Labor is the largest controllable expense in a veterinary practice, and the lever that decides whether a busy clinic is actually profitable. Under-leveraged doctors doing technician work, creeping overtime, and a labor cost ratio that drifts above benchmark all eat margin that the production reports never reveal. This dashboard makes staffing efficiency visible by role, week, and clinic.
What this report answers
The labor-and-leverage page answers the core staffing questions: total labor cost, total hours worked, the labor cost ratio against production, and tech-to-DVM leverage, broken out by role and clinic. The overtime-and-efficiency page answers where the waste is: the overtime rate by role and the production each labor dollar buys, trended by week.
The metrics that matter
Labor cost ratio — labor over production — is the headline; it's the single number that tells an administrator whether staffing is sized to revenue. Tech-to-DVM leverage is the productivity lever specific to veterinary medicine: well-leveraged doctors hand off everything a credentialed technician can do, which raises both production and morale, while low leverage means expensive doctor time spent on tech work. Overtime rate is the creep metric — small per week, large per quarter — and production per labor dollar ties the whole thing back to output.
Why the data is trapped across the systems
Hours and wages live in the timeclock or payroll system; production lives in the PIMS. The two are almost never joined, so labor cost ratio and production per labor dollar can't be computed without exporting both and aligning them by week and clinic. Tech-to-DVM leverage requires splitting hours by role, which payroll has and the PIMS doesn't. That join is exactly what canned reporting skips.
How to read it
Read labor cost ratio trended by week against your target band first — a steady climb means staffing is outrunning production. Read tech-to-DVM leverage next: low leverage is a coaching and scheduling fix that lifts production without new hires. Then read overtime by role to find the chronic over-runs, and use production per labor dollar by clinic to compare sites on efficiency rather than raw cost.
The sample on this page uses fully synthetic data — anonymized staff and clinic ids, no real payroll.
Metrics it tracks
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Total Labor Cost | Sum of wage cost (regular + overtime) across staff in the period. |
| Labor Cost Ratio | Labor cost ÷ production revenue — a SUM/SUM ratio, the headline staffing-efficiency measure. |
| Tech-to-DVM Leverage | Technician/support hours ÷ doctor hours — a SUM/SUM ratio, how well doctors are leveraged. |
| Overtime Rate | Overtime hours ÷ total hours worked — a SUM/SUM ratio. |
| Hours Worked | Sum of total hours worked across all staff. |
| Production per Labor Dollar | Production revenue ÷ labor cost — a SUM/SUM ratio, output per dollar of payroll. |
Used by: Hospital administrators managing technician/support leverage, labor cost ratio, and overtime
Frequently asked questions
What is a good labor cost ratio for a veterinary practice?
Labor cost ratio is total labor cost divided by production revenue, and it's the headline staffing-efficiency number. The right target band varies by model, but a ratio trending steadily upward means staffing is outrunning production — which is the signal to act on, more than any single benchmark figure.
What is tech-to-DVM leverage and why track it?
Tech-to-DVM leverage is technician and support hours divided by doctor hours. Well-leveraged doctors hand off everything a credentialed technician can legally do, which raises production and morale; low leverage means expensive doctor time spent on technician work. It's one of the most actionable productivity levers in veterinary medicine.
Can I build this on my own labor and production data?
Yes. Export hours and wages from your timeclock or payroll system and pair them with production from your PIMS, then use this as a template — we model it into a Power BI report. The sample uses synthetic data, so there's no real payroll here.
Build this report on your own data
Clone this Vet clinics 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 →