Manager Forum

What does everyone do to track oil change times accurately?

Since typically many shops give away time on these 'loss leaders' to get the car in the shop to sell more, if you are trying to evaluate production hours- do you ---

1 Set an oil change labor value so the tech spends 45 minutes and gets 45 minutes credit but sold at say $50 an hour vs $150 shop rate?

2 Set the rate at shop rate then include a discount or coupon to make the numbers what you want to 'lure' in the customer?

My goal is to be able to evaluate the cost of the cheap price or 'advertising' to get the car in the shop and compete with the low ball coupons.
The accounting becomes very difficult to get real numbers if the invoice pay is 15 minutes and it takes the tech 45/1 hr.

Admins- please direct this to the proper forum if I'm in the wrong one.

We have a special oil change rate that reflects actual time spent. Very close to your number one scenario.

We are a fleet shop also doing outside work in south central PA and what we do is this: A typical oil change is 1/2 hr of our shop labor rate. Oil, filters, etc is extra charge. Very seldom an oil change takes longer than 1/2 hour. That applies to everything except medium duty trucks and up, including RV'S. On those categories, it is strictly time and materials.

Am example of how this works: Say I am changing oil on a 2004 Honda Accord. Labor is 34.95. Filter is $9.50 for a 57356 Wix, and $22.00 for 4.4 qt of Wolf's Head Semi Synthetic 5W20 oil. If it doesn't take anything else, the total becomes $66.45 plus tax. Not a lost leader for us. By the same token, an oil change on a medium duty truck, say a 2019 Freightliner FLM2-106 with a PACCAR 6.7L engine will be in the 250-300 dollar range. We are not trying to compete with the fast lube places. Too much stress and no profit, to say nothing of lost integrity.

Thanks guys