The words on a repair order

An aftermarket part is a replacement part manufactured by a company other than the vehicle's original manufacturer, sold through parts distributors under its own brand, warranty and price.

Average repair order, or ARO, is a repair shop's total sales for a period divided by the number of repair orders closed in that period, giving the average dollar value of one ticket.

Book time is the labor hours a published labor guide lists for one operation on one specific year, make and engine, used to price a job before the work starts.

A canned job is a saved template in a shop management system that carries the shop's own labor time, parts and customer-facing wording for work the shop quotes often.

Car count is the number of vehicles a repair shop invoices in a given period, usually counted as closed repair orders per week or per month, and it is one of the two numbers that multiply out to shop sales.

A comeback is a vehicle that returns to the shop with the same complaint it was already repaired for, redone at the shop's expense because the first repair did not fix it.

Concern, cause and correction is the three-part record written on a repair order: the customer's complaint in their own words, what the technician found causing it and exactly what was done to fix it.

A core charge is a refundable deposit a parts supplier bills on a rebuildable part such as an alternator, turbocharger or injector, credited back to the shop once the old unit is returned.

Declined work is a job a shop inspected, recommended and priced that the customer chose not to approve, recorded on the repair order so the shop can show what was offered and follow up on it later.

A digital vehicle inspection is an inspection a technician completes on a tablet or phone, recording every finding with a severity rating, a measurement and photo or video evidence that attaches to the repair order and can be sent to the customer.

A DPF, short for diesel particulate filter, is the exhaust component on a modern diesel engine that traps the soot leaving the cylinders and burns it off during a regeneration cycle so the particulate never reaches the tailpipe.

Effective labor rate is a repair shop's total labor dollars for a period divided by the labor hours sold in that period, showing the rate the shop collected after discounts, flat-priced jobs and giveaways.

An EGR valve is the emissions component that meters a measured amount of exhaust gas back into an engine's intake to lower peak combustion temperature and cut the oxides of nitrogen the engine produces.

An exploded view is a parts-catalog drawing that separates an assembly along its axis and numbers each component with a callout, so a parts counter can match a numbered position on the drawing to the part number that fits one specific vehicle.

Flat rate in auto repair is the practice of billing a job and paying a technician on the published labor hours for that operation, so the price and the paycheck are both set before the work starts and neither one moves with the clock.

Gross profit in an auto repair shop is what a repair order keeps after the cost of its parts and the wages of the technician who did the work, measured before rent, salaries and other overhead come out.

A hot shot delivery is a dedicated one-off parts run a supplier or shop sends outside the normal delivery route, used when a vehicle is already apart and the next scheduled run is too late to save the day.

Hours per repair order is the total labor hours a shop sold divided by the number of repair orders it closed in the same period, used to measure how much work goes onto an average ticket.

Jobber price is the wholesale price tier a parts catalog quotes to trade accounts such as repair shops, sitting below the published list price and above the net cost a shop with a negotiated discount pays.

Kit contents are the individual pieces that ship inside a single kit part number, such as the gaskets, seals, hardware and O-rings a supplier bundles so one line on an order covers what a job consumes.

A labor guide is a published reference that lists the labor hours for a specific repair operation on a specific year, make and engine, along with a footnote stating what that time includes and excludes.

A labor matrix is a table that sets a repair shop's labor rate by a variable such as job category, hours on the line or technician skill level, so a half-hour diagnostic line and a six-hour engine job do not bill at the same rate per hour.

A line card is the list of manufacturer brands a parts supplier is authorized to sell, which sets the limit on what a repair shop can order from that supplier no matter what a catalog search shows.

List price is the published retail price a parts manufacturer or catalog assigns to a part before any trade discount, and it sits at the top of the price ladder that a repair shop's cost and selling price are both quoted against.

A long block is a partly assembled engine sold as one unit with the cylinder block, crankshaft, rods, pistons, cylinder heads and valvetrain already installed, and with no intake, fuel system or bolt-on accessories included.

Markup is the percentage a shop adds to what a part cost, and margin is the percentage of the selling price left as gross profit, so a $100 part sold at $150 carries a 50% markup and a 33.3% margin.

A master technician is a technician who holds every core certification test in one series at the same time, most commonly the ASE automobile tests A1 through A8, and is normally the person a shop puts on its hardest diagnostic work.

A matched set is a group of parts that were machined together or that wear into each other in service, sold and replaced as one unit because a new piece running against a used mate fails early.

An OEM part is a replacement component built to the vehicle manufacturer's specification, carrying the manufacturer's own part number and sold through a dealer parts counter.

Part interchange is the catalog record of which part numbers fit the same application, letting a parts counter substitute one brand or number for another that fits the same vehicle.

Parts margin is the gross profit a shop keeps on the parts it sells, expressed as a percentage of parts sales and calculated as parts sales minus parts cost, divided by parts sales.

A parts matrix is a table that sets a repair shop's parts markup by cost bracket, applying a large multiplier to inexpensive parts and a small one to expensive parts so that a $3 clip and a $1,400 turbocharger both land at a price the shop can defend.

A punchout is a session that hands a user from their own purchasing or shop software into a supplier's catalog under the buyer's account, then returns the finished cart as priced lines on the document the user started from.

R&R stands for remove and replace, the labor operation of taking a component off a vehicle and installing a new one, billed at the labor guide's published time for that operation on that year, make and engine.

A reman part is a used unit that a remanufacturer has taken apart, cleaned, measured and rebuilt with new wear components to a published standard, then sold with a warranty and usually a core charge.

A repair order is the numbered document a shop opens for one vehicle visit, carrying the customer's concern, the technician's findings, every labor and parts line, the customer's authorization and the final invoice.

An RPO code is a three-character Regular Production Option code that General Motors assigns to a factory option, printed on the vehicle's service parts identification label and used at the parts counter to pin down the exact engine, axle or transmission variant a part has to match.

A service writer is the shop employee who opens the repair order, turns a customer's concern into priced jobs, gets the work authorized and keeps the customer updated until the invoice closes.

A shop management system is the software an independent auto repair shop runs its business in, holding the repair order, the estimate, the customer and vehicle records, parts ordering, invoicing and the reports the owner reads every morning.

A shop supplies fee is a line on a repair order that recovers the consumable materials a job uses without billing them individually, covering items such as brake cleaner, rags, sealant, fasteners, gloves and waste disposal.

A single-use fastener is a bolt, nut, clamp or washer that a manufacturer's service procedure requires be discarded and replaced during reassembly, because installing it once deforms it past the point where it can hold its clamp load again.

A skill code is the technician grade a labor guide attaches to a published operation time, stating what level of technician the number assumes so a shop can dispatch the job to somebody able to hit it.

A sublet repair is work a shop sends out to an outside vendor such as a machine shop, a driveline specialist or an alignment rack, then bills to the customer on the shop's own repair order.

A supersession is a manufacturer's replacement of one part number with a newer number, so an order placed on the retired number fills with the current part, which can arrive as a revised design, a different quantity or a different price.

A teardown is authorized disassembly performed to find or confirm the cause of a failure, billed as its own labor line because the engine, transmission or assembly has to come apart before anybody can quote the repair.

Technician efficiency is the flat-rate hours a technician produces divided by the hours they clock on those jobs, expressed as a percentage, which measures speed against published labor time rather than attendance.

Technician productivity is billed hours divided by the hours a technician was available to work, expressed as a percentage, which measures how much of a paid day turned into hours a customer was charged for.

An upsell in an auto repair shop is additional work sold on a vehicle that is already in the bay, found during inspection and added to the repair order on top of the job the customer originally booked.

Verbal authorization is a customer's spoken approval of repair work or of a price above the written estimate, which protects a shop only when the person, the time and the amount are written onto the repair order.

A VIN decode is the lookup that turns a vehicle's 17-character identification number into the year, make, model, body style and engine details a shop needs before it can price labor or order a part.

A will-call order is a parts order placed with a supplier and held at that supplier's counter under the shop's name for pickup, instead of going out on a scheduled delivery run.

Work in progress in an auto repair shop is the money already committed to open repair orders, covering parts issued and labor logged against tickets that have not been invoiced, and it is also the job-board status for vehicles being worked on right now.