What's in this article: 

• Introduction
• How to Understand Labor Inventory Management
• How to Dispatch Work Based on the Labor Inventory Management Information Available to You
• Frequently Asked Questions
  • 1. How do I configure the Labor Inventory Management system to my preferences?
  • 2. Why does adding the hours on the vehicle tile not add up to the assigned hours aggregated at the top of the tech’s column?
  • 3. Why are the assigned hours on the vehicle tile different from the hours added when looking at all the work assigned to the technician on the work order?

Introduction

AutoVitals Labor Inventory Management (LIM) goes beyond the capabilities of your scheduler. It allows you to assign work based on current conditions rather than assumptions you made when scheduling vehicles for the current day. The ability to modify the tech assignments throughout the day will allow you to fully utilize your technicians’ time. Without using AutoVitals workflow features with real-time LIM information, you are not accounting for the following in your scheduling procedure:

• Up-to-date technician job completions
• Additional work approved
• Parts availability/arrivals

This leads to either:

• Leaving money on the table, because you were too cautious about your techs’ availability and you under-scheduled them OR
• Losing customers because you overscheduled your techs and they can’t get all work done, so motorists get the work done somewhere else

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How to Understand Labor Inventory Management

1). Your Technician budget

is the total number of planned billable hours to be sold and finished for any given day. Use this number to plan out the day. Click to modify it for today.

*Note that in the technician settings you can enter the default time budget for every day.*

2). The Yet-to-be-Completed Billable hours

assigned to the techs are the billed (paid) hours you have planned (in workflow steps that are set to include hours) for the technician to do today.

Once work is sold and assigned to the technician, this helps you gauge how many more hours need to be sold, compared with the Tech Budget. Use the workflow configuration to define what workflow steps should count for this calculation.

For example, if you leave out nonproductive workflow steps such as "Waiting for Parts" you will see the valid number of hours left for a working tech. If, on the other hand, all workflow steps are included in the calculation (default), then all assigned hours are visible, no matter whether the techs can work on the vehicle or not.

3). The Total Billable Hours Completed per tech

is the amount of billed (paid) hours completed by the assigned tech today. For this to be accurate, the technician should regularly mark job progress on the AutoVitals.X app.

To meet customer expectations, this needs to be closely monitored and driven as close as possible to the sold hours. Otherwise, carry-over work will be created, and customer expectations will have to be re-managed.

4). Remaining hours to reach the goal for the pay period.

 A positive number here means that the technician has exceeded their goal! Meanwhile, a negative number means they are behind the pay period goal.

This is calculated by first figuring out how many total hours are in the pay period by taking the default time budget below and multiplying it by the number of workdays per pay period. Then you subtract how many hours they have actually completed in the pay period
You can set individual tech goals in settings. (from there select the inspection tab, click on technicians, and then select edit)

• The current RO# the tech is working on displays on the left of this bar
• Worked hours displays on the right and allows you to determine whether the work is profitable
• If green it is profitable, if red the work is not profitable

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How to Dispatch Work Based on the Labor Inventory Management Information Available to You