Auto Repair Shop Books Cleanup One price still hides the filter

The sticker is not the cost

An oil change is the clearest mixed line in a bay, because the menu board sells it as one price and the shelf still has to give up a filter. If that whole price is posted to income, the filter and the oil never become a cost. Labor then looks as if it earned the menu price, and the parts margin is invisible.

We lift the parts off the ticket by reading the vendor bill, not by guessing a percentage of the menu price. The bill names the filter and the oil. Those amounts are the cost. What remains of the customer price, after those amounts are recognized, is the labor. The menu price can stay on the wall. The menu board can stay as it is while the ledger tells a finer story.

When the bill is missing

A Saturday rush sometimes means the filter went on the car and the packing slip went into a pocket. The line stays open until the slip shows up. Inventing a parts cost so the month can close is how a later bill double-counts the same filter. We would rather leave the ticket marked unfinished than print a split nobody can point to.

The same rule covers a tire rotation sold as one price when the only thing consumed was time, and a brake flush sold as one price when the fluid has its own invoice. If nothing was consumed except time, the whole price can be labor and the parts line is honestly empty. Empty is a real answer. A made-up cost is not.

What the close does with it

Once the filter has a cost and the time has an income line, the deposit still has to match the customer price minus the processor fee. The fee is an expense. The fee does not reduce the tax you collected, and the fee does not reduce the labor. Three small amounts, kept apart, are what let the next month's menu price be a decision instead of a habit.

Bring one oil-change ticket and the bill that supplied it. We will say whether the books already split them or whether the menu price was posted whole. A year of tickets can wait.

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