You pay for every hour an operator is clocked in, but you only get paid for the hours that land on a job. The difference - direct versus indirect time, and how efficiently the direct time produces standard hours - is one of the biggest controllable levers in a shop, and one of the least visible. This dashboard splits paid floor time into direct and indirect, then measures how much standard work the direct hours actually earn.
What this dashboard answers
It answers two distinct productivity questions that owners tend to blur together. Clock Efficiency % (Direct) is direct (job) hours divided by paid hours - the share of paid time booked to billable work versus indirect or idle. Earned-Hour Efficiency % is earned standard hours divided by direct hours - how productively the time on jobs is spent. An operator can score well on one and poorly on the other, and the fix is completely different in each case.
The metrics that matter
Clock efficiency exposes time leaking out of jobs - meetings, waiting on material, cleanup, machine problems - captured here as Indirect Hours broken down by reason. Earned-hour efficiency exposes pace against standard. A per-operator bar for each, plus a department-level run/indirect/idle split and a weekly trend line, turns "are my people productive?" into a number you can manage instead of a feeling.
Why this data is trapped
Direct and indirect hours come from the same shop-floor time clocks that feed labor cost into JobBOSS (E2 Shoptech), Global Shop Solutions, ECI M1 / Epicor, or the QuickBooks-based setups smaller shops run. The ERP uses those clockings to cost jobs, but it doesn't usually surface a clean direct-versus-indirect productivity view per operator and per department. That summary is another after-the-fact spreadsheet - if anyone builds it at all.
How to read it
A low clock efficiency means paid time isn't reaching jobs - read the indirect-by-reason bar to find out why (material waits and machine downtime are common culprits, and they point back to scheduling and maintenance, not the operator). A low earned-hour efficiency on solid clock efficiency means the time on jobs is slow against standard - a training, tooling, or standards question. The Operator-by-Week matrix surfaces whether a dip is a one-week event or a pattern worth a conversation.
The sample uses realistic synthetic operator-week data - no real employees, hours, or payroll records.
Metrics it tracks
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Paid Hours | Total clocked, paid floor time across all operator-weeks. |
| Direct (Job) Hours | Hours clocked directly to work orders. |
| Clock Efficiency % (Direct) | Direct hours divided by paid hours - share of paid time booked to billable jobs versus indirect or idle. |
| Earned-Hour Efficiency % | Earned standard hours divided by direct hours - standard hours produced per direct hour worked. |
| Indirect Hours | Non-job clocked time - meetings, cleanup, maintenance, waiting. |
| Operator-Week Count | Number of operator-week rows in scope. |
Used by: Owners, shop foremen, and operations managers tracking labor productivity
Frequently asked questions
What is clock efficiency in a machine shop?
Clock efficiency is the share of paid floor time booked directly to jobs - direct hours divided by paid hours. The rest is indirect time: meetings, material waits, cleanup, maintenance. A low number means you're paying for hours that never reach a billable work order.
How is earned-hour efficiency different?
Earned-hour efficiency measures how productively the direct (job) time is spent - earned standard hours divided by direct hours. Clock efficiency asks whether time reaches jobs at all; earned-hour efficiency asks how fast that time runs against the quoted standards. They have different fixes.
Can I build this on my own labor data?
Yes. Export operator clockings split into direct, indirect, and idle with the standard hours earned, then use this as a template. We model it into a Power BI report. The sample is fully synthetic, so there's no real payroll or employee data in what you see here.
Build this report on your own data
Clone this Machine / job shops template — describe it and we’ll generate sample data so you can try it free, or upload your own export. You get a fully modeled, branded Power BI project that opens in Power BI Desktop.
Use this as a template →