The Stuck Car Flag: turn the CCC ONE production report into a short list of stuck cars

This is the guide from the Cortex video on the Stuck Car Flag. It has the same three steps as the video, in the same order:

1. Switch on the emails. Turn on CCC ONE's scheduled UpdatePlus report emails, daily or weekly.
2. Flag what's stuck. An agent (or a person, to start) reads each report and flags only what breaks a rule, such as a car that has sat in one stage for days.
3. A person decides. The production manager or owner decides what happens to each flagged car.

A report is a pile of rows. The flag is the part somebody actually reads.

Step 1, switch on the emails

CCC's own UpdatePlus Reports job aid says UpdatePlus reports sit inside CCC ONE Estimating and Repair Workflow, with six more on cccone.com, and that a repair facility user needs UpdatePlus Status, or Status and CSI, to open them. The six on cccone.com are the Production, Performance, Feedback, Completion, Ranking and Trend reports.

The same job aid says the settings icon lets you email three reports to yourself on a weekly or daily basis. That is the switch most shops never flip.

What to set:

Report	Send	What it gives the flag
Production Report	Daily	Active repairs dropped off in a date range, the raw material for stuck cars
Feedback Report	Weekly	Post-delivery feedback by estimator
Performance Report	Weekly	Jobs delivered and estimate accuracy over the last six months

The job aid says the Production Report covers active repairs where the vehicle was dropped off in a date range, extendable to a 93-day window. Send the emails to a shared shop inbox rather than one person's address.

One caution: we could not confirm the exact format of the emailed reports from anything CCC publishes. Look at the first few that arrive before anyone builds rules on them.

Step 2, flag what's stuck

A flag rule is one plain sentence: when this is true, list the car. The thresholds below are our starting suggestions for a typical shop, not CCC numbers. Set your own from your board.

Flag	List the car when	Who looks at it
Stuck in stage	It has been in the same stage for 4 working days or more	Production manager
No start	It was dropped off 2 working days ago and repair has not started	Production manager
Past promise	Today is past the promised delivery date	Owner or CSR
Waiting on parts	It is marked as waiting on parts for 3 days or more	Parts manager
Unhappy customer	A CSI response shows dissatisfaction	Owner

Stage times differ by job, so one threshold for every car will flag the wrong ones. CCC's sponsored cycle time article in Claims Journal suggests splitting cycle time by driveable status, airbag deployment, vehicle age and coverage type. Its data is from 2015, so we do not use its numbers, but the idea works: give non-driveable, airbag-deployed cars a longer stage threshold than a driveable bumper job.

For the unhappy-customer flag, CCC says UpdatePlus CSI sends surveys by email or text within two days of a completed repair and sends instant alerts to the shop when a response shows dissatisfaction. Put those alerts on the same list, at the top.

To spot a stuck car you need yesterday's report as well as today's, because "same stage for four days" means comparing. Keep every daily email in one folder, or have the agent keep a copy.

A morning list looks like this (the shop and cars are examples):

Ridgeway Collision, 7:00 AM RO 3318, 2020 Camry, in Body 4 days (production) RO 3307, F-150, past promised date by 1 day (CSR) 1 CSI alert from yesterday (owner)

Step 3, a person decides

The flag never moves a car, orders a part or calls a customer. It puts the car in front of the right person with the reason, and they decide. That keeps your systems of record as they are and keeps the agent to reading and reporting. We explain the approach in the daily owner briefing.

Good habits for the person deciding:

• Clear the list before the first estimate of the day.
• Write one word next to each line: called, moved, waiting, fixed.
• If the same car is flagged three days running with "waiting", it goes to the owner.
• Once a month, look back at which flags fired most. A flag that fires every day for the same stage usually points at a staffing or parts problem, not a car problem.

Other ways in, when the emails are not enough

CCC's Repair Workflow has digital production boards, schedules, checklists and reports, so the board itself holds the stage data. If a builder needs more than the emailed reports, ask CCC which data channels your subscription includes before anything is scoped, and get the answer in writing. Many shops also have an export folder set up for other tools; we cover what it contains in what CCC ONE exports.

How to tell it worked

• The report emails arrive every morning without anyone running them.
• The list fits on one phone screen most days.
• No car sits in one stage for a week without someone having written a word next to it.
• CSI alerts are answered the same day.

For the full picture of reporting automation in a collision shop, read CCC ONE reporting automation for collision shop owners. If you would like help writing the rules for your shop, your free AI Operations Audit covers it.