17 numbers every service business owner should know

You don't need a dashboard with fifty charts. You need a short list of numbers that answer three questions: where does the work come from, does the work make money, and is the cash there when bills come due. Each item below says what the number is, how to calculate it, and what to do when it looks wrong. Most of them come straight out of a CRM that records the lead source, the quote, the job and the invoice in one place. Pick a day each month and look at all of them together.

1. Leads by source

Count new leads each month, split by where they came from: Business Profile, website, referrals, past customers, signs, each paid platform. The split matters more than the total. A month with fewer leads but more referrals may be a better month. To make this number reliable, the source has to be recorded the moment the lead arrives, from a fixed list, as our lead source tracking guide explains. "Internet" is not a source.

2. Time to first response

Measure the minutes between a lead arriving and a real person or system replying to it, for calls, texts and form fills. Speed matters. The authors of a 2011 Harvard Business Review piece sent web inquiries to 2,241 U.S. companies, and 23% of the firms never replied. In a separate data set of 1.25 million leads that the article also reports, firms that tried to reach a lead within the first hour were close to seven times likelier to qualify it than firms that tried an hour after that. Track your median response time by channel, and look hardest at evenings and weekends. More in speed to lead for contractors.

3. Missed calls

Count inbound calls that went unanswered, and how many of those callers you reached afterward. Your phone system's call log has the raw data. A missed call during business hours can be a lost job, because the caller can simply try the next company. If the number is high, look at when the misses happen: on job sites, at lunch, after five. Then fix that window with call routing, a text-back or an answering service.

4. Close rate on quotes

Divide jobs won by quotes sent, by month and by source. A low close rate on referrals points to a pricing or follow-up problem; a low close rate on a lead platform may just mean you're competing with several other companies for the same customer. Track it by the person quoting too, if more than one person sends estimates. Before you cut prices, check follow-up: a quote nobody followed up on tells you nothing about your price.

5. Average ticket

Total revenue for the month divided by the number of jobs. Watch it by job type and by source. If your average ticket from one channel is half what it is from another, the cheaper leads may be costing you more per dollar earned. Raising the average ticket with add-ons, options and minimum charges can be easier than finding more jobs.

6. Cost per booked job

For each paid source, divide what you spent by the jobs it produced, not the leads. If a platform charged $600 for twenty leads and three became jobs, each job cost $200 to win, before any labor. Compare that with your margin on those jobs. This is the number that shows whether a lead source is paying for itself. Our guide to cost per lead vs cost per job walks through the math.

7. Gross margin by job type

For each kind of job, take the revenue and subtract the direct costs: labor with payroll taxes, materials, disposal and equipment wear. Divide by revenue. You may find one or two job types carrying the business and one that looks busy while barely breaking even. Price, minimum charges and the service area are the levers. Do this from real job records, not memory.

8. Revenue per crew hour

Divide the month's revenue by the total hours your crews were paid. It folds speed, pricing and drive time into one figure you can compare month to month. If it falls during your busiest season, something is leaking: too many small jobs, long drives between stops, or unpaid extra work. Compare crews against each other, and against the hourly floor you priced from.

9. Billable utilization

Billable hours divided by paid hours. A crew paid for forty hours that bills twenty-eight is at 70%. The other hours go to driving, loading, waiting on materials, weather and callbacks. Some of that is unavoidable, but routing jobs by area and keeping trucks stocked can recover hours every week. Track it per crew, and check it again after any change to the schedule.

10. Callback and redo rate

Count the jobs that needed a return visit to fix or finish something, divided by total jobs. Every callback is an unpaid trip and a customer who is less likely to leave a good review. Record why each one happened: missed spot, wrong part, customer misunderstanding. Patterns point to training, checklists or how the job was described on the quote.

11. Days to get paid

Measure the days from job completion to payment, and list every invoice over thirty days old. Slow collection can quietly starve a profitable company of cash. Taking card payment on site, sending invoices the same day and keeping cards on file for recurring work all shorten it. The options are compared in online payments for contractors. Call anything past sixty days personally; a polite phone call can work where a third emailed reminder didn't.

12. Recurring revenue and plan cancellations

If you sell plans or recurring service, track how much revenue is on a recurring schedule each month and how many plans were cancelled. Recurring work makes the schedule more predictable and can lower what you spend to win each dollar. A rising cancellation count is an early warning about quality, price or communication, often before it shows up in total revenue.

13. Repeat customer rate

Of the customers you served last year, what share booked again this year? For seasonal and maintenance trades, this number carries much of the business. Low repeat rates mean you are paying to win the same kind of customer over and over. Reminders sent off the last job date, plans and a simple rebooking text are the usual fixes. Split it by service, since a customer who rebooks gutter cleaning but never calls back for windows tells you something too.

14. Review count, rating and recent reviews

Track your total Google reviews, the average rating and how many arrived in the last 30 days. Recent reviews tell new customers you're active. Google's local ranking tips say prominence, meaning how well-known a business is, is based partly on how many reviews it has, and that a higher review count with good ratings can help where a business ranks locally. If new reviews stop arriving, check your asking process before you blame the crew.

15. Booking lead time

How many days out is your next open slot for a typical job? Too short, and you need more demand. Too long, and you are losing customers who won't wait, which is your cue to raise prices or hire. Write this number down every week during the season. It is the simplest real-time view of supply and demand you have.

16. Website visits to calls and form fills

Count how many visitors your site gets and how many of them call, text or submit a form. Google Analytics, which Google offers free of charge, measures specific interactions such as link clicks as events, so once it is set up you can count quote requests and phone-number taps. A site with plenty of visits and almost no contacts likely has a page problem: slow loading, no clear phone number, or a form nobody can finish on a phone. Our website service builds that tracking in from the start.

17. Months of fixed costs in the bank

Add up the costs you pay no matter what: rent, insurance, truck payments, software, owner draw, core payroll. Divide your cash on hand by that monthly figure. That is roughly how many months the business could cover its fixed costs through a bad stretch. Seasonal companies usually want more cushion, because the slow months come every year. Watching this number is how you decide when to buy a truck, hire, or hold off.

Where to start

Start with three. Leads by source (item 1), because without it none of the marketing numbers can be trusted. Cost per booked job (item 6), because it tells you which sources to keep paying for. Days to get paid (item 11), because cash problems can sink a profitable company. Set up a fixed monthly review and add the rest as your records improve. If your numbers are spread across a phone, a spreadsheet and an invoicing app, a single CRM puts most of them in one place, which can make the monthly review much quicker.

Frequently asked questions