Average repair order
Total sales in a period divided by the number of repair orders closed in it: the size of the typical ticket. Shops watch it with car count, because the same sales can come from fewer, larger tickets or more, smaller ones.
Average repair order = total sales ÷ repair orders closed in the period
The figure is a ratio, so it moves for two reasons that are not the same. Sales rise on the same tickets, which is what the shop wants. Or the count of small tickets falls, which may be a lost customer. A shop that stops writing up the free inspections and the zero-dollar warranty returns as orders will see its average repair order rise with nothing else changing. So the rule for what counts as an order has to be fixed before the figure means anything month to month.
As an example only: $48,000 of sales on 120 closed orders is a $400 average; the same sales on 100 orders is $480, and whether that is better depends on where the 20 orders went.
Hunt Demarest's March 2026 column in Ratchet+Wrench argues for reading the ticket against the hours it took rather than on its own, which is the point of the figure beside this one. Read it beside car count, which is the denominator, and beside gross profit per hour, which says whether the larger ticket was worth the hours. Parts sold at matrix and the shop supplies charge both sit inside the numerator.
Sources (1)
- Demarest: The Power of Gross Profit Per Hour · Ratchet+Wrench, Hunt Demarest, CPA · read November 4, 2026