To help equipment dealers increase profitability through the use of Charter’s proven, intuitive, integrated, cost-effective business solutions.
Since the introduction of its first software product in 1985, Charter continues to work directly with manufacturers and suppliers to provide integration with their software and systems. Charter Software’s integration provides the equipment dealer with streamlined business management tools that reduce errors and duplication of effort.
| Tracking Technician Time is Key to Boosting Profits |
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Gauge the Amount of Precious Time Lost on Daily Tasks A minimum of 85% of a technician’s day can be billable hours, so any non-revenue generating task they perform can cause your dealership to lose money. Having technicians perform duties such as clean-up and maintenance takes them away from revenue-generating activities. Even time spent waiting for parts to be pulled when the parts department is busy should be tracked as “non-wrenchturning” time. Tracking 100% of technicians' paid time through a time management system is the key to boosting your dealership’s profits. For example, setting up monthly work orders for non-billable tasks in your system can help you to quantify the value of your technicians' non-wrenching turning time. Billing those monthly work orders out to the relevant departments allows department managers to see where time is being spent, and determine whether staffing changes need to be made. If you quantify the amount of time your technicians waste waiting to receive requested parts, you may find that it makes more business sense for you to hire a parts runner at a lower wage. Work Orders Categorize Labor Hours Here’s how it works: Set up monthly work orders for the following items: shop clean-up, building and facilities maintenance, unloading trucks, parts support, waiting for parts, misc. sales support, etc. You should also set up monthly work orders to be utilized to adjust billable time: excess time, flat rate adjustments, and customer loyalty adjustments. Using a computerized time clock, your technicians can easily clock onto these work orders, and track their billable vs. non-billable hours to the minute. By quantifying your technicians' time, you are sure to pinpoint areas where their time can be more effectively utilized.
Get it Measured—Get it Fixed!
Charter Software’s dealership business management solutions allow you to create service codes with specifically assigned labor categories which can be used to distinguish revenue vs. non revenue tasks, and determine the default charge out rate for each. These broad categories such as revenue customer, revenue warranty, setup, reconditioning, rework, overallowance for customer satisfaction and other non-revenue generating activities are all user-defined in DealerWin™. Our Service program also allows you to print a weekly report to use for evaluating service department efficiency by comparing hours paid to revenue hours. Many dealers use this report to pay bonuses and incentives to employees in the service department.
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