Self-audit · 15 minutes
Home-service revenue leak checklist
Score ten handoffs between an enquiry and completed-job gross profit. The result is not a software shopping list; it is a ranked set of operating facts to verify.
Start with one representative month
Bring call logs, website enquiries, booking and dispatch records, invoices, job costs, open estimates, and membership lists from the same period. Record exclusions before comparing totals. Your baseline should be reproducible by another operator, not reconstructed from memory.
Phone coverage
Can you separate answered, abandoned, missed, after-hours, duplicate, and non-service calls?
- Baseline
- Eligible calls, answer rate, abandoned calls, missed calls recovered, and bookings.
- Owner
- CSR manager or dispatch lead who reviews exceptions and coverage.
Form delivery
Does every valid website request arrive once, promptly, with source and service context intact?
- Baseline
- Valid submissions, delivery failures, duplicates, first-view time, and bookings.
- Owner
- Marketing owner with an operations escalation path.
Response time
Can you measure from lead creation to acknowledgement and then to a meaningful human response?
- Baseline
- Median and range by source, business hours, and outcome.
- Owner
- CSR or sales lead responsible for the response queue.
Booking ownership
Is every qualified request assigned until it is booked, disqualified, or deliberately closed?
- Baseline
- Qualified leads, assigned leads, bookings, disqualifications, and unowned records.
- Owner
- Named dispatcher, CSR lead, or sales coordinator.
Estimate follow-up
Do open estimates have a stage, next action, consented channel, and stop condition?
- Baseline
- Open value and age, follow-up coverage, replies, appointments, wins, and lost reasons.
- Owner
- Sales lead who handles questions, exceptions, and final outcomes.
Membership reminders
Are due customers contacted against real capacity and current contact preferences?
- Baseline
- Members due, eligible records, outreach coverage, bookings, completions, and opt-outs.
- Owner
- Membership or service manager.
Source tracking
Can you trace an enquiry to a stable source without overwriting the original attribution?
- Baseline
- Known, unknown, duplicated, and conflicting source records.
- Owner
- Marketing and operations jointly approve source definitions.
Completed-job value
Does reporting distinguish quoted, booked, invoiced, collected, and completed revenue?
- Baseline
- Completed revenue by lead source and service line, with cancellations and refunds reconciled.
- Owner
- Finance or operations owner who approves completion rules.
Gross margin
Can you apply a defensible gross-margin input rather than treating revenue as return?
- Baseline
- Completed revenue less the direct costs included in the agreed margin definition.
- Owner
- Finance owner who documents inclusions, timing, and revisions.
Weekly review
Does one meeting resolve exceptions, assign actions, and compare the same measures over time?
- Baseline
- Open exceptions, overdue actions, trend by metric, and decisions recorded.
- Owner
- Operations leader accountable for the operating cadence.
Read the score without overreaching
0–7: establish reliable event and financial definitions first. 8–14: choose one handoff with enough evidence and ownership to improve. 15–20: validate data quality, then test whether a bounded workflow can change the chosen measure. Scores rank investigation; they do not forecast ROI.
For a trade-specific view, compare these checks with the HVAC revenue workflow map. If the leak is response time, use the speed-to-lead guide. When you have baseline inputs, run the ROI calculator.