Bookkeeping and financials for a auto body shop
Body shop books are harder than most trades because a repair order mixes four things with very different margins: parts, labor, paint and materials, and sublet. Averaged together they hide the problem. Separated, they tell you which work to chase.
The month should close with gross profit broken out by those four categories, direct repair program work separated from customer-pay, and marketing spend split by channel so cost per booked repair is a number instead of a feeling. A shop can be busy on program work at a negotiated rate and still be losing ground once paint materials and cycle time are counted honestly, and the books are the only place that shows up.
Worth tracking every month as well: parts gross profit percentage, sublet margin, technician efficiency against hours flagged, and how much of the month's revenue came from work you sourced yourself. That last one tells you whether your marketing is building an asset or subsidizing somebody else's program.
Two weeks in, working means one clean month closed, transactions categorized, and a profit and loss you can read in five minutes without translating it.