WARRANTY ADMIN PAY

[2wheels4me]

I'D APPRECIATE SOME FEEDBACK ON WARRANTY ADMINSTRATOR ANNUAL EARNINGS. I WANT MY W/A HAPPY BUT I DON'T WANT TO PAY TOO MUCH EITHER.
WE ARE A LUXURY IMPORT DEALER IN A LARGE METRO MARKET IN THE S.E. ALSO, IS YOUR W/A RESPONSIBLE ONLY FOR WARRANTY PROCESSING OR DOES HE/SHE "MULTITASK"?

THANKS IN ADVANCE.

[jtr8178]

We make our warranty administrator also act as the cashier and "closer" of all tickets. We are in the truck business, so its a little different, but she is the last one to handle the r/o's, close them (after we've reviewed the lines and coded them), collect money, file warranties (5 different manufacturers), collect funds, etc... We do about 200k a month in sales, so its just about enough to keep her busy.

[texaslp]

In answer to 2wheels, there was a previous discussion on this and warranty admin pay was all over the place, depends on many things.

To jtr, a caution that someone who handles warranty, booking and cashiering has the opportunity to steal.

[Lhansen]

A lot of dealerships I work with pay their W/A a good salary and a bonus based on lack of overaged claims. If the W/A also acts as cashier or has customer service duties, they often share in any CSI based bonuses.
A good Warranty person can be worth their weight in gold! They can keep you out of trouble, but as in all positions within the dealership, there have to be checks and balances in place for accountability!

Thanks!

Linda

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Linda Graham Hansen
Auto Dealer Focus www.autodealerfocus.com

[This message has been edited by Lhansen (edited 08-11-2006).]

[GMFXDOPSMGR]

I am just changing the w/a at this store. I will set him up on a good salary and a tiered % comm for paid claims gotten from the credit memo. There will also be a bonus for our WINS report being kept under or at reginona/national level. We are a GM store.
Dealersedge has a good pay plan manual.

[jargonaut]

As a long time warranty administrator who has worked at quite a few dealerships over the past 25 years I personally always find myself taking on new and different challenges and tasks at the places of my employment beyond just the scope of warranty.But sinceg good warranty admin is the end result of a concerted team effort on everyone's part in service and even sales. As the point man for "good admin" I strive to educate and train all the people who supply me a piece of the warranty puzzle. This takes time and effort so when first starting at a store with poor admin and requiring to overhaul the system per se , I spend alot of time training and providing the insight into what is required of people to maximize warranty claim values legitimately. This isnt easy since everyone is concerned with their little domain from parts to techs to sales.
That being said I dont thing a commission on warranty claims is a good pay incentive since it could precipitate the view of an auditor of misrepresentation on the part of the warranty person. I prefer a good solid weekly pay rate based on the person's skills and atttiude as well as work ethic and then a bonus based on some attainable numbers like perhaps reject rate (this isnt a great barometer of excellent warranty admin though) or the cleanliness of the 263 schedule as to aging etc. Always strive to create a situation where the admin can achieve some goals with earnest work readily and some where it takes the real effort to achieve and even then sometimes you cant make it happen. This pushes me and should push a good admin too.
I have worked in stores where the history files were attrocious and required months of overhaul to make them useful for warranty admin and for techs etc. When it was required I would spend hours a day working on these files but after the time was spent the system worked and made life easier for myself and everyone else so to me this was a task required for the job and a good admin wouldnt balk at doing this task but I dont believe a warranty admin ought to play cashier full or even part time apart from perhaps the hourly lunch time of the usual cashier. This distracts too much from the job of getting the paper right and ensuring you lose as little as possible on each and every claim. That's right lose as little possible. I think you need to understand it is a losing game at times and everyone lose's something at some time so create an environment for the warranty admin to lose as little as possible.
Some of my thoughts on the issue. As to numbers they ought to make , this always depends upon your market and location as well as volume of warranty dollars allowing you to create the proper pay plan. Here in metro NYC upwards of 50-60K wouldnt be outrageous for the larger claiming points. Even higher isnt unheard of but of course lower is too

[kcatdeejay]

....I was just wondering what constitutes 'paying too much' for a warranty administrator who is both worth their weight in gold and does an outstanding job.......?

[robc]

How much is too much? How about $250K, how about more than the GM makes, how about more than the SM makes? I know the phrase "I don't want to pay too much" gives such a bad taste, but seriously, for any job under the sun, there is a limit to what you can pay. It is understandable for someone to want to know a range of pay and then offer on the higher end of it for a valued employee.

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** Rob, Editor Dealersedge/WD&S **
Help is only a message post away!
robc@dealersedge.com

[kcatdeejay]

"....and then offer on the higher end".....now that's a different program!