Watch: How to see installer utilization in SalesThumb (0:54)
Labor utilization tells you how much of your paid installer time is actually generating revenue. Every point of utilization you recover is paid time turned into billable time.
What utilization means
Utilization = (billable installer hours) / (total installer hours on the clock), per day, per installer, per bay.
Billable hours = time spent on a customer job that was eventually invoiced and paid.
NOT billable: prep, cleanup, slow days, lunch, training, fixing mistakes from yesterday, redoing a customer's car, idle waiting between jobs.
Open the reports
SalesThumb tracks this across two reports, both under Reports:
- Reports → Scheduling → Utilization — for each active installer (or other bookable resource), shows booked hours ÷ available business hours as a percentage, for whatever date range you pick (default range plus custom presets).
- Reports → Staff → Tech Efficiency — shows clocked hours vs. billed hours per installer, the closest thing to a "how much of their paid time was billable" view (Growth plan and up).
Neither report is broken out by bay, by hour-of-day, or by day-of-week today — both are per-installer totals for the date range you select. If you want a sense of *when* bays are busiest, Reports → Operations → Busy Hours shows a 7×24 heatmap of completed appointments by day/hour over a lookback you pick (30, 60, 90, or 180 days; 90 by default) — appointment counts, not billable hours, which is a reasonable rough proxy.
What's healthy
SalesThumb doesn't publish utilization benchmarks — compare each installer against your own shop average and history. A very low number is worth checking against their schedule (see the PTO note below); a number that stays very high for weeks can mean you're short-staffed.
Reading the reports
- Utilization (Scheduling) — one bar per active resource, showing booked minutes against available business-hour minutes for the range. Use it to spot which installer (or bay, if you've set bays up as resources) is running hot or cold relative to the shop average.
- Tech Efficiency (Staff) — clocked hours, billed hours, and the efficiency ratio between them, per installer. This is where slow changeovers, no-shows, and off-task time show up as a gap between clocked and billed.
Where dead time hides
Common sources of recoverable dead time:
- Job changeover — between vehicles, 20-40 minutes of dead time. Fix: stage the next vehicle while current one is mid-install. Saves 10-15 min/changeover.
- Photo capture skipped or delayed — installer rushes the cleanup, captures photos later, then has to chase them down. Fix: lock photo capture into the workflow so it happens at the bay.
- Reschedule churn — customer no-shows or cancels, gap not filled. Fix: maintain a 3-5 customer standby list of last-minute fills.
- Wrong-vehicle prep — installer preps for the wrong service or wrong film. Fix: pre-install confirmation step (installer reads back the job, customer confirms, system locks).
Fix one at a time and watch Tech Efficiency to see whether it moved.
What these reports don't separate out yet
Neither Utilization nor Tech Efficiency currently excludes PTO or training time from the denominator — if an installer is on the clock but on approved leave or in training, that time still counts as "available" in these reports and will drag their percentage down. There's no toggle to exclude it today. When you're reading the numbers, sanity-check any unusually low installer score against their schedule before assuming it's dead time.