The Labour Recovery Cheat Sheet

What you'll learn

This free resource gives you everything you need to understand, calculate, and improve your recovery rate.

• The simple formula to calculate your recovery rate today
• What the best-performing trade businesses target, and why
• Where the gap opens up and how to find it in your business
• Three quick fixes to close the gap without adding headcount
• The maths: what one extra recovered hour per tech really means
• Benchmark bands so you know exactly where your business sits

Why it matters

Labour is typically 50–60% of a trade business's total cost base. It's the biggest line on the P&L, and yet most businesses manage it reactively, without ever knowing their actual recovery rate. Recovery doesn't drop dramatically. It drifts:

• Scheduling gaps, idle time between jobs that nobody tracks
• Travel time that's paid but not recovered through invoiced work
• Hours logged late or forgotten at the end of a long day
• New staff in the schedule before they're fully productive
• Variations absorbed on-site that never make it to the invoice

None of these are dramatic failures. They're operational drift, and they're fixable once they're visible. This cheat sheet gives you the formula, the benchmarks, and the three habits that close the gap.

Who this is for

• Trade & service business owners
• Operations managers and office teams
• Businesses managing multiple crews or growing teams
• Companies using job management systems like Simpro or AroFlo
• Anyone who suspects labour recovery is lower than it should be
• NZ & Australian trade businesses of all sizes