How to manage multiple technicians in a repair shop

When you work alone, all the shop's information lives in your head: you know which phone is in which drawer, who to call and what's left to order. The moment a second or third technician joins, that memory stops working. You get the "I thought you were doing it", the repairs nobody touches and the customers calling about a device no technician remembers. Managing multiple technicians isn't about working faster: it's about getting the information out of your head and making it visible to everyone. This guide gives you the system, step by step.

1. What changes going from 1 to several technicians

The most common mistake when you grow is to keep working the way you did as a one-person shop, just with more hands. It doesn't work. Three things change all at once:

• Assignment stops being obvious. Before, every repair was yours. Now someone has to decide who takes each device, and if you don't decide, chance does (or the technician who prefers the easy jobs).
• Status stops living in your head. If three people touch repairs, nobody has the full picture unless it's written somewhere shared and up to date.
• Handover becomes critical. A device that goes from the front-desk person to the technician, and from the technician to whoever hands it back, crosses three sets of hands. Every jump is a chance to lose information.

The good news: all three problems are solved by the same principle. Every repair must have, at all times, a visible owner, a clear status and a history of what's been done. Without that, every extra technician you hire adds chaos instead of capacity.

2. How to split and assign repairs

Assigning well isn't dividing equally. A good split takes into account specialty, difficulty and urgency. These are the criteria used by shops that grow without jamming up:

By specialty

If one is fast at microsoldering and another flies through screen swaps, don't force them to do the opposite. Assign by strength whenever you can: a board-level job given to your microsoldering tech yields twice as much as if someone who only does it occasionally takes it.

By workload, not by order of arrival

Don't assign "the next one to whoever's free" without looking. Check how many open repairs each person already has. The goal is that nobody is drowning while another waits for work.

By urgency

Mark priority (normal, high, urgent) on the repair itself. A customer waiting in the shop while you fix their phone can't be in the same queue as a device due next week.

The medium doesn't matter as long as it's shared and kept up to date: a whiteboard can work for two people in a small shop, but past three technicians or two shifts it falls short fast. This is where repair shop management software makes the difference: the assignment is recorded, visible to everyone and changeable in one click.

3. Controlling each technician's workload

"Who's overloaded?" should be a question you answer at a glance, not something you discover when a customer complains about a delay. Workload is controlled by looking at two things: how many open repairs each technician has and how many are still waiting to start.

With a picture like this, the decision is obvious: the next non-board job goes to Lucía, and it's worth moving a queued job from Marcos to Ana if it's compatible. Without this view, the split is done "by feel" and almost always goes wrong: the technician who talks the most looks the busiest, and the quiet one ends up buried.

A board organized by status (received, in progress, waiting for part, ready, delivered) with the technician's name on each card gives you exactly this reading. At a glance you see who has a full "in progress" column and who's empty.

4. Permissions and employee accounts

Giving each technician their own account isn't just tidiness: it's security and traceability. If everyone logs in with the same user, you'll never know who did what, who applied that odd discount or who closed a repair that wasn't finished.

What you should be able to control per employee:

• Individual access: each technician with their own username and password. If one leaves, you revoke their access without touching the others.
• Role-based permissions: a technician doesn't need to see the cash report, the margins or the rest of the team's data. Each one should see only what they need to do their job.
• Traceability: a record of who received the device, who repaired it, who applied which price and who handed it back.

With individual accounts you can also start measuring properly, because every repair is tied to whoever did it. And that opens the door to the next part: productivity and commissions.

5. Measuring productivity and commissions

If you want to reward your top performer —or simply know who to train— you need numbers, not impressions. With every repair attributed to a technician, you can look at real per-person metrics:

• Closed repairs: how many each one completes per week or month.
• Revenue generated: the value of the jobs they've closed.
• Average time per repair: useful to spot who's fast and who gets stuck (careful: fast isn't always better, cross it with repeat rates).
• Return rate: repairs that come back under warranty. A high rate flags rushing or a lack of training.

Commissions that motivate without breaking the bank

A typical scheme is to pay the technician a percentage of the labour (not the total, which includes the part cost) on the repairs they close. For example, 10–15% of labour. To work without friction, the commission should:

• Be calculated only on repairs that are delivered and paid, not open ones.
• Be based on labour, so nobody earns commission on the cost of the part.
• Subtract (or not count) repairs that come back under warranty, to reward work done well, not just fast.

Doing this by hand every month is a spreadsheet nightmare. If your system already attributes each repair to its technician and stores the labour and payment status, the calculation almost does itself. To understand which part of the ticket is commissionable, it helps to be clear on your real margin per repair: commissioning on the total instead of on labour can leave you with no profit.

6. Avoiding bottlenecks and handover errors

The two enemies of a shop with a team are the bottleneck (all the work jammed in one person or one step) and the handover error (information lost as a device passes from hand to hand). Here's how to tackle them:

Bottlenecks

• The owner as the cork: if everything goes through you for approval, you're the bottleneck. Delegate routine decisions (standard prices, clear warranties) and save your time for what truly needs your judgment.
• The single specialist: if only one person can do microsoldering and ten boards pile up, those jobs stop. Train a second one even at a basic level, and prioritize their queue.
• Waiting for parts: repairs stalled waiting for a spare nobody ordered. A visible "waiting for part" status stops them from drifting into limbo.

Handover errors

Handover is the most fragile moment. A device changes hands from the front desk to the technician and from the technician to whoever delivers it, and at each jump you can lose the reported fault, the unlock pattern or the accessory it came with. The way to lock it down is to keep every repair with a living record: status up to date, notes on what was done and everything received written down. A good device check-in and check-out system helps a lot here, so no phone changes hands without leaving a trail.