A shop that charges $89 for a virus removal, $199 for a refurbished laptop, and $75 per seat for MSP sees one deposit in the bank and three different businesses in the ledger — and the deposit hides which one actually makes money.
Three Streams, Three Margins
Break-fix: One-time repair, often same-day, with parts and labor. Revenue is recognized on delivery. COGS is the part (screen, battery, SSD) at cost, and labor is the technician's time on that ticket. Break-fix margin is typically 45–60% before overhead, but utilization is spiky.
Refurbished sales: Used machines acquired via trade-in, wholesale, or customer drop-off that you refurbish. Inventory is the acquired machine at cost, plus parts and labor to refurbish, tracked per unit. A $120 acquisition + $45 in parts and 1.2 hours at $30 loaded = $201 cost. Sold at $299, margin is $98, 33%. Without per-unit costing, the shop that buys a lot of $60 trade-ins and refurbs them "because it's cheap" doesn't see the labor that makes it expensive.
MSP (managed services): Recurring per-seat support, often $75–$150 per endpoint per month, billed monthly as deferred revenue recognized ratably. MSP margin is high (70%+) when utilization is stable, but onboarding a new 10-seat client requires setup hours that must be deferred, not expensed all in month one.
Data recovery: A $600–$1,500 service with a high close rate and low COGS when successful, but a success fee that is often no-data-no-fee. Track recovery revenue separately; its margin subsidizes the front counter's low-margin screen repairs, and the blended margin hides both.
Keep Your Finances Organized From Day One
A repair shop is three businesses sharing one bench, one parts drawer, and one schedule. Split the streams, cost the refurb per unit, and defer the MSP, and the business that looks like a single deposit becomes three margins you can manage.
Beancount.io keeps each ticket as a transaction with stream, parts, and labor, version-controlled and auditable by the ticket number the customer already has. Get started for free and make the next repair price itself before the bench is booked.