Finding and capping a >$4M p.a. leak

======================================
CASE STUDY 1 (SEE)

TITLE: $5.4M a year of paid time that never reached an invoice

CLIENT: National equipment dealer, service division

THE PROBLEM
Technicians were being paid for their hours, but a large share of those hours never made it onto a job or an invoice. Payroll and invoicing ran on separate systems, so nobody could see the gap. Unapplied time was running at $5.4M a year.

WHAT THE DIAGNOSTIC FOUND
Comparing hours paid with hours billed showed the size of the leak. Tracing the difference showed where it came from: technicians working but not clocking to a job, and hours worked that never reached an invoice. The two systems didn’t talk to each other, and no one owned the gap.

WHAT CHANGED
We closed it two ways: billing the hours that were being worked, and finding where the rest was going. Then we fixed the process and the discipline behind it, so the people running the shifts owned the number.

THE RESULT
Unapplied time fell from $5.4M to $890K a year, a cut of $4.5M (84%). It stayed there.

THE LESSON
If your systems can’t see where paid time goes, you can’t manage it. The first job is making the waste visible.