Materials, Missed Revenue, and What’s Coming Next
In our most recent webinar, OEC RepairLogic Experts Jeremy Dibble and Alex Koehler sat down to talk through one of the most overlooked costs in collision repair today: materials that are required by OEM procedures and get used in the bay but are never captured on the estimate. The team also provides market context, real examples from shops, and a live demo of a new RepairLogic feature designed to surface material requirements before the repair scope is finalized, not after.
Missed the webinar? Click below to watch the recording!
The market context: fewer jobs, higher stakes
Koehler opened by sharing what his team hears from shops every day: claim counts are down roughly ten percent compared to Q1 of last year, and larger, more comprehensive repairs have declined by about fifteen percent over the past twelve months. Add sentence to introduce the data/metrics below
- ~10% Drop in claim counts, Q1 year-over-year
- ~$500 Average materials cost per estimate
- 7M+ OEM procedure changes in Q4 alone
But, with all that said, the question he hears most often: how do we get more out of the jobs we do have?
Part of the answer, they argued, is already sitting inside your estimates. You’re just not capturing it yet. On average, there’s roughly $500 in materials on every repair. When 10-20% goes unbilled, that’s up to $100 per job left on the table. Across a week’s worth of work in a slow market, that figure compounds quickly.
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Why materials fall through the cracks
Dibble was direct: this isn’t a technician problem. It’s a workflow problem. OEM procedures are dense and numerous, averaging fifteen-plus minutes each to read thoroughly. Plus, material requirements are scattered throughout them rather than surfaced in one place. On a structural repair involving multiple procedures, tracking every adhesive spec, sealer requirement, fluid grade, and cavity wax application isn’t realistic under normal shop conditions.
Compounding that, OEM procedures change constantly. RepairLogic saw over 7 million updates to OEM documents in Q4 alone, including roughly one million brand-new procedures. A vehicle your shop has repaired before may carry entirely different material requirements on the current model year.
“You may have repaired the exact same vehicle three years ago, but it’s different now. And that also comes with the materials perspective.”
— Alex Koehler, Manager, OEC
The examples Dibble shared from shops in OEC’s collision repair network made it clear how high the stakes are:
- Structural adhesives, $80+ per tube, are often missed on the estimate and absorbed by the shop
- Seam sealers, when missed, affect the longevity of the repair
- Cavity wax gets skipped more regularly than most owners realize – as confirmed through post-repair quality audits
What stands out isn’t the cost of any single missed material, but how often the same items go uncaptured on estimates across shops.
The demo: what the new RepairLogic Materials feature looks like
Dibble walked attendees through a live demo using a 2026 Chevrolet Corvette, which is the perfect vehicle to demonstrate the kind of complexity shops are increasingly seeing. In the rear structure alone, the new feature surfaced adhesive, fluid, lubricant, and sealer requirements at the procedure level, all before scope was finalized.
Click below to watch the webinar recording and see the live demo for yourself!
What the feature gives you:
- Procedure-level tags: identifying where adhesives, fluids, lubricants, and sealers are required and are visible during the estimating process
- A full materials report: consolidating every requirement across all relevant procedures into a single downloadable PDF
- OEM part numbers (where available): so your parts person is ordering the right product from the start
- Source documentation traceable to the OEM: ready to support any carrier conversation about why a specific material is on the estimate
“We’re not going to change information or procedures,” Dibble said. “We’re just going to bring those out and highlight them.”
How to use the new Materials feature in RepairLogic
The Materials feature recently launched on RepairLogic. For shops already using RepairLogic, it will appear automatically with no additional configuration required. If you want to see how this would work for the vehicles you repair every day, you can book a one-on-one demo with our team.
