Where a service job loses money: the five leaks

Every job passes through five stages: the call, the dispatch board, the visit, the closeout and the books. At each stage one person hands the job to another, and each hand-off is a place where something can be dropped. A caller waits too long. An open afternoon stays open. A better option isn't shown. A part isn't billed. A payment sits in a truck.

None of these feels like much on one job. Across a year of jobs they add up to real money, and most of it never shows up in a report because nobody recorded what didn't happen.

1. The call: the lead that waited

The first leak happens before anyone reaches the house. A web lead waits an hour for a call back and books with the next company on the list. A call comes in during lunch and goes to voicemail. A CSR takes the call but doesn't book it, and nobody notes why.

What to measure

• First-response time by source. How long a web lead, a text and a missed call each wait before someone replies.
• Booking rate by CSR. Calls answered against jobs booked, for each person and for the team.
• Unlogged calls. Calls with no outcome recorded. Each one is a lead you can't follow up.

How to close it

Put calls, texts and web leads in one queue so nothing waits in a separate inbox. Require an outcome on every call before the CSR moves on. Show the next seven days of open slots on the CSR's screen, so the job is booked while the customer is still on the phone.

2. The dispatch board: the afternoon nobody filled

A board can look full and still have room. One technician has two open hours after a job finished early; another is booked tight with drive time nobody counted. When the board doesn't show capacity, the CSR tells a customer "Thursday" when Tuesday afternoon was free.

What to measure

• Booked hours against available hours, per technician and per day, for the last two weeks.
• Callbacks, and whether each one was linked to the original job and its warranty.

How to close it

Put capacity on the board itself, per technician and per day, marked as room, tight or full. Show leave and time off on the same board. Link every callback to the job it came from, with the warranty coverage and the technician who did the work, so a covered callback isn't billed and an uncovered one isn't given away.

3. On site: the option nobody showed

The technician fixes what was asked and leaves. The customer with a 15-year-old system, or a water heater near the end of its life, never hears what a replacement would cost. Or they hear one price, say "let me think about it", and nobody calls back.

What to measure

• Estimates with only one option, as a share of all estimates.
• Open estimates with no follow-up date. Each one is a decision waiting for a call nobody has planned.

How to close it

Put Good, Better and Best on every estimate, so repair and replacement sit side by side. When the customer wants time, set a follow-up date on the estimate itself instead of leaving it to memory.

4. Closeout: the part that never reached the invoice

Materials come off the truck during the job: an extra breaker, more wire than planned, a fitting that wasn't on the estimate. If the invoice is built from the estimate rather than from what was used, those parts are given away. Photos, signatures and payment details go missing in the same way, and the office spends the next week chasing them.

What to measure

• Materials used against materials billed, job by job, for a sample of recent jobs.
• Jobs closed with something missing: no photos, no signature, no payment or no invoice sent.

How to close it

Reconcile materials used against the plan for each work order before the job closes. Give each job type a closeout checklist, and don't let the technician submit the job until every check is done. Then have dispatch review each submitted job before anything is paid or stamped.

5. The books: the payment that sat in a truck

Cash and checks collected on site travel in a truck until someone hands them in. Some arrive days later. A few never arrive, and nobody notices until the customer shows a receipt. Separately, commission paid on revenue rewards jobs that made little money as much as jobs that made a lot.

What to measure

• Undeposited funds by technician, and the age of the oldest payment each one holds.
• Commission against gross profit on your ten most material-heavy jobs.

How to close it

Track every payment to the person holding it until it is handed in and deposited, with shorts and overs posted. Pay commission on true gross profit, and hold it until the customer has paid. Our guide to commission on true gross profit covers how.

A one-hour audit you can run this week

You don't need new software to find out how big your leaks are. Pick ten jobs closed in the last month and work through them with your office manager.

1. For each job, put the estimate, the invoice and the list of parts that came off the truck side by side. Note any part used but not billed.
2. Note how many estimates offered more than one option, and whether "let me think about it" had a follow-up date.
3. Check whether each job had photos, a signature and payment before it was closed, and how long it took the office to get anything missing.
4. Pull last week's missed calls and web leads, and how long each waited for a reply.
5. List payments collected on site last month and the day each was deposited.
6. For your three most material-heavy jobs, compare the commission paid with the gross profit the job made.

Multiply what you find on ten jobs by the jobs you run in a year. That is the size of the problem, in your own numbers.