How do cleaning businesses automatically track job costing and profit margins for recurring clients?
Hi all! In our cleaning business we have a lot of recurring clients with lots of visits for the same job. 85% is recurring and 15% one off jobs. however, the reporting options for job costing and profit margins for recurring jobs are not as good as the one off jobs. there are integrations that will pull live data from jobber and push into google sheets for example - but only using the triggers “job closed” or “job updated”. As most of our jobs never close, we are looking for a visit-based data pull that functions automatically. I have a google sheets dashboard with metrics based on the visits report, but requires Manual data pull daily to track performance. any suggestions? cheers!The Number I Wish I Watched Before Adding More Work
For a long time, growth meant adding more customers. Now I pay a lot more attention to revenue per hour of field capacity. Two routes can bring in similar revenue and have completely different economics. One might be tight, efficient, and easy for a technician to complete. The other might have longer drive times, slower properties, awkward scheduling, and enough dead time that the revenue isn’t nearly as valuable. That changed how I look at growth. I’d rather add 10 customers that strengthen an existing route than 20 scattered customers that make the schedule worse. The same goes for pricing. A job can look profitable until you account for how much technician time and route capacity it actually consumes. What metric has changed the way you decide whether new work is actually worth taking?“Your prices are probably too low.” 💸
Winning almost every job you quote? Gabe Chrismon (Oply) says that could be a sign you’re charging too little. More jobs can keep you busy, but the extra driving, paperwork, and labor can eat into what you actually take home. 💬 Comment below: Have you ever realized you were charging too little? How did you know, and did you raise your prices? In this Masters of Home Service episode, Gabe shares the hidden costs of taking on more jobs, how to test higher prices with new customers, and ways to explain an increase to longtime customers. Never miss an episode of Masters of Home Service. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's the best way to do job costing?
Hello everyone, I have been inconsistent with adding expenses to each job. How are other jobber users adding expenses to each job to see your profitability per job? Are you having your techs keep track of parts/fittings used on a separate form and then adding that to the job after the job has been completed? Trying to find an easy way to keep track of this and get it entered into jobber. Thanks ErnieWhat marketing channel works best for you right now???
Hello, We are currently evaluating our marketing strategy to improve lead consistency and build deeper community trust. While we currently use Yelp, we find the results inconsistent and often attract price-shoppers rather than long-term clients. :( Moving forward, I would like to pivot our focus toward community-based marketing, such as sponsoring local schools and Little League teams. These sponsorships build the kind of long-term goodwill and trust that ensures local homeowners think of us first during emergencies. To clarify our strategy, we are avoiding the following channels: - Lead Aggregators (Angi, Networx, HomeAdvisor): These platforms sell the same lead to multiple contractors. The requirement to respond within seconds to avoid losing the job—while still being charged—does not align with our workflow. - Yelp for Major Projects: Due to high cost-per-click metrics and a high volume of price-sensitive inquiries, we find this to be a low-return channel for larger plumbing jobs. Your Friendly Neighborhood Plumbers,Are You Building a Business or Just Creating Yourself Another Job?
It’s easy as a small business owner to get caught up doing everything yourself. At what point do you start delegating, hiring, or putting systems in place so the business can operate without you being involved in every job? I’d love to hear how other owners are making that transition while still keeping quality and customer service high.Those who charge for inspections, do you have a flat rate or does it depend on the property?
I recently got a request for a rodent assessment for a house that is about 10,000 sqft, an absolute monster of a house with 6 levels, a 4 car garage (buddy has a McLaren 750S, Porsche 917, Ford GT and a Range Rover!!!), vehicle lifts, elevator, separate chef kitchen, indoor pool...the works! I told the homeowner my standard fee for a more modest sized house, and that I would have to triple that to be able to spend the time at their home and not feel rushed. They did agree and made no issue out of it but it did make me wonder how other people approach this. Then I found the issue areas and they were about 3-4 times as many as a regular house and the cost reflected that. More doors, vents, cracks, holes, utility lines...it was insane. Should I have kept the inspection charge the same knowing I would find many many more holes or was it smart to up the inspection charge?What’s Your Target Gross Margin vs. Actual Net Margin? Let’s Benchmark.
In home services and contracting, top-line revenue gets all the attention, but net profit pays the bills. Many trade operators aim for a 40–50% gross profit margin to retain a healthy 15–20% net margin, but actual figures vary significantly based on team size and trade complexity. A standard healthy benchmark breakdown often looks like: Cost of Goods Sold (Direct Labor + Materials): 50–60% of revenue Overhead & Operating Expenses: 25–30% of revenue Net Profit Target: 15–20% of revenue I’d love to benchmark with the community: Are you hitting your target net margins consistently as you scale, or is overhead creeping up faster than revenue? Where are you seeing the biggest pressure on your margins today?Should customers pay more if they refuse auto-pay?
Auto-pay saves a lot of admin time in a recurring service business. Manual billing sounds simple until invoices sit unpaid, cards fail, reminders pile up, and someone has to decide whether to pause service. That extra follow-up has a cost. I don’t think every customer who avoids auto-pay is a bad customer. Some people just prefer more control. But if one customer requires more billing work every month, should they pay the same price as someone on auto-pay? I’m starting to think manual billing fees make sense. Something simple like: “Auto-pay is included with monthly service. Manual invoice payment is available for an added admin fee.” Do you require auto-pay, charge more for manual billing, or let customers pay however they want?Service Agreement Ideas for Project Based Businesses
This one has got me racking my mind. One thing they always talk about when you are building enterprise value in a business is having predictable revenues. I think for something like window washing, lawn care, poop scooping etc it'd be easy to have predictable revenues because it's pretty straightforward to have a re-occuring service agreement. But what about us GCs? I originally thought I could get people with a membership for a percentage off jobs. This seemed like a good idea till the first two people to sign up only did so because they had large $40k plus jobs so it was a no brainer (it paid for itself 2x over). If I tried to make the percentage off smaller, it wouldn't be enticing enough to get people interested. Let's brainstorm here guys - what can a general contractor do as a monthly or quarterly service to get in to the service agreement game?
