Technician productivity: ten measures and the cost each technician has to cover
Updated 16 October 2026
In a field service company, technicians produce the revenue and also set the limit on how much the company can sell. Each technician, truck and crew has to bill enough work, at enough gross profit, to cover wages, payroll costs, the truck, tools, dispatch, management and overhead. Adding technicians without lifting the share of hours billed, the prices, the routing and the share of jobs fixed on the first visit can raise revenue and lower profit. This page lists the measures, works through the main calculations and sets out a weekly review.
Ten measures
| Measure | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Billable hours | Hours charged to customer work. |
| Share of paid hours billed | Billable hours divided by hours available. |
| Revenue per technician | Total revenue each technician produces. |
| Gross profit per technician | Revenue less parts and materials for each technician's jobs. |
| Jobs per day | How many jobs each technician completes, which reflects dispatch. |
| First-visit fix rate | The share of jobs finished without a return visit. |
| Callback rate | Return visits as a share of completed jobs. |
| Average ticket | Revenue per completed job. |
| Travel share | The share of paid time spent driving. |
| Plan sign-ups | Service plans or memberships sold on visits. |
Precision Garage Door Service's average business sells $5,737,824 a year at $1,213 a job, which the Precision Garage Door page works out to about 18 jobs a day. A Precision Garage Door owner divides those 18 jobs by the technicians on the road that day to get jobs per technician, and reads the average ticket for each technician against the $1,213.
The share of paid hours billed
This measure divides the hours billed to customers by the hours a technician is paid and available. The rest of the paid time goes to driving, waiting, picking up parts, training and callbacks. Each extra billed hour costs nothing more in wages, so the gain lands almost entirely in gross profit.
A technician is paid for 40 hours a week and bills 26, a 65% share. Tighter routing lifts billed time to 30 hours, a 75% share. At $140 an hour, the 4 extra hours bring in $560 a week, or $28,000 over 50 working weeks, with the same wage bill. The figures are an illustration.
Does each technician cover the full cost of the role?
A technician's cost is more than the wage. Payroll taxes and benefits, the truck, tools, a share of dispatch and a share of overhead all belong to the role. The test sets each technician's gross profit for the year against that full cost. A technician with a modest wage and a low billed share can fall short of it, and a higher-paid technician with a full schedule can clear it.
A technician bills 1,300 hours at $140, which is $182,000 of revenue. Parts take 25%, leaving $136,500 of gross profit. Wages are $62,000, burden $15,500, the truck $14,000, tools $4,000, the dispatch share $9,000 and the overhead share $18,000, a full cost of $122,500. The technician covers the role with $14,000 left over. The figures are an illustration.
More work through the same crew
Wages stay close to fixed for a crew on a full shift. When the same crew handles more work, wages fall as a share of sales and the margin rises. The count of jobs, cars or visits a crew completes in a day is therefore one of the measures to watch most closely.
Grease Monkey's 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD), the disclosure a franchisor hands a prospective franchisee, groups centers by sales. Wages take 40.1% of sales at the smallest Grease Monkey centers, which serve 12 cars a day, and 30.2% at the largest, which serve 38. The Grease Monkey page values one more car a day at $36,495 to $43,952 a year, depending on the group's ticket. A Grease Monkey owner tracks cars per day as the first productivity measure.
A weekly review
Read the measures every week. A drop in billed share or jobs per day shows up in a weekly report a month before it shows in the profit and loss, and a week is short enough to change the schedule, the dispatch rules or the routes in response. Compare each technician with their own last four weeks and with the company average.
Window Genie reports an average of 3.2 jobs a day per business at $549 a job, with a median of 2.9 jobs a day. Over a five-day week, 3.2 jobs a day at $549 is about $8,784 of work. A Window Genie owner who reads the week's job count each Monday sees a slip below 2.9 a day while the month can still be recovered.
What this means for an owner
Ten measures describe technician output, and the share of paid hours billed is the one that moves profit fastest. Each technician's gross profit is set against the full cost of the role: wages, burden, truck, tools, dispatch and overhead. More work through the same crew lowers wages as a share of sales. The measures are read weekly.
Get technician reports from the books
Averan builds technician-level reports from the job records and payroll, and reviews them with the owner each month. The controller service page describes that work. The fleet and equipment page covers the truck side of the same cost.
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