The dashboard a Head of Business reads first
A dealership is really four number-systems working together: what sells, what the workshop earns, what it costs to run the site, and how customers feel about all of it. This Playbook covers each one — first the definitions, then the arithmetic (that's the part most guides skip), then the benchmarks, then your own live tracker.
How to use it
Tabs 2–4 define the KPIs. Tab 5 shows you how to calculate each one, with worked examples. Tab 6 gives typical UK ranges. Tab 7 is your live RAG tracker — enter target and actual, and it flags green, amber or red. Tab 8 is a blank org and capacity model you fill with your own roles and headcount.
Everything runs in the page. Nothing is sent anywhere. Works offline once loaded — including on an iPad.
The four systems
| Sales | Conversion, order take, F&I, renewals, stock health |
| Aftersales | Hours, recovery, upsell, fix-first-time, retention |
| Financial & site | GPU, overheads, absorption, prep pipeline |
| Customer | Satisfaction, reviews, complaint recovery |
The operating rhythm
KPIs only move if they're reviewed on a cadence. A simple daily / weekly / monthly rhythm keeps the whole site honest without drowning managers in reports.
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Sales KPIs
What comes in, what converts, what each deal earns, and whether stock is healthy. Definitions here; the maths is in How to Work It Out.
Conversion & activity
Enquiry → sale conversion
Test-drive conversion
Video walkaround completion
Order take & delivery
Order bank / order take for the month
Actual vs budget delivered
Renewal rate
Finance & income
F&I penetration
Products per deal (PPD)
Used stock health
Days in stock / over-60-days (overage)
Stock turn
Prep pipeline (days to prep)
Aftersales KPIs
The engine room. Aftersales is where a dealership's fixed costs get covered — the metrics here decide whether the site is protected in a slow sales month.
Workshop productivity
Hours sold per repair order
Technician productivity
Effective labour rate (ELR)
Upsell & quality
Health-check upsell (red / amber work sold)
First-time fix (FTF)
Workshop quality-check pass rate
Booking & retention
Booking conversion
Appointment show rate
Service retention
Financial & Site KPIs
Where the money actually lands. These are the numbers that tell you, in seconds, whether the site is healthy.
Margin
Gross profit per unit (GPU)
Service & parts gross margin %
Site health
Overhead absorption
Overheads vs budget
Attrition / staff turnover
Customer
Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
Online review score & volume
How to Work It Out
The part most guides leave out. Every KPI above, reduced to arithmetic you can do on the numbers you already have — with worked examples using round figures. Swap in your own.
Conversion
Enquiry → sale. Count qualified enquiries in the period. Count orders from them. Divide.
Worked example
Do it again for test drives, and for new vs used, to see exactly where the funnel leaks.
Effective labour rate
ELR tells you what you really earn per hour once discounts and warranty rates are in the mix — almost always below your advertised door rate.
Worked example
If your door rate is £100 and ELR is £80, you're discounting a fifth of every hour away somewhere. Find it.
Overhead absorption
Absorption is the health-in-seconds number. Take aftersales direct profit (service + parts operating profit) and divide by total site overheads.
Worked example
Read it plainly: aftersales covers 75p in every £1 of overhead, so sales only needs to find the remaining 25p to break even. Over 100% is achievable with tight cost control — and means sales volatility barely touches you.
Stock turn & overage
Stock turn: units sold in the period ÷ average units held. Overage: share of stock past 60 days.
Worked example
Eight turns means the average car sells in about 46 days. Every extra day past 60 is depreciation you're paying for.
The return-to-workshop cost model
This is the number that changes conversations. A repeat repair — a car back in for something that should have been fixed first time — costs far more than the redo. Here's how to size it. Multiply out the annual lost value:
Worked example — annual cost of repeat repairs
Cost per repeat repair
- Deferred red/amber work left unsold — e.g. brakes flagged and not completed. That job walks to a competitor, or comes back as an emergency, and it's safety-critical either way.
- The satisfaction and reputation hit of a customer making a wasted second trip.
- Technician time lost to re-diagnosis — hours you can't sell to anyone else.
- Goodwill and courtesy-car cost absorbed on the return visit.
Where the inputs come from: jobs/day and average hours from your DMS; repeat-repair rate from your survey or comeback log; recovery rate, parts-per-hour, clean and loan costs are your own site figures.
Best-in-Class Benchmarks
Typical UK franchised-dealer ranges for 2025–26, with a best-in-class marker where the data supports one. These are orientation, not gospel — brand, size and region all move them. Set your own target on Tab 7 and measure against yourself first.
Sales
| KPI | Typical UK range | Best-in-class |
|---|---|---|
| Used days on market | ~73 days (market avg) | ~46 days |
| Over-60-day overage | Keep in single figures % | Minimal |
| F&I — service contract pen. | ~45–46% | 50%+ |
| F&I — GAP penetration | ~40% | 45%+ |
| Products per deal (PPD) | 1.3 – 1.7 | 1.7+ |
| Front / back-end GPU | Set your own (vs budget) | — |
| Conversion (new / used) | Set your own (vs budget) | — |
Used DOM: UK market data, Oct 2025. F&I penetration: UK/industry Q1 2026. GPU and conversion vary too widely by brand and site for a public figure — benchmark against your own budget.
Aftersales & site
| KPI | Typical range | Best-in-class |
|---|---|---|
| Overhead absorption | Aftersales covers ~75p / £1 | 100%+ |
| Technician productivity | ~70% target | 85%+ |
| Service gross margin % | Healthy around three-quarters | Higher, tightly controlled |
| Service retention | ~60% benchmark | 70%+ |
| First-time fix | Set your own baseline, improve monthly | High 90s% |
| Hours per repair order / ELR | Set your own (vs door rate) | — |
| Staff attrition | Lower is better | Well below sector |
Absorption: UK accountancy guidance (aftersales "covers ~75p in every £" of overhead; over 100% achievable with tight cost control). Productivity/retention are widely-cited operational targets. Margin and ELR depend on your labour rates — benchmark internally.
My Targets
Your live RAG tracker. Enter a target and an actual for any KPI; the tool flags it. Set whether "higher is better" (most KPIs) or "lower is better" (overage, attrition, days-to-prep, repeat repairs).
| KPI | Direction | Target | Actual | Gap | Status |
|---|
The 10% amber band is a sensible default. For a KPI where you want a tighter or looser tolerance, judge the status against your own appetite — the flag is a prompt, not a verdict.
Org & Capacity Tracker
A blank version of the org chart a Head of Business really uses — not a static diagram, but a live capacity model. Enter each role, the headcount you need, the headcount you have, and (optionally) the daily capacity per head. It flags where you're short.
| Role | Dept | Needed | In post | Gap | Capacity / head | Status |
|---|
How the flag works
Gap is needed − in post. Green means fully staffed; amber means short by one; red means short by two or more, or a role with nobody in post. Capacity per head is optional — use it to translate a headcount gap into lost daily throughput (e.g. two technicians short × 6 billable hours = 12 hours a day you can't sell).
Leading the numbers
The KPIs in this Playbook are only half the job. The other half is how a leader uses them — as coaching tools that grow people, or as weapons that teach people to hide. Same dashboard, opposite cultures. This is the executive layer: how the numbers become development.
Numbers as coaching, not ammunition
The KPI conversation that develops someone runs in a fixed order: what does the number say — what's behind it — what help do you need? The manager who opens with the gap gets defensiveness; the manager who opens with the story gets the truth. And never ambush anyone with a number in public: praise on the floor, coach in private. A team beaten with daily figures learns one skill — managing the figure, not the business.
Give every number an owner — then grow the owner
Every KPI on the My Targets tab should have one named owner who presents it at the monthly review — not the manager presenting on everyone's behalf. Owning a number in front of peers is the cheapest leadership development there is: it teaches accountability, narrative and forecasting in one move. Stretch people by rotating them onto a number outside their comfort zone with the authority to move it.
The one-to-one, structured by three numbers
A monthly one-to-one built on the three numbers the person owns: the trend (never the snapshot), what they tried, what worked, and one agreed improvement for next month with the support named. Twelve of those a year is a development programme; twelve status chats is a diary entry.
Succession through the scoreboard
The Org & Capacity tab isn't just about gaps — it's the succession map. For every key role ask: who's ready, who's one number away from ready, and what would stretch them there? Filling a vacancy is recruitment; never having one is leadership.
The leadership red flags
Watch for these in yourself and your managers: beating people with daily numbers · changing targets mid-month · celebrating only outcomes, never the behaviours that produce them · reviewing everything and owning nothing · the dashboard replacing the walk of the floor. The rhythm on Tab 1 tells you what to review; leadership is deciding what you'll go and see instead.
The chain behind the numbers
Every KPI in this playbook is the last link in a chain. Chase the number alone and you get short-term movement and long-term damage; understand the chain and the number follows.
Process is what the KPI measures
A KPI is not a target to be hit by any means — it's a read-out of whether the process beneath it is running. Efficiency reflects workshop discipline; days-in-stock reflects pricing discipline; conversion reflects follow-up discipline. Move a number by breaking its process (discounting to shift metal, skipping checks to raise efficiency) and you damage the chain and the number rebounds worse. Fix the process and the KPI moves and stays moved.
Reading a KPI honestly
The temptation is to treat a red KPI as a person to chase. Read it instead as the chain pointing at a loose link. A rising comeback rate, an ageing stock line, a falling conversion — each names a process to inspect, not a colleague to blame. That reframe is what turns a scorecard into a diagnostic.
Accountability — clarity, not blame
A number should have one clear owner who knows what "good" looks like and expects to be asked — supportively, predictably. Accountability for a KPI is "you own this line, here's what good looks like, how can I help you move it" — never using the dashboard as a monthly search for who to embarrass. The dashboard used to blame is the dashboard people quietly learn to game.
Working the numbers with AI
AI is a capable analyst's assistant for everything in this Playbook — trend reads, variance commentary, formula checks, meeting packs. Used well it gives you hours back; used carelessly it invents benchmarks and leaks data. The 4Ds framework — the same one that underpins the whole SMART AI series — keeps you on the right side of that line.
The 4Ds, applied to KPI work
Delegation — what to hand over
Keep human: setting the targets, judging people's performance, and the final numbers that go to the board — AI drafts, you decide.