Blackpurl provides two complementary time-tracking features for your service department: Payroll Clocking and Job Clocking. Together, they give you the data needed to measure how productive, efficient, and proficient your technicians are — and to identify where time is being lost.
Payroll Clocking
Payroll Clocking is the ability to have your staff clock on and off Blackpurl so that a log is kept of when they are at work and available to work.
When a staff member clocks on, they signal to Blackpurl that they are ready and available for work.
When a staff member clocks off, they signal that they are no longer available for work.
Blackpurl uses these on/off timestamps to calculate how long each staff member was available within any given time frame.
For step-by-step instructions, see Payroll Clock On and Off.
Job Clocking
Job Clocking is the ability for your technicians to clock onto specific Customer Order service jobs throughout the day.
When a technician clocks on to a job, Blackpurl starts a timer to record how much time they spend on that specific service job.
When a technician clocks off a job, the timer stops and the elapsed time is recorded against that Customer Order service job.
Blackpurl tracks how many service jobs each technician was clocked onto and for how long.
For step-by-step instructions, see Job Clocking On and Off for Service Jobs.
The Purpose of Payroll Clocking and Job Clocking
Payroll Clocking and Job Clocking serve different but complementary purposes. Payroll Clocking establishes when a technician is available for work. Job Clocking records where that available time is actually being spent. Together, they give Blackpurl the data it needs to generate meaningful productivity reports and answer the key question: are your technicians productive, efficient, and proficient?
How Payroll Clocking and Job Clocking Fit Into Productivity Reporting
Blackpurl uses the combination of Payroll Clocking and Job Clocking data to calculate three distinct performance metrics for each technician.
Productivity
Productivity measures how much of a technician's available time is actually spent clocked onto service jobs.
Payroll Clocking establishes how many hours a technician was available. For example, if a technician clocked on at 8am and off at 3pm, Blackpurl knows they were available for 7 hours.
If that technician job clocked onto service jobs for only 4 of those 7 hours, Blackpurl can calculate their productivity by comparing clocked job time to available time.
The remaining 3 hours raises a useful question: what was the technician doing during the time they were available but not clocked onto a job?
Efficiency
Efficiency measures how closely the time a technician spends on a job matches the time the dealership can bill to the customer.
If a technician job clocks onto a service job for 3 hours but the dealership can only bill the customer for 2 hours, that technician is not working efficiently.
Other factors may explain the gap — for example, the technician spent time helping others while still clocked onto a job, or forgot to clock off when switching tasks.
Proficiency
Proficiency measures how well a technician's billable hours hold up against the total hours the dealership is paying them for.
Blackpurl calculates proficiency by comparing billed hours (what the dealership charges customers) to available hours (Payroll Clocking).
For example, if the dealership pays a technician for 8 hours but their billable output is only 2 hours, their proficiency is low.
Contributing factors may include the need for further training, under-quoted jobs, or missed opportunities to call the customer when additional work was identified.
For more on the reports available, see Technician Productivity Reports.
More Information
The following articles cover setup and day-to-day management of Payroll Clocking and Job Clocking: