How to price labour at a car service in Georgia

Calculate a sustainable labour rate

A sustainable labour rate starts with your operating costs and realistic billable hours, not simply the price at the shop next door. Gather the costs your labour income must cover, including mechanic pay, premises, utilities, equipment upkeep and administration. Decide how much contribution you need beyond those costs. Keep parts purchasing separate so you do not mistake money collected for parts for income available to run the workshop.

Divide the labour revenue you need for a planning period by the hours you reasonably expect to sell during that period. Do not use every paid staff hour as a billable hour: receiving cars, explaining findings, cleaning up and waiting for approval also take time. Use your own records to estimate the difference. For a shop in Georgia, test this calculation against your actual mix of routine servicing, diagnostic work and longer repairs rather than assuming every occupied bay earns equally.

Choose fixed prices or hourly pricing by scope

Use a fixed-price menu for repeatable work with a clear scope, and hourly pricing where the work cannot yet be defined reliably. For example, a routine service can have a defined labour charge when the vehicle and included tasks are known. An intermittent fault may need an initial diagnostic stage instead. Explain what that stage covers, what result you will report and when you will ask for approval before continuing.

A fixed price should not silently include every complication you might discover. With imported used cars, previous repairs, damaged fasteners or unfamiliar modifications can change the job. For LPG/CNG-converted vehicles, confirm what system the requested work concerns and whether your shop can undertake it. If inspection reveals work outside the agreed scope, stop and explain the change. Do not turn a fixed-price promise into an unexplained hourly bill after the customer has committed.

• Fixed menu: repeatable work with known tasks and clear exclusions.
• Hourly work: uncertain diagnosis or repair scope, with an agreed approval point.
• Staged estimate: inspect first, then quote the defined repair.
• Additional work: explain the finding and obtain approval before proceeding.

Use actual job times to correct your prices

Use consistently recorded job times to check whether your planned labour allowance matches the work you actually perform. Have mechanics record hands-on work consistently, using a timer or a clearly defined recording method, and distinguish it from waiting for parts, customer approval or a free bay. Junto reports compare mechanics' actual hours with planned hours per job. Use that comparison to identify jobs worth investigating, rather than treating every difference as a reason to raise the price.

Review comparable jobs together before changing the menu. If a repeatable task regularly takes longer than planned, check whether the allowance excludes a necessary step, the equipment causes delays or the booking description attracts more complex vehicles. If only one repair runs over, record why. A shorter actual time can also reveal an overly generous allowance or an efficient method worth sharing. Update prices and planned durations deliberately; do not penalise a mechanic merely for reporting time honestly.

Keep labour, parts and extra work separate

Separate labour from parts so you can see what each part of the job earns and explain the bill clearly. Order lines are labour or part lines; part lines carry a cost price as well as a sale price, which the profit report uses. Inventory and stock tracking are not part of Junto yet; parts are free-text lines. Enter part descriptions consistently and check their costs, rather than assuming a completed order also maintains a stock record.

Clear lines also make additional-work decisions easier for customers. If a routine visit reveals another repair, show the proposed labour and parts separately and explain whether the original work can continue without it. Junto lets shops send suggested work for customer approval by SMS link, with each line and its price visible before work starts. Use that step to confirm a changed scope, not to replace the conversation about what you found and why the work is being suggested.

Publish prices that match the work you can book

Publish prices only for services whose scope, labour allowance and booking duration you can explain. Services in Junto carry a price and a duration used in appointments, orders and online booking; instant online booking sells only checked services. Review which services you mark as checked before making them available. A repair with uncertain scope should lead to an inspection or diagnostic booking, rather than presenting a complete repair price you cannot yet support.

Price lists appear on the shop's public page and in junto.ge/services, where owners compare shops. Make each service name understandable to a car owner, and clarify whether the displayed price covers labour alone or includes specified parts. Avoid vague labels that make different packages look identical. Booking duration deserves equal attention: a labour allowance is not necessarily the whole appointment window. Leave room in your schedule for receiving the car and handover, and remember that online visits require shop confirmation.

Check your menu before changing prices

Check your costs, scope, time records and published descriptions together before you change a labour price. Start with frequently booked work and jobs that repeatedly overrun, rather than rewriting the whole menu at once. Ask your service adviser and mechanics whether the description matches what customers request and what the workshop performs. A pricing problem may actually be a scope problem, a scheduling problem or a missing approval step; increasing the charge alone will not fix those causes.

After a change, compare later jobs with the revised allowance and ask whether customers understand the quote. Keep a record of why you changed the price or duration so the next review has context. In busy Tbilisi traffic, explain appointment timing clearly instead of promising a collection time that depends on unresolved work. If customers request checks before periodic technical inspection or after mountain-road trips, define the checks you offer without implying a guaranteed inspection outcome or an automatic repair requirement.

• Confirm which operating costs your labour income must cover.
• Estimate saleable hours from records, not total opening hours.
• Define the tasks, vehicle applicability and exclusions for each menu item.
• Compare actual working time with the planned allowance.
• Check labour lines, parts costs and additional-work approval.
• Review published prices and durations before accepting bookings.

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