Revenue per Technician per Day: The One Number to Read Every Monday
It is 7:10 on a Monday. Two trucks are warming up in the lot.
You know last week was busy. The phone did not stop. Both techs ran late twice.
Here is the question. Did either truck make money last week?
Most owners in shops doing $500,000 to $5 million cannot answer that until the bookkeeper closes the month. By then the answer is three weeks old.
There is one number that answers it every Monday in about ten minutes. Revenue per technician per day. This guide shows you how to build it, what it has to beat, and the mistake that makes it lie.
What revenue per technician per day actually measures
The definition is simple. Take everything a technician invoiced last week. Divide by the days he worked.
A tech who invoiced $3,930 across five days produced $786 a day.
That is the whole formula. Nearly every KPI article online stops there and hands you a benchmark.
Do not take the benchmark. The published ranges for “good” revenue per technician come from software vendors and bookkeepers. Most never say where the number came from, and none of them know your overhead, your rate, or your parts mix.
On its own, the number is a vanity metric. It only means something next to a second number: what one day of that truck costs you.
The number it has to beat
Here it is, built from the sample shop in our free Rate Calculator.
A tech paid $25 an hour costs $32.96 an hour loaded, once payroll taxes, workers comp, benefits and paid time off are in. Eight paid hours a day. That is $263.68 a day in labor, whether he bills one hour or all eight.
He bills 116 of 160 paid hours a month. That is 72.5 percent utilization, or 5.8 billable hours a day. Overhead in that shop runs $48.71 per billable hour. So one day of that truck also carries $282.52 of rent, insurance, dispatcher, fuel and your salary.
Add them:
$263.68 labor + $282.52 overhead = $546.20 a day
That is what one truck costs before it has earned you a dollar. It is the break even rate from our billable rate guide, $94.17 an hour, times 5.8 hours. The one cent difference is rounding.
Now revenue per technician per day has a meaning. Above $546.20 after parts, the day paid for itself. Below it, the day cost you money, no matter how busy it felt.
One Monday, two trucks
Let’s run last week. Two techs, five days each.
Tech A invoiced $3,930. His parts cost you $830. Tech B invoiced $2,650. His parts cost you $540.
Parts come off first, at your cost. A truck that invoices $600 in parts and $50 in labor did not produce $650. It produced $50 plus the markup.
| Line | Tech A | Tech B |
|---|---|---|
| Invoiced last week | $3,930 | $2,650 |
| Days worked | 5 | 5 |
| Revenue per day | $786.00 | $530.00 |
| Parts at cost per day | $166.00 | $108.00 |
| Revenue after parts, per day | $620.00 | $422.00 |
| Cost of the day | $546.20 | $546.20 |
| Over or under, per day | $73.80 over | $124.20 short |
Read Tech B’s column again. $530 a day sounds like a working truck. Dispatch had him on calls every day. Nobody would have flagged him.
After parts, he produced $422 against a $546.20 day. That truck lost $124.20 every day last week.
Five days a week, fifty weeks a year:
$124.20 × 5 × 50 = $31,050 a year
From one truck that looked fine. Shops your size leave at least $100,000 on the table every year, and this is one of the places it sits: in plain sight, inside a number that sounded healthy.
Redo the table with your own two inputs, loaded labor cost per day and overhead per billable hour. The free Rate Calculator builds both, and it arrives with your Quote Leak Check breakdown.
Why the number lies if you read it alone
Revenue per technician per day moves for four reasons. Only one of them is the tech.
Hours billed. Tech B produced $422 after parts at a $95 rate. That is 4.4 billable hours in an eight hour day. Where did the other 3.6 go? Driving, diagnosing for free, waiting at the supply house, a second trip.
Rate. The sample shop charges $95 an hour against a floor of $117.71. Even a tech billing a full 5.8 hours produces $551 a day at $95. That clears the $546.20 day by less than five dollars. One slow afternoon and the whole week is under water. That is a pricing problem wearing a productivity costume.
Job mix. A week of maintenance visits and a week of changeouts produce very different days from the same tech. Compare a tech to his own last four weeks before you compare him to anyone else.
Days counted. If a tech spent Thursday in training, do not divide by five. Divide by four. The number is revenue per day worked, not per day on the payroll.
Separate those four and the Monday conversation changes. You stop asking why Tech B is slow. You start asking what the shop did to Tech B’s Tuesday.
The same number in plumbing, electrical and roofing
The formula does not change by trade. The trap does.
Plumbing: a drain tech runs six calls a day at $189 each. $1,134 a day looks like the best truck in the fleet. Then you notice the shop pays him nine hours, because the sixth call always runs past five. His cost of the day is higher than everyone else’s.
Electrical: a service electrician does two panel upgrades a week at $3,200 each. His revenue per day swings from $0 on Monday to $3,200 on Tuesday. Read him by the week, not the day, or you will chase noise.
Roofing: the truck is a crew. Three men and a foreman, one day on a tear off. Divide revenue by crew days, and build the cost of the day for the whole crew: four loaded wages plus the overhead share. A $9,000 roof over two crew days is $4,500 a day. Whether that is good depends entirely on what the crew day costs you, and almost nobody has that number written down.
I spent seven years as a licensed HVAC technician and eight more running operations. In those eight years I watched good owners manage by feel because the scoreboard was a month behind. The fix was never a better feeling. It was a Monday number.
Where this number lives, and what sits next to it
One number is a start. It is not a system.
Revenue per technician per day is one of the five numbers read at the Friday numbers review inside the Weekly Operating Rhythm, one of the documents we install when we work together. The other four explain why it moved. The KPI Tracker that goes with it does the division for you, keeps the cost of the day current when payroll or rent changes, and shows every tech against his own trailing four weeks.
And if your table says the problem is rate, not hours, that is the pricing half of The Recovery Reset. Two weeks, $1,950. Your floor rate set and your price book rebuilt on it, in your numbers, so the cost of the day stops winning.
Frequently asked questions
What is revenue per technician per day?
It is the total a technician invoiced divided by the days he worked, usually read weekly. A tech who invoices $3,930 over five days produced $786 a day. On its own it is only a productivity number. It becomes a profit number when you subtract parts at cost and compare what is left to what one day of that truck costs you in loaded labor and overhead.
How do you calculate revenue per technician?
Add up everything the technician invoiced in the period. Divide by the days he actually worked, not the days he was paid. For a profit reading, subtract parts at your cost first, then compare the result to his daily cost: eight paid hours at his loaded hourly rate, plus his share of overhead per billable hour. In the sample shop above, that daily cost is $546.20.
What is a good revenue per technician for an HVAC company?
Published benchmarks vary widely and most do not name a source, so treat them as conversation starters, not targets. The number that matters is yours: the daily cost of the truck, built from loaded labor and overhead. In the sample shop, a tech must produce $546.20 a day after parts just to break even, and $682.72 a day to hit the floor rate. Beat your own number first.
What KPIs should an HVAC or plumbing company track every week?
Fewer than you think, and all of them readable in ten minutes. Start with revenue per technician per day against the cost of the day, because it tells you whether last week made money. Then add the numbers that explain why it moved: hours billed, rate charged, and quotes won. Five numbers read on the same day every week beat thirty numbers nobody opens.
What to do this week
Monday morning, before the trucks leave, pull last week’s invoices by tech. Write down three things for each one: what he invoiced, what his parts cost you, and how many days he worked.
Build your cost of the day. Loaded hourly cost times eight, plus overhead per billable hour times your billable hours per day. If you do not have those two numbers, the free Rate Calculator builds them, and it arrives with your Quote Leak Check breakdown.
Run each tech through the table above. Circle any truck under the line.
Then ask that tech one question. Not “why were you slow.” Ask “where did Tuesday go.” Write down his answer.
Which truck are you going to circle first?
Want the exact number for your shop? Start with the free Quote Leak Check. It puts a dollar figure on the quotes that went quiet in your last 30 or 90 days. Send yourself the breakdown and the free Rate Calculator comes with it, so you leave with your cost of the day too.
Rather talk first? Bring last week’s invoices to a free working session. Sixty minutes, your numbers on the screen, and you leave with a plan you own either way. We keep three of these a month.
Run the Quote Leak Check →