Toronto, Ontario — September 4, 2018 — In May, Collision Advice and the CRASH Network have collaborated to bring Canadian repairers the first in a series of wide-ranging surveys. This week, the team has released the findings of the original survey, and placed a second survey online.
The current survey focuses on body, frame and mechanical labour procedures; shops can take the survey before the end of September by clicking below:
The first Who Pays for What, Canada?survey, the team examined shop billing practices and insurer payment practices – related to “not-included” refinish-related procedures. According to responses from more than 300 shops across Canada, just under 35 percent of shops acknowledge never having invoiced for the added time it takes to refinish the backside of a panel when it is necessary.
“Shops need to understand that the published refinish times are for one side of a panel and one side only,” Mike Anderson of Collision Advice said “You need to consider: Do you need to paint the top and the bottom? Or do you need to paint the inner and the outer? If you do, there may not be any labour time allowance for it.”
The results were similar for many of the refinish procedures covered in the first survey.
“This confirms something I see as I work with shops all across the U.S. and Canada,” Anderson said. “On this one procedure alone, 35 percent of shops aren’t even listing on their estimates something that more than 50 percent of shops that do are regularly getting paid for.”
In the information released today, it has emerged that half of the respondents bill and receive payment for the ostensibly ‘not-included’ service of refinishing back or underside of body panels, while one third of respondents do not bill for these services at all.
Anderson said the surveys, which will take about 15-30 minutes each, should be completed by the shop owner, manager or estimator who is most familiar with the shop’s billing practices and the payment practices of the insurers in their province. Each individual shop location (whether a stand-alone business or part of a multi-shop operation) may submit one response to the survey.
According to the survey team, a shop’s individual responses are held in the strictest confidence; only aggregated data is released. The second survey in the series, which focuses on body, frame and mechanical labour procedures, can be taken online here.
Survey participants receive a 75-page report with complete survey findings at no charge. The report also includes analysis and resources to help shops better understand and use the information presented. A link to the previous survey findings is included at the end of the current survey.
Collision Advice is an independent training and consulting firm featuring some of the most respected and experienced experts in the collision repair industry. CRASH Network is a subscription newsletter offering collision industry news and information not available from other sources.
