Home-service AI ROI calculator guide

The full calculation

If monthly benefit is zero, payback is not applicable. The model keeps revenue, gross profit, and labor savings separate so a decision is not built on the largest-looking number.

What each input means

Monthly leads

Eligible new enquiries in a representative month, after documented spam and duplicate rules.

Missed opportunity rate

The share of eligible leads that were not answered, meaningfully contacted, owned, followed up, or resolved under the selected workflow.

Recovery rate

The share of those missed opportunities the proposed workflow could realistically recover—not every lead that exists.

Booking rate

The share of recovered, qualified opportunities that schedule a valid appointment.

Close rate

The share of additional booked opportunities that become the kind of completed job represented by the average value.

Average job value

Average completed revenue for the matching service mix, after cancellations, refunds, and exclusions.

Gross margin

The agreed share of completed revenue left after the direct costs included in the company’s definition.

Admin hours saved

Hours actually removed or redeployed each month—not the sum of every task touched by the workflow.

Loaded hourly cost

Wage plus the employer costs the finance owner agrees are relevant.

Implementation investment

The scoped implementation cost used for simple payback. Add ongoing software and operating costs separately when comparing net value.

How scenario ranges work

The expected scenario uses the recovery rate entered. The conservative scenario uses 60% of that recovery assumption. The upside scenario uses 125%, capped at a 100% recovery rate. Other inputs stay fixed, which keeps the comparison readable but does not model seasonality, capacity, lead mix, churn, financing cost, taxes, or uncertainty in every variable.

Change the inputs yourself to test those factors. Do not interpret the three outputs as confidence intervals or promised outcomes.

Avoid double counting

Double counting happens when the same benefit appears twice—for example, counting recovered jobs in gross profit and also treating all related office time as eliminated; counting revenue from an existing follow-up process as fully incremental; or combining technician capacity with jobs that the model already counted. Build a benefit ledger with one source, owner, calculation, and inclusion rule for each line.

Gross profit is more decision-useful than revenue, but it is still not net ROI. Subtract ongoing software, usage, oversight, exception handling, maintenance, financing, and other incremental costs before evaluating net return.

Implementation patterns from vendor-reported case studies

These are vendor-published, customer-attributed stories—not Build With Alivio client results and not independent studies. They show possible implementation patterns. They do not supply calculator defaults, prove AI-only causality, or guarantee a transferable result.

Validate before a proposal

1. Reconcile a representative baseline to the operating systems and financial record.
2. Choose one bounded workflow and name its human owner, escalation, stop conditions, and rollback.
3. Tag eligible records and define a validation window or practical comparison group.
4. Report booked work, completed work, completed revenue, gross profit, costs, exceptions, and customer harm signals separately.
5. Proceed only when the conservative case remains operationally credible.

For workflow context, review the HVAC systems page and the revenue leak checklist.