What Is Labor Capture Rate?
Labor Capture Rate and Effective Labor Rate get confused constantly because they're both about labor efficiency, but they answer different questions. ELR tells you what you're collecting per hour billed. Labor Capture Rate tells you how much of the labor your techs actually performed made it onto an invoice at all.
The Formula
Labor Capture Rate = Labor Hours Sold ÷ Labor Hours Worked × 100
If a tech clocks 8 hours and 7 of those hours end up billed to customers, that's an 87.5% capture rate. The other half hour — unbilled diagnostic time, a comeback redone for free, time hunting for a part — evaporated.
Why the Gap Exists
- Unbilled diagnostics — a customer declines after a diagnosis, and that time never gets invoiced
- Comebacks — redoing a job correctly is worked hours with zero additional sold hours
- Non-billable shop tasks — necessary, but not billable
- Flat-rate mismatch — extra time worked beyond book time never converts to sold time
What Improves It
- Bill for diagnostic time up front, applied toward the repair if approved.
- Track comebacks by cause, not just by count.
- Keep techs on billable work — if one tech absorbs all the non-billable tasks, their capture rate always looks worse.
- Review flat-rate accuracy periodically for your shop's reality.
Capture rate is nearly impossible to eyeball — it requires comparing hours clocked against hours billed, tech by tech, which is exactly the kind of daily tracking ShopDocs' Know Your Numbers module is built to make easy.