Clock in. Clock out. Track every hour. Shop Commander's time tracking and task management system tells you exactly where your labor hours go — per tech, per RO, per task. 100% free.
Here's a scenario every shop owner knows: you bill 8 hours of labor on an RO, but the tech actually spent 12 hours on it. Where'd the other 4 hours go? Was it a difficult diagnosis? Parts delay? Or is the tech just slow on that type of job? Without tracking, you'll never know. You'll keep billing 8 hours, keep losing money on that service, and keep wondering why your margins are tight.
Labor is the single biggest controllable cost in your shop. Parts have fixed costs. Rent doesn't change. But labor — how efficiently your techs turn hours — is where shops either make money or bleed it. The shops that thrive are the ones that know exactly how long each job takes, which techs are most efficient, and where time is being wasted.
Shop Commander gives you that visibility. Built-in time tracking lets techs clock into specific repair order line items and internal tasks. Live timers display elapsed time with per-second updates. Managers can view and filter time entries across all technicians. The technician productivity report shows billable hours and utilization percentage per tech. You'll know exactly who's turning hours, who's efficient, and where the problems are.
On top of time tracking, Shop Commander includes a complete internal task management system for all the non-RO work that keeps your shop running. Cleaning, maintenance, parts runs, training, equipment checks — all tracked, assigned, and managed in one place. With recurring task templates that auto-generate on a schedule. All free.
Shop Commander's time tracking is simple by design. Techs clock into a specific repair order line item or an internal task. A live timer shows elapsed time in hours, minutes, and seconds. When they're done, they clock out. The system records the entry with the start time, end time, duration, tech name, and the job it's linked to.
That's it. No complicated setup. No separate app. No hardware clocks on the wall. Your tech taps a button when they start, taps a button when they stop, and the data flows straight into your productivity reports. It's the simplest way to answer the question: "Where did the time go?"
Time entries are linked to specific repair order line items — not just the RO as a whole. If a tech works on brakes for 2 hours and an oil change for 30 minutes on the same RO, you get separate time entries for each. This is the level of granularity you need to price your services accurately and identify where time is being lost.
Active timer displays elapsed time in HH:MM:SS format with per-second updates. Techs can see exactly how long they've been on a job. No more guessing "I think I've been on this for about an hour." The timer is right there, ticking, keeping everyone honest and aware.
Managers get a filterable view of all time entries across all technicians. Filter by tech, date range, repair order, or task. See who's clocked in right now and what they're working on. Total hours this week, this month, and daily averages are calculated automatically. Complete labor visibility at your fingertips.
Total hours this week. Total hours this month. Daily averages. Per-tech breakdowns. The system does the math so you don't have to add up time cards at the end of the week. Pull up any tech's time summary and see exactly how many hours they've clocked, how many jobs they've touched, and what their daily average looks like.
Time tracking data is only useful if it turns into actionable insights. Shop Commander's technician productivity report takes all those clock-in/clock-out entries and turns them into the metrics that matter.
Billable hours per tech: how many hours each technician is billing. Not how many hours they're at the shop — how many hours they're actually producing billable work. This is the number that drives your revenue.
Utilization percentage: the ratio of billable hours to total hours clocked. If a tech is clocked in for 8 hours but only bills 5, their utilization is 62.5%. Industry target is 85%+. This metric tells you immediately whether your team is being used efficiently or whether there's downtime eating your margins.
These reports work with custom date ranges and CSV export, just like every other report in Shop Commander. Compare tech productivity across weeks, months, or quarters. Identify trends. Spot problems before they become expensive. All free — no premium tier required.
See exactly how many billable hours each tech produces per day, week, or month. Compare techs side by side. Identify your top performers and your underperformers. Make staffing decisions based on data, not feelings. This report alone justifies installing time tracking — and it's free.
Billable hours divided by total hours clocked. The single most important labor metric in your shop. If a tech's utilization is dropping, you need to know why. Parts delays? Scheduling gaps? Inefficiency? The number tells you something is wrong. The time entries tell you what.
Track productivity over time with charts and data tables. Is your team getting more efficient or less? How does productivity change with seasonal volume? Are new techs ramping up as expected? Custom date ranges let you compare any period. CSV export feeds your own spreadsheets if you want to go deeper.
Your shop doesn't just produce repair orders. There's shop cleaning. Equipment maintenance. Parts runs to the supplier. Training sessions. Safety inspections. Inventory counts. Recycling runs. All the work that keeps the operation running but doesn't generate an invoice.
Most shop software completely ignores this work. It either lives on a whiteboard, in someone's head, or doesn't get tracked at all. That means tasks get forgotten. New employees don't know what's expected. The shop floor gets messy. Equipment doesn't get maintained. And you're constantly reminding people to do things that should be automatic.
Shop Commander's internal task system solves this. Create tasks with descriptions, priority levels, categories, assignments, due dates, checklists, and file attachments. Tasks can appear on the main job board alongside repair orders so the whole team sees them. And recurring task templates automatically create new task instances on a schedule — so the "clean the shop" task shows up every Friday without anyone having to remember.
Every task gets a sequential number per shop (T-001, T-002, etc.). No confusion about which task you're talking about. Reference tasks by number in conversations, comments, or team meetings. Clean, organized, professional — even for the mundane stuff.
Low, normal, high, and urgent — with color-coded indicators. An urgent task (broken lift, safety hazard, customer complaint) stands out immediately from a low-priority task (organize the break room). Your team knows what to tackle first without asking.
Cleaning, maintenance, errands, training, organization, shop improvement, administrative, and other. Categorize tasks so they're filterable and reportable. Want to see how many maintenance tasks were completed this month? Filter by category. Want to know who's handling most of the cleaning? Filter by category and assignee.
Open, In Progress, Done, Blocked, Waiting. Tasks follow a clear lifecycle. If a task is blocked because you're waiting on a part, mark it blocked. If it's done, mark it done. Everyone on the team can see the status without asking. Tasks on the job board can be dragged between columns just like ROs.
Some tasks are simple: "order brake pads for RO-1042." Other tasks are multi-step processes that need a checklist: "end-of-day closing" might include locking the bays, turning off the compressor, running the backup, counting the cash drawer, and setting the alarm. Shop Commander supports both.
Add checklist items to any task with completion tracking and a visual progress bar. Check off items as they're completed. See at a glance whether a multi-step task is 50% done or 90% done. The progress bar on the task card tells you without opening it. Perfect for opening procedures, closing procedures, weekly inspections, and any process with multiple steps.
Define tasks that automatically regenerate on a schedule: daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Choose which day of the week or date of the month. A background worker creates new task instances every 15 minutes. The "clean the shop floor" task shows up every Friday at 3pm without anyone creating it. Activate, deactivate, edit, or delete recurring templates anytime.
Team discussion via comments on individual tasks. Attach photos, documents, or files with camera capture support from any device. Full activity log tracks every change — status updates, reassignments, comments, checklist completions. Complete accountability for every task. Nothing gets lost. Nobody says "I didn't know about that."
Track estimated minutes per task. Set expectations for how long each task should take. Compare estimated effort to actual time (via the time tracking system) to improve your estimates over time. Helps with scheduling and workload balancing — you'll know if you're overloading one tech or underutilizing another.
Here's what makes Shop Commander's task system different: tasks don't live in a separate, hidden section that nobody checks. They live on the main job board — right alongside repair orders.
Internal task cards appear with a purple border to distinguish them from RO cards. You can drag them between columns. You can toggle their visibility on or off. You can configure which columns tasks appear in. The result is one unified view of everything happening in your shop — billable work and internal work, side by side.
This visibility matters. When your whole team can see that "Clean Bay 4" is sitting in the "Open" column, someone picks it up. When "Order shop towels" is marked urgent, the parts person notices. Internal tasks stop falling through the cracks because they're visible on the same board everyone's already looking at all day.
Most shop management platforms either don't include time tracking at all or offer a basic version that doesn't connect to anything. Shops end up buying separate time clock systems, standalone apps, or just using paper time sheets — then manually reconciling the data with their shop software. It's a mess.
Shop Commander builds time tracking directly into the repair order workflow. Clock into a specific line item. The time entry links to the RO, the service, and the tech. The productivity report pulls the data automatically. No imports. No reconciliation. No separate login. It's one system where labor time, repair orders, and analytics all talk to each other.
Add the internal task system with checklists, recurring templates, and job board integration, and you've got a complete labor and task management solution that competitors either don't offer or charge premium prices for. All included. All free.
Shop Commander's time tracking and task management gives you complete visibility into your team's productivity — per tech, per RO, per task. All for $0/mo. Forever.
Free setup. No credit card. No catch.