Free tool
How much technician time do photo inspections really cost
Size the weekly hours a full digital inspection program takes before you promise your technicians it will only take a minute.
Free tool, no sign up
What a few approval points are worth in your shop
Enter your weekly ticket count, what your technicians typically write up per inspection and how much approval you expect photos to add.
Recommended work that nobody approves is just labor you already paid for. Most shops know their approval rate within a rough band, and most owners underestimate what a small move is worth because they think in sale price rather than gross profit. This calculator works in both, so you can see the top line and the money you actually keep.
Be conservative with the approval lift. Shops that go from a verbal recommendation to a photo with a measurement often see a real change, but the size depends on your advisors, your pricing and how quickly the link goes out. Put in a number you would defend to your accountant, then look at the annual gross profit figure and decide whether the habit is worth building.
Your result
Inspections per week
42
The number of vehicles that actually get photographed and graded.
Extra approved work per week
$1,411
Additional sold dollars from the approval points you entered.
Extra gross profit per year
$38,808
Fifty working weeks at your blended parts and labor gross profit.
Extra approved work per repair order
$23.52
Spread across every ticket, including the ones nobody inspects.
These figures assume your technicians keep writing up the same work and only the approval rate changes.
Why gross profit is the honest number
An extra 1,400 dollars of approved work in a week sounds better than it is if half of it is a set of rotors you buy at eighty percent of the sale price. Owners who plan around sale price end up disappointed, because the parts invoice arrives before the customer pays.
Use your real blended number. Most independent shops sit somewhere between a strong labor margin and a thinner parts margin, and the blend depends on how much of your work is brake and tire versus diagnostic hours. If you do not know it, pull one month of closed tickets and divide total gross profit by total sales.
Where the approval lift comes from
The lift is not magic and it is not uniform. It concentrates on the items a customer cannot see and does not feel yet: a weeping rear shock, a cracked serpentine belt, a filter packed with leaves, brake fluid that tests high for moisture. Those are the items that get declined on a phone call and approved when there is a picture.
It also depends on timing. A link that reaches the customer at 9:40 in the morning while the car is still on the lift gets a decision that day. The same link at 4:15 in the afternoon gets a pickup conversation instead, and the parts run is already over.
Questions about this calculator
What approval lift should I enter if I have no data?
Start low, around five points, and treat anything higher as upside. Then run one month with photos on every inspection and measure it properly. Recommended dollars and approved dollars from your closed tickets are all you need.
Should I count declined work that gets approved later?
Not in this calculator. It measures same visit approval only, which keeps the number defensible. Work that comes back on the next visit is real money, but count it separately so you do not double count a single line item.
Why fifty weeks instead of fifty two?
It leaves room for holiday weeks and the slow stretch most shops see at some point in the year. If your shop runs hard all year, multiply the weekly figure by fifty two yourself for a slightly higher number.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The digital vehicle inspection rollout checklist
Everything a shop has to decide, install and say out loud before the first inspection link goes to a customer, and what to check every week afterward.
From this number to a graded inspection
The figure above assumes a technician actually wipes the rotor, shoots the pad next to a gauge and types the measurement into the caption. A demo shows what that looks like from under a lift and what the customer taps on the other end. Bring your own inputs and we will run it on your shop rather than an average one.