Auto glass business intelligence: the numbers a glass shop actually runs on.

Jobs per day, and per technician

The base rate of the business and the number that tells you whether a van is earning. The trap: it counts a chip repair and a full replacement the same, so a shop can look busier while revenue per day falls.

Mobile versus in-shop ratio

The single most structural number in a glass business. It sets your cost per job, your dispatch complexity, and how much of your day is windshield time. The trap: a rising mobile ratio looks like growth and can be a shrinking route density problem, where each additional mobile job costs more to reach than the last.

Average ticket, and the insurance versus cash mix

Average ticket alone is misleading in glass because a cash customer and an insurance job with a deductible are different transactions with different collection risk and different paperwork loads. The trap: a healthy average ticket can hide a mix that has shifted heavily toward insurance work, which brings slower payment and more administrative load per dollar.

Repair versus replacement ratio

Repair is faster, cheaper for the customer, and often the right answer for a chip that meets the criteria for repair. The trap: this is the metric that most easily conceals something. A very high replacement share can describe a shop that replaces what it could have repaired. A very high repair share can describe a shop taking repair work it should have turned into a replacement. Either direction, the number alone cannot tell you which.

Calibration attach rate and calibration revenue

The clearest line between a shop that has adapted to modern vehicles and one that has not. The trap: attach rate measured against all jobs means nothing, because not every vehicle needs it. Measured against the jobs that require it, a gap is revenue quietly given away on every replacement that should have carried a calibration line.

Part cost and the OEM versus aftermarket mix

Part cost is the largest single line in most glass jobs, and the mix moves it more than any purchasing decision. The trap: chasing part cost while ignoring the mix that policies and vehicles actually require produces a number that predicts nothing about the next quarter.

Claim turnaround time

Days from job completion to payment received. In a heavily insurance-driven business this is working capital, and it is the number that most directly determines how much cash a growing shop needs. The trap: an average turnaround hides the tail. Three claims at ninety days and forty at twelve days produce an average that looks fine and a cash problem that is real.

Route density

The metric that determines whether a mobile operation is a business or a series of long drives. The trap: density collapses slowly. A shop can lose density for a year as it takes jobs farther out to fill capacity, and each individual decision looks reasonable.

Comeback and leak-recheck rate

A job that comes back costs the part, the labor, and a second trip, and it costs the customer's confidence in a way that does not show up on the invoice. The trap: a rate that looks flat can hide two different problems moving in opposite directions, one of them a training issue and the other a materials or cure-protocol issue. The rate alone will not distinguish them.

Technician production versus windshield time

How much of a paid day is spent on a vehicle versus driving between vehicles. In a mobile business this split is closer to the truth about a technician than any count of jobs. The trap: a technician who looks unproductive on jobs per day may be sitting in traffic doing exactly what the schedule asked.

The exception view

A short list of things that are off their own normal right now. Not every metric, and not a dashboard. The point is that it is short enough to act on before the day ends.

• A job on the board with no part staged.
• A technician carrying more stops than the day can hold.
• A claim past the age where it normally pays.
• A completed replacement with no calibration line and no note explaining why.

The review

Fifteen minutes on the direction of travel. Not a comparison to last week, which is noise in a business this weather and season dependent, but a comparison to the shop's own recent normal.

• Is route density falling while mobile volume rises?
• Is the insurance versus cash mix shifting, and what is that doing to cash?
• Is the calibration attach rate moving on the jobs that require it?
• Is the comeback rate flat, and does the pattern behind it point one way?

The technician whose route is unprofitable

One van looks busy and never quite earns. The jobs are real and the customers are happy, and the drive time between stops has been quietly rising for months because each individual stop looked worth taking.

The claim that aged past payment

A file stops moving and nobody notices, because a stalled claim looks exactly like a claim that is being processed. It surfaces weeks later as a receivable nobody remembers the details of.

The calibration the shop keeps forgetting to bill

The work gets done, because a good technician does it. The line does not get billed, because nothing in the process forces the question. It is the same omission repeating across the book, which is why the aggregate gap is larger than any single instance.