Multi-shop management: How to standardize reporting across locations 

You have four shops. On a Sunday night, you’re trying to figure out which location made you the most money last month from four different reports generated using four different methods.  

This happens to almost every shop owner who scales past one location. The systems and habits that worked perfectly fine for one shop start falling apart when you add in more locations. You start blaming your shop management software, but this isn’t really just a software problem. It’s about standardizing your reports.  

Why multi-shop reporting breaks down as you scale  

When you’re running one location, you’re there on the shop floor, checking everything, talking to your techs and service advisors, explaining the repairs to the customers, and knowing exactly what’s going on in the bays. But the moment you start adding locations, you’re no longer on top of things because you’re depending on your shop managers and their reporting.  

This doesn’t always work out because every manager has their own way of reporting. Some might be comfortable with a spreadsheet while others swear by the numbers in their notebooks. Another manager uses the software that was already installed when they joined, and yet another uses new software and dozens of sticky notes. Even if the reports are right, you can’t make decisions or determine what’s profitable when nothing is standardized.  

What does standardization mean?  

Standardized reporting is basically when everyone follows the same format, instead of creating their own templates, so that the reports are consistent across various locations.  

You might think having the same software in every shop will help, but in order to make sure you know what’s working and what’s not, you need the same Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the same definitions, the same categorizations, and the same measures at the same time. For example, a service advisor might call it a “diagnostic fee” while another calls it an “inspection fee” and files it in a different category. This is a tiny thing that’s easy to miss but can cause you a lot of headaches later. 

Every shop should track the same handful of metrics. Labor rates, tech hours, ARO, and comebacks should be calculated using the same inputs. This is where a good Multi-Shop Operator (MSO) software system can help you get standardized reports.  

The core reports every shop owner should see 

When it comes to reports, there are four main ones you shouldn’t compromise on checking weekly.  

Sales by location: A week or two is bound to be slow depending on the season, but seeing a specific shop be slow for three weeks in a row is a red flag you have to catch before it turns into a total loss.  

Approval rate: If one of your shops is approving fewer jobs regularly, you need to be able to check if it’s due to your customers or your service advisors.  

Tech productivity: You need to know the hours put in by each tech on each repair across your shops so that you can decide whether you need to hire more techs, redistribute, talk about their pay, or have a hard conversation.  

Inventory turns: Sometimes there will be parts that you ordered without checking the stock. Extra parts sitting on the shelf and repairs done without enough parts are both money down the drain.  

Your shop management software should be able to give you reports based on these. If you’re using Way Repair Tech, you also get reports on customers, orders, payments, tax, outstanding invoices, services invoiced, labor, and customer aging.  

Make sure you have role-based access controls 

 A service advisor and a tech shouldn’t be viewing the same information. Who gets to see what is crucial for accountability. Essentially, there should be three roles: shop owner/admin, service advisor, and tech. Based on the role, they can have full access, view-and-edit access, or view-only access. Role-based access, paired with reporting that doesn’t change from shop to shop, is what actually makes a location accountable for its own performance. 

Rolling out the software in all your shops  

A concern that every shop owner has is that they can’t afford downtime across shops while switching systems. This is why you never switch all at once. Instead, you roll out the software in phases.  

The biggest issue with new software is data migration. Without clean data, the implementation will not go smoothly. Once you have your data, do a trial run in one of your shops. After this, you’ll be able to see what works and what doesn’t, which will help you install the software in the rest of the shops. During the first two weeks, make sure you’re checking in daily, so you can catch the problems at the start, and not when the shop is busy and you can’t afford to make any changes.  

The bottom line  

Standardized reporting won’t fix a slow week. But it’ll tell you which shop had the slow week, and whether it’s a marketing problem, a service advisor problem, a tech problem, or just a slow Tuesday.  

Schedule a demo of Way Repair Tech to see how it works across your locations.

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