Payment of labor for craftsmen in a service center: how to calculate wages for repairs

In service businesses and service centers, tracking working hours and calculating technicians’ salaries are among the owner’s key tasks. The service center workflow requires a clear separation between the cost of spare parts and the cost of the work itself, as the technician is paid specifically for the services provided. 

Business owners often have the following questions: 

To make salary calculation transparent and avoid manual calculations, Torgsoft provides close integration between two additional options: «Repair and Warranty Service» and «Salary and Staff Motivation». 

Below, we will examine the entire process in detail: from assigning a repair request to paying the technician.

1. Assigning repair requests and appointing a responsible technician

If several technicians work at the service center, the administrator needs to distribute orders evenly among them and monitor each stage of completion. The program provides a special mechanism for this:

• Assigning a responsible technician. When accepting an item or directly during the repair, the administrator opens the repair card and selects the required employee in the «Technician» field (or «Responsible for the repair»).

• This helps balance the workload among technicians. Each specialist knows exactly which device they are responsible for, while the manager can always see which employee is handling a specific repair request.

2. Setting up motivation: fixed payment or percentage

The main rule for calculating salaries in a service center is that the technician is paid for operations (work), not for the materials used (spare parts). The salesperson may receive a percentage for accepting or selling materials, while the technician is paid for performing the repair itself.

To enable the program to calculate salaries automatically, you need to configure the operations directory:

1. Open the repair operation settings (or the operations directory).

2. Create a new operation, for example, «Display Replacement» or «Diagnostics».

3. Specify the price of this service for the customer in the «Unit Price» field.

4. In the «Payment Type for the Technician» field, select the required format: Amount (a fixed payment, for example, UAH 200 for a replacement) or Percentage (%) (for example, 40% of the service price charged to the customer).

5. Enter the relevant number in the «Technician Payment Value» field.

This allows you to configure the financial logic once, after which the program will apply it to every repair.

3. Adding completed work to the repair card

When a technician starts working, either the technician or the administrator records all actions in the system. This is when the connection «technician → repair → payment» is created:

• In the open repair document, go to the «Works» tab (or «Repair Operations»).

• Click «Add» and select the required operation from the directory.

• Specify the number of completed operations.

• Be sure to specify the Technician in the corresponding field — this is the person whose salary will be calculated.

The technician’s payment is calculated automatically using the following formula:

Cost of one operation for the technician × number of completed operations.

If the situation is non-standard, you can manually change the payment amount for the technician directly in the repair operation card. The program will automatically recalculate the unit price (for example, if you manually set a total payment of UAH 300 for five identical operations, the program will record a technician price of UAH 60 for each operation). The price of the work charged to the customer can also be edited manually.

4. Salary calculation and reporting

For the payment to be included in the technician’s payroll statement, the corresponding calculation type must be added in the position settings in the «Salary Calculation» module:

• Open the employee settings and go to the salary settings for the position.

• Add the calculation type «Completed Repair Work».

• The program will calculate the cost of the work using the values configured for the operations, either an amount or a percentage.

All payments for completed repairs are included in the payroll statement after the repair has been closed or paid for. The technician can independently view their earnings, provided they have the required access, through the «My Payslip» mode. To avoid misunderstandings and questions for management, the employee can click «Breakdown by Products, Works and Operations». This provides a detailed report showing the specific repair and operation for which the payment was calculated and the amount paid.

Answers to common questions from business owners

The connection «Selecting a technician → Adding an operation with a fixed rate/percentage → Automatic inclusion in the payroll statement» completely removes the need for the business owner to maintain notebooks or Excel spreadsheets. The full history of interactions with employees is stored in the system, making records accurate and salaries transparent.