Profitability per coach: which coach makes money

To find out which coach makes money, you have to subtract, for each coach and over a period, what it cost from what it brought in. Not by service: diesel, the workshop and insurance go by coach, not by wedding or excursion, and spreading them by eye gives margins that look right and are not.

This is how Bus Center calculates it: profitability by coach and by period, with services that have no amount counted separately and what was really invoiced alongside for comparison. And with quote conversion measured only on what has really become a service.

Why profitability is measured by coach and not by service

Because a fleet's big costs do not go by service. Diesel is bought when needed, the workshop comes when it is due and insurance is paid per vehicle. If you try to say how much one particular wedding made, you have to spread those costs using an invented criterion, and the result depends more on the criterion than on the wedding.

That is why Bus Center does not give profitability by service. It gives it by coach and by period, which is where income and costs really meet: what that coach brought in with its services and what it cost over the same time.

What goes into the calculation

For each coach, Bus Center adds up the income from the services done in the period (those completed, invoiced or paid) and subtracts its costs: fuel, workshop and the rest of the expenses charged to that coach. If you do not choose dates, the period is the current year.

With that data, each coach comes out with its services, its income, its costs, its result and its margin, and, if kilometres are logged, the cost and income per kilometre. Coaches are sorted from highest to lowest result, so you can see at a glance which one is carrying the business and which is not.

Expenses not tied to any coach, such as a stray toll or a fee, are shown separately and deducted from the company total, without charging them to a coach that did not generate them. Everything is calculated by reading what is already there: no total is stored that goes stale when someone corrects an invoice.

When reading the result, do not draw conclusions from a single month. A coach with a low result may have been through the workshop that quarter, or may have done services that have not yet been priced. Compare several periods, look at the number of services with no amount and check the cost per kilometre: a coach that costs much more per kilometre than its siblings usually deserves a visit to the workshop or a conversation with the driver.

Services with no amount, counted separately

A service with no amount on its sheet is income that is not in the calculation. Instead of giving a pretty margin from incomplete data, Bus Center counts those services separately and warns you: how many services have no amount recorded, and that their income is not in the figures.

That warning is not lost money: it is invoicing still waiting to be recorded. The fix is simple and lies in the office: put the price on each service when it is confirmed, not at the end of the quarter.

What was really invoiced, alongside

Next to the income that comes from the services, Bus Center shows what was really invoiced in the period, according to the invoices issued. It is the cross-check that stops margins from misleading: the price on the service sheet is sometimes filled in and sometimes not; the invoice always is.

If the invoiced amount is far higher than the services' income, the difference is almost always amounts not yet recorded. And to see what each customer brings in, the record of each school, company or individual keeps its history: services, quotes, invoices and amount invoiced.

Quote conversion, really measured

The other business question is how many quotes end up as a trip. Bus Center answers it with three separate numbers. What is certain: how many quotes were sent in the period and for what amount, and how many are still waiting. What is measured: the truly converted ones, which are the quotes that have become a service in the program. And an estimate, labelled as such, that matches quotes and services of the same customer and the same destination, without looking at dates.

The converted number starts at zero and grows with use of the program: it is the only way to measure it properly. Quotes that come from paper or from an earlier file cannot be matched with their services, and the program does not invent that match. If you want to refine your quotes, see how a coach quote is prepared.

What it takes for the number to be good

Profitability by coach is only as good as the data feeding it. Three habits make it reliable:

• Every service with its coach and its price, from the moment it is confirmed.
• Every expense charged to its coach: the receipts drivers send in, once approved, already go in that way; we explain it in driver expenses on the road.
• Fuel too, as a coach expense: profitability subtracts the expenses charged to each coach, and the refuels on the fuel record, which give consumption and cost per kilometre, are a separate record; we cover it in fleet fuel tracking.

With that, the question of which coach makes money stops being an impression. The rest of what the program does is in Bus Center's features (in Spanish).