1. Read Recovery next to Unclocked. Low recovery with high unclocked is a flow problem; low recovery with low unclocked means the jobs themselves are running past their estimates.
2. For a flow problem: parts on site before the car, and a clear next job.
3. For an estimate problem: send the worst offenders back to the estimator with the actual hours.
4. Anyone working two shops needs one person owning their schedule, or they will spend the gap travelling.

Watch for: Over 100% recovery is normal and good. Do not treat it as an error -- it means they beat book time on the work they were given.

The same labour contribution as on each shop page, but totalled across the whole group so anyone who moves between sites appears once with their full figure. Panel beaters first, then painters, each ranked on Per hr.

Technician

The person. ×2 or ×3 means they worked that many shops in this period — on the per-shop panels their figure is split that many ways and each slice looks smaller than they are.

Trade

Panel or paint, from their payroll job title.

Wage hrs

Hours we paid them, morning break included. Called wage hours rather than paid hours because that is what they are: the hours the wage bill covers.

Sold hrs

Sellable hours they produced over the same period.

Recov.

Sold hours divided by wage hours. This is the margin figure, expressed in hours. It says the same thing as a margin percentage — how much of what we pay for turns into sellable work — without putting money on a per-person row.

Unclk

Paid hours that reached no job at all. Red past a quarter of their paid time. This is usually the reason a margin looks poor.

Sick / Leave (hrs)

Paid leave taken, in HOURS rather than dollars. Both still reduce the margin behind the scenes; showing the hours keeps the reason for a low margin visible without printing a wage figure.

Why there are no dollar totals per person

Wage cost, sold value and margin were removed from the rows on purpose (Blair, 21 Aug 2026). Together with Per hr they solved for someone's hourly rate exactly: sold value less margin, divided by their hours. With those gone the equation has no inputs left here. The dollar totals stay on the Total row, where they describe the shop rather than a person. Note: sold and paid hours are still published on the Staff panel, so a determined person with both panels can still approximate a rate — this makes it deliberate work, not a glance.

Sick / Leave and recovery

We pay for these hours, so they are in the money already: both are subtracted from margin, which means Per hr is what each WORKED hour returns after covering that person's leave as well. They are deliberately NOT in the Recovery column, because nobody can sell an hour while on leave and that column exists to compare people — adding leave would rank a technician on when they were sick. The figure that does include them is Business recovery in the note below, which is the one that sizes the wage bill.

Per hr

Margin ÷ hours paid. What each hour we pay them leaves behind once their own wage is covered. Being a rate, it compares people rather than rosters.

Read Per hr against Unclk. Where the two disagree the story is nearly always unclocked time rather than slow work: someone can beat book time on every car they touch and still return a poor rate because a third of their week never reached a job. Daniel Austin is the clearest case — he works all three sites, and the travelling and shuffling between them is time we pay for that no job carries. Labour only: no parts, paint, rent or overhead, so break-even is well above $0 an hour. Never put this on a floor screen.

How to improve this

What each technician's labour returns after their own wage.

1. Work Per hr, not Margin. Margin mostly measures who worked the most hours.
2. Before judging a low figure, check Unclocked and Sick on the same row. The reason is usually there.
3. A negative figure is almost never a poor worker -- it is an internal project, a badly under-sold job, or a long absence.
4. Use it to size the team, not to rank people. It is wage data and it stays off the floor screens.

Watch for: Never show this to the floor. It is the fastest way to turn a productivity conversation into a pay conversation.

Every job the shop is losing labour money on, worst first. Two different faults sit in one list, told apart by the Issue column, because they cost the same thing but need opposite fixes.

Shop

Which site did the work.

Issue

under sold — the job sold hours, but fewer than the work actually took. An estimate question first and a workshop question second.
no time sold — the job never sold hours at all, so there was nothing to run over. An authorisation question for the office.

Job / Vehicle / Debtor

The job number, the car, and who should be paying for it.

Sold

Hours the job sheet says were sold. On a no time sold row this is a fraction of an hour — the QC and admin lines, which are the only ones carrying a target when the labour was never authorised.

Actual

Hours technicians actually clocked to it.

At risk

The hours in question. On an under sold job that is actual less sold — the hours we did and were not paid for. On a no time sold job it is every hour on it, because none of them sold anything.

$ lost

The hours at risk priced at what that trade actually bills — paint $117.89/hr, panel $73.30/hr, blended on the job's own split of paint and panel hours. It is lost labour revenue, not lost profit: the wages were paid either way, so this is the money that should have come in against them and did not. Hours booked to neither trade (QC, admin) are priced at the panel rate, the lower of the two, so the figure errs low.

Ratio

How many times over the sold time it ran. Shown as n/a on unsold jobs: dividing by almost nothing gives a meaningless number, which is exactly how good jobs used to end up at the top of this list.

Est. hrs

What the estimate values the job's labour at, read from the estimate's own lines whether or not they were authorised. Compare it with Actual, not with Sold. Job 118711 clocked 16.4 hours against a 15.8-hour estimate — a good job that read as 16 hours under sold purely because nothing was authorised.

Auth

Authorised labour lines out of the total. iBodyshop only writes target hours onto the job sheet once a line is authorised, so 0/79 in red is the cause of an unsold job, not a symptom.

Status

Where the job is now. Collected means the car has already left, so recovering the money is an invoicing job rather than a workshop one.

Last worked

The most recent day anyone clocked to it.

Work the red rows first. An unsold job is usually the easier money: the scoping is already done and only the authorisation is missing, so the estimate hours come straight back once it is chased. An under-sold job is the harder conversation — either the estimate was light and needs a supplementary while the car is still here, or the scope grew and nobody raised it. Both drag recovery down on every board and make the technicians look slow for work they did properly. Internal company projects are excluded; if one appears here it is missing from the internal-jobs list.

How to improve this

Open jobs where the labour is not being paid for. These are still fixable.

1. Work the red 'no time sold' rows first. The scoping is already done and only the authorisation is missing -- it is usually one phone call.
2. For under-sold jobs, raise the supplementary while the car is still on site and the damage is visible.
3. Photograph the extra work when it is found, not afterwards.
4. If a job is on this list and the car has been collected, it is an invoicing job now, not a workshop one.

Watch for: Do not let these age. Once the job is fully invoiced it drops off this list because there is nothing left to claim.

The ten finished jobs that cost us the most labour money and the ten that made the most, across all three shops. Every job here is closed and fully invoiced — there is nothing left to claim, so this is for learning what a good and a bad job look like, not a to-do list. Open jobs are in Jobs losing labour money above and never appear here.

Shop / Job / Vehicle / Debtor

Which job, and who paid for it.

Sold

Hours the estimate sold.

Actual

Hours technicians clocked to it.

Variance

Sold less actual. Positive means it came in under the sold time and made money on labour; negative means it ran over.

$

The variance priced at what that trade bills, blended on the job's own paint/panel split. Ranking uses this, not hours: two hours lost in paint costs $236 and two in panel costs $147, so ranking on hours would quietly push panel jobs up the worst list.

Ratio

Actual as a multiple of sold. Under 1.00 is profitable.

Invoiced

When the job was fully invoiced and closed.

Read the two halves against each other. The same vehicle appearing in both — and the BYD ATTO 3 currently does, three times in the worst list and twice in the best — means the variance is coming from how the job was estimated or run, not from the car being inherently hard. That is the most useful thing on this panel: it points at an estimating template or a process, which can be fixed, rather than at a technician. Jobs with no sold time are excluded; an unauthorised estimate is not a labour story and would otherwise fill the whole worst list.

How to improve this

Finished jobs, best and worst on labour. Nothing here can be claimed -- it is for learning what a good job looks like.

1. Look for the same vehicle or job type in both lists. That means the variance is in the estimate or the process, not the car.
2. Take the worst three to the estimator with the actual hours and ask what the estimate missed.
3. Take the best three to the team and ask what went right. It is usually parts ready, a clear brief and no interruptions.
4. Build a template for the job types you see most often.

Watch for: Do not use the worst list to discipline anyone. Most of these are estimating and flow, and treating them as effort will stop people reporting problems.