How to plan bench capacity for a bike workshop

Every workshop has a number: how many bikes a day it can take and still get them out on time. Most have never worked it out, so the booking page is set to whatever felt right in February and the bench is three days behind by October. This guide finds that number and defends it. It supports running a bike repair workshop.

Count bench hours, not opening hours

• Start with the hours mechanics are on bikes. Subtract the counter, the phone, the parts chase, the bike that needs cleaning first
• For most small shops that's about six hours a day per mechanic, not eight. Measure a week before arguing
• Work out what an average job costs in bench time from last month's completed jobs, grouped by tier, honest about the ones that overran
• Two mechanics at six hours is twelve bench hours. At 1.5 hours a job that's eight bikes a day, not the twelve your booking page offers

Turn hours into window capacities

1. 1Split your daily bike number across your arrival windows. Eight bikes is four morning and four afternoon, not eight in the morning because that's when people come.
2. 2Take 20% off for slack: the rush job, the warranty argument, the regular with a flat.
3. 3Set the rest as the capacity on each window, per weekday. Monday and Saturday are not Wednesday.
4. 4Add date overrides for public holidays, stocktake and the week your senior mechanic is away.
5. 5Leave it a month, then compare promised against delivered. Raise capacities only after turnaround holds.

Set capacity to what you can do well on an ordinary day, not what you can survive on a good one. Six bikes back on Thursday beats ten with four late.

Not every hour fits every job

If one person does your suspension and hydraulic work, suspension bookings are limited by that person's days, not the shop's total hours. Velobook handles this with per-mechanic skill levels (Can do, Prefers) and required skills per service. Auto-assign picks a qualified mechanic inside their working days and daily cap, and assigning by hand warns if you're over someone's limit or short a skill, without blocking.

Cap how far ahead people can book

An open-ended diary locks in today's prices and staffing for a year, and fills spring with winter bookings whose plans have since changed. A booking horizon fixes both: a rolling window (nothing past 60 days out) or a fixed cutoff date. Velobook has no limit by default, so set this on purpose.

Plan for the season, not the average

• Look at last year's booking counts by month and find the two or three weeks where demand doubles
• Decide in advance which lever you pull: more windows, higher capacity with a longer promised turnaround, a rush surcharge, or closing the booker earlier in the day
• Watch the awaiting-parts count too. A bench full of bikes waiting on a supplier is an ordering problem, and more capacity makes it worse

Pitfalls to avoid

• Setting capacity from opening hours. The gap to bench hours is usually a quarter of the day.
• Zero slack. A plan with no room for surprises fails on its first bad morning.
• One capacity for every weekday. Saturday is not Wednesday.
• Ignoring who can do what. Total hours mean nothing if the job needs the one person who isn't in.
• Raising capacity to clear a backlog. Turnaround first, capacity after.