[Dale Wiley]

Tracking efficiency in operations can be hard in smaller companies. You may not have a mechanic, or a lot lizard to do support work.

You need to track that type of work, to make sure you are billing for it in overhead recovery.

Our construction foreperson is recovered 40% in overhead to cover repair work, support operations. The rest of his time is hopefully, recovered in production.

He tracks the support process's by a separate labor number, so I can always monitor where we are at. Early in the year , that number will creep up there, so it is very important that you track those numbers to make sure you are correctly adding ALL support numbers to your bids in the correct percentages for proper recovery. Otherwise , it's a net hit.

[cutntrim]

I don't have a mechanic on-staff (my entire staff consists of no more than five at any one time including myself). We track "Equipment Maintenance" time on our daily logsheets. That's for time spent going to and from the repair shop, fueling equipment, blade sharpenings, oil changes, that sort of stuff. I've tracked it for a few years now, but to be honest I'm still tweaking how it is categorized under expenses. I definately DO account for it in pricing jobs though...