How Technician Utilization Reports Reveal Hidden Inefficiencies

Sometimes, it’s easy to find inefficiencies in your heavy-duty repair shop’s workflow. For example, let’s say one of your technicians falls into a deep and dreamless sleep every time you get a new service request. The obvious solution is to ask another tech to wake them up with true love’s kiss, right?

Wrong: if you do that, you’ll be assigning the second tech to a non-billable task. Instead, you’ll want to break the witch’s curse that caused this situation in the first place. Yes, that means you’ll have more work on your plate right now, but your shop will save countless hours in the long run.

You can apply the same mindset to less obvious workflow problems, such as issues with how your technicians spend their work hours. The most effective way to address these problems is to identify the root cause — and to do that, you’ll need to focus on technician utilization.

When you take tech utilization seriously, your workers and business will be as efficient as possible, and your customers will be happier than ever. To get to that point, you’ll need to know what technician utilization reports are, how to use them, and what programs can generate these reports for you.

What Is a Technician Utilization Report?

Technician utilization is pretty straightforward — it’s just a way of describing tech efficiency in terms of the time service technicians put toward billable tasks vs. their total working hours. You can turn that into a usable percentage (or “utilization rate”) by following this simple formula:

Technician utilization rate = technician’s total billable hours/technician’s total hours X 100

So, how do you find your shop’s technician utilization rate? Good news: this is way easier than you might think. Your heavy-duty repair shop management platform should be able to create technician utilization reports for you! (Unless it doesn’t; in that case, you’re on your own.)

If you have these reports at your fingertips, you can quantify the time your techs spend handling tasks that bring in revenue (as opposed to everything else). And these reports can help no matter where your technicians happen to be working, whether that’s in your shop or out in the field.

What a Utilization Report Actually Measures

Wondering what statistics you can expect your utilization reports to track? Ideally, you’ll be able to use these reports to get info on:

• Clocked-in time vs. billable time. This is the “heart” of technician utilization reports — an at-a-glance look at the time your techs spend generating revenue compared to the total amount of time they spend at work.
• Time spent on service orders. This is the number of work hours technicians in your shop spend fixing or maintaining heavy-duty equipment.
• Administrative time. Meanwhile, this is the amount of technician time spent on administrative (and non-billable) jobs.
• Travel time. If your techs only work in your shop, this isn’t something you’ll need to worry about. On the other hand, you’ll definitely want to have access to this data for field service teams.

What is a Good Technician Utilization Rate?

It depends! No two shops are exactly the same, and you’ll need to adjust your expectations for tech utilization accordingly. The size of your shop, whether or not you’re looking at a mobile or in-shop tech, and many other factors will determine what a “good” utilization rate looks like for you.

Of course, you can still benefit from knowing average technician utilization rates across North America. Here’s a quick look at those rates, according to the 2024-2025 edition of our State of Heavy-Duty Repair report:

• Canada: 87%
• West: 88%
• Midwest: 98%
• Northeast: 81%
• Southeast: 117%
• Southwest: 106%

(Want more cool stats like these? We’ve got you covered: this is a free report, and you can get your copy right here.)

Common Causes of Low Technician Utilization

If your technician utilization rate is lower than you’d hope, it’s time to find out why by taking a close look at your workflow. Your tech utilization might be affected by:

Parts/Approval-Related Delays

Delays caused by missing parts or waits for customer approval are a fact of life for heavy-duty shops…or, at least, it’s easy to assume they are. A heavy-duty repair shop management platform with inventory management capabilities can give you a heads-up when parts are running low, allowing you to reorder well before you run out. And when you use this system to streamline your shop’s approval process, your clients can OK repairs and maintenance with ease.

Inefficient Dispatching and Scheduling

No matter how hard your technicians work, putting some thought into when they work will go a long way in terms of efficiency. Once you adopt high-quality heavy-duty repair shop software, it can assist you in scheduling maintenance/repair work and assigning techs to the right jobs.

Excessive Travel Time

If you have a team of field service technicians, there’s no getting around travel time. That said, scheduling and dispatching capabilities can help you minimize this source of non-billable hours (and reduce the frequency of techs asking “Are we there yet?” by 78%).

Non-Billable Work

Yes, somebody in your shop needs to take care of administrative tasks and other non-billable jobs…but “somebody” doesn’t have to mean “your technicians.” Those workers should focus on the specialized work you hired them to do in the first place, especially since those tasks generate sweet, sweet revenue for your shop.

Rework

When you don’t have the full picture on a truck’s condition at the start of a job, your techs might have to set things right later on. But even though they’ll be hard at work in this situation, they aren’t generating revenue, so rework will still have a negative impact on your overall technician efficiency. 

That’s where Fullbay comes in: our software’s powerful repair estimate creation workflow makes it easy to get all the information you need about heavy-duty equipment from the get-go.

Poor Communication

As you might expect, miscommunication between your techs and service managers can easily lead to inefficient tech utilization. When your heavy-duty repair shop software comes with powerful communication features like internal text message notifications, this won’t be as much of an issue as it would be otherwise.

Not Using Real-Time Tracking Software

The best way to avoid situations like the ones we just touched on is to have shop software you can count on. When this program tracks your ongoing jobs, tech utilization, and inventory status in real time, you’ll never have to wonder what your technicians are working on, how efficient they are, or what your part levels look like.

How Fullbay’s Reporting Software Helps Improve Technician Utilization

Since heavy-duty repair shop software plays such a crucial role in tech utilization, you’ll want to put some thought into finding the right program for the job. Luckily, you can’t go wrong with Fullbay! Our reporting tools will give you:

• Real-time technician dashboards
• Automated time tracking/labor reporting
• The ability to monitor your workflow and improve job assignments
• Help spot bottlenecks interfering with tech productivity

With the insights Fullbay delivers, heavy-duty shops like yours can track tech activity and reveal inefficiencies. From there, you’ll have a chance to increase billable time, reduce wasted hours, and even determine how many employees you actually need. Then, your improved efficiency will help you get jobs done faster, improving customer satisfaction as a direct result.

Live Happily Ever After With Fullbay

Want to improve your shop’s operational efficiency and get an edge over the competition? Instead of wishing upon a star, your best bet is to look for industry-leading heavy-duty repair shop software. As you might have already guessed, no program in this category is better than Fullbay.

If you’re interested in learning how Fullbay can give your shop technician utilization reports and much more, you’re in the right place. Get started by scheduling a free demo today!