Before the pandemic, getting a car repaired after a collision in the US took about 12 days on average from when a claim was filed until the car owner got their vehicle back. By 2023, that number had climbed to 23.1 days, according to data from J.D. Power. Things have improved somewhat since then, with keys-to-keys cycle times dropping closer to 14 to 17 days in 2026. Progress, but still nearly double what the industry considered normal a few years ago.
Most people assume the gap comes down to parts shortages and technician headcount, and both of those are real. But there’s a third factor that gets less attention: operational friction. Delays that come from manual status checks, estimate details that get missed the first time around, parts orders that go out a day later than they should have, and a shop floor that nobody can see without physically walking it. None of that is a supply chain problem. It’s a process problem, and process problems are the kind of software that can actually be solved.
Why cycle time is a capacity problem, not just a satisfaction one
The customer-experience argument is obvious. Nobody enjoys a three-week wait for their car. But there’s a second cost that matters more to the person running the shop: bay utilization.
Every day a vehicle sits in a bay waiting on a parts confirmation, a supplement approval, or a technician assignment, that bay isn’t available for the next job. Shops track how many vehicles move through each bay per month, and cycle time is the single biggest lever on that number. Cut two days off average cycle time, and you’re not just making one customer happier; you’re opening up real capacity across the whole shop.
Where the days actually go
Vehicle complexity is a big part of why cycle times haven’t fully recovered. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) calibration is the clearest example. In 2017, fewer than 1% of repairable appraisals included a calibration. By Q3 2025, that had reached 35.6%, according to CCC Intelligent Solutions, and it’s still climbing.
The bigger problem isn’t just that calibrations are more common. It’s when they get caught. CCC’s data shows scans get flagged on the initial estimate over 90% of the time, but the majority of calibrations don’t show up until the vehicle is already being repaired, when they get added as a supplement instead. That distinction shows up directly in cycle time: CCC found repairs with no calibration averaged 13 days keys-to-keys, repairs with one calibration averaged 15.5 days, and repairs requiring multiple calibrations stretched past 17 days. Each supplement adds a review-and-approval cycle with the insurer before work can continue, and that wait happens with the car already on the lift.
Parts delays are the more familiar culprit. A part ordered a day late, or one that shows up wrong, can stall a job for the better part of a week. None of this is news to anyone who’s run a shop floor. The harder question is what actually closes the gap.
What auto repair shop software changes
Good shop management software replaces the whiteboard and the walk-around. Instead of a manager physically checking each bay to see what’s stalled, a dashboard shows it: which job is waiting on a part, which part arrived but hasn’t been moved to the right bay, which technician has capacity for another job right now. The underlying problems don’t disappear on their own. What changes is that nobody has to guess where the bottleneck is.
Cutting time on parts sourcing specifically
A large share of lost time on the parts side comes down to how orders get placed. The old way is calling suppliers one at a time, hoping the part is in stock somewhere nearby, and writing down whatever you’re told.
Integrated parts-ordering tools like PartsTech and Nexpart (that are integrated into Way RepairTech auto repair shop software) allow shops to search many suppliers from one screen instead of having to make multiple phone calls.
PartsTech, for instance, lets a shop search across its full supplier network from a single screen instead of a string of phone calls. PartsTech reports shops save an average of 15 minutes per repair order on sourcing alone. Multiply that across a month of repair orders, and it adds up to real hours, on top of the fact that comparing suppliers side by side means a shop is less likely to default to whichever one happens to pick up the phone first.
What to look for if cycle time is the priority
Not every tool marketed as auto repair software is built with collision workflows in mind. If shortening cycle time is the actual goal, look for:
- Parts vendor integration that’s native, not a manual export-and-reenter workaround
- Supplement and estimate workflows built into the platform, so revisions aren’t living in a separate email thread
- Shop-wide visibility into job status, not just a view that the front office can see
- Calibration and diagnostic flagging early in the estimate process, so fewer calibrations get caught as late supplements
- Cycle-time reporting broken out by stage, so you can see exactly where jobs stall instead of guessing
That last point is easy to overlook, but it’s the difference between fixing a delay and just noticing one. Software that shows average time in teardown, in parts wait, in paint, and in reassembly gives you a map of where to focus, instead of a general sense that things are slow.
The takeaway
Auto repair shop software doesn’t make the actual repair work go faster. What it fixes is the time spent waiting on a part that hasn’t been confirmed, chasing down a supplement that should have been flagged on day one, or leaving a finished car sitting in a bay because nobody noticed it was done. Shops that close those gaps are no longer treating that dead time as the cost of doing business.
The software itself isn’t the hard part. Most shops that switch find it easy to pick up. The harder part is building the habit of actually checking what it’s showing you, every job, every day, until that becomes how the shop runs rather than an extra step.
FAQ
Both, and they’re connected. Industry data shows a meaningful chunk of cycle time isn’t repair labor at all; it’s coordination: parts confirmation, supplement approval, and status handoffs between departments. Software that closes those gaps shortens the calendar time a car spends in the shop, even though the hands-on labor hasn’t changed.
Calibrations are increasingly caught after the estimate is written rather than during it, which turns them into supplements. Each supplement requires insurer review and approval before work can continue, and CCC Intelligent Solutions data shows repairs with even one calibration run are about two and a half days longer on average than repairs with none.
Look at the cycle time broken out by stage rather than the total number. If vehicles are sitting for days between stages with no active work happening, that’s usually a visibility or coordination gap. If technicians are consistently behind on active jobs, that points more toward capacity, which software alone won’t solve.
It depends on what the current system is missing. If it doesn’t show real-time status across departments, doesn’t integrate with parts vendors, or keeps supplement approvals in a separate inbox, those are the specific gaps worth solving, whether that means switching platforms or adding integrations to what you already run.
