Labour & Part Billing

[artadot]

We rebuild transmissions. In order to track our labor and costs of a rebuilt unit we must bill out the parts and labor separately. Is there a way to bill out a part and include the labor without billing separately? In other words, bill out a part only to the customer but still be able to track the labor for the rebuilt unit.

[brianp87]

Could you not just put the item as canned job? Or you may be able to set the hours to whatever you want and the labor cost to what ever you want. If I understand your question correctly.

[Gary R]

You could bill out the labor item at 0 hours/dollars and then in the technician pay hours, put in the labor hours. Running the technician commission report would give you the number of hours, but not dollars.

[steven kiser]

What I was doing until I just threw in the towel and started using Jasper was running in house invoices to track tech time and parts. If I was rebuilding one for stock I would bill it to Transmission in the company header then make in the plate # . It would have to be shortened obviously. If a vehicle came in and we were R&R the transmission I would bill it to transmission (no tax because it was for resale) and use that order # as a part # on the customer order. That way I could track all my kits. A basic reman kit was simple to track but I would also include neutral safety switches, plug harnesses, new line receivers especially the applications that had screens in them.No where were you (that I could find) told to check the screen when you were having shifting issues that slowly came along. All these parts were add on to the basic kit. Broken bolts in mount receivers was additional and added to the cost of the reman. The customer would only see the end result but my in house order would include everything right down to gasket sealer. There was a base price per unit plus additional. If we were doing an R&R and there was a broken bolt to be removed even though we were installing one we had rebuilt the customer was billed additional for removing the broken bolt.

I loved the front wheel drive Toronado's and Eldorado's where the drive chain broke. The repair called for an R&R. All we did was take the top mount off lower the cradle and with a pipe or pry bar pry up on the floor board and bend it out of the way. Take back pan off and install a new chain and gears. Had it down to 45 minutes, I took a baseball bat, cut the end of the handle off and fit a steel pipe with a cap on it over the end of the bat. I could pound on that end all day long and do no damage to it. I used that to pound the floor back into shape. I think back then the chain, gears and gasket cost around 300 dollars. I charged around 14 hundred and was 2 grand cheaper than the dealer down the street and AAMCO. No one else would do the work.

[artadot]

Thanks Steven, we have done that in the past and It worked well, I was just looking for a simpler way of doing it, sort of like a parts kit where the labor could be recorded but not visible to the customer.