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KPIs for Every Seat in a Contracting Company

Contractor Lane editorial guidance. Reviewed October 12, 2026. Examples are illustrative, not industry benchmarks.

Short answer: give every seat two to four numbers that show whether its work is getting done, define each number in writing, and review them weekly in the same order. The goal is not a dashboard with fifty charts. It is that the owner can see in ten minutes which seat needs help this week.

The examples below are measures, not targets. Set your targets from your own history and the economics your company needs. A number with no definition and no owner is decoration.

Rules for picking a KPI

1. The seat can move it. Do not judge a CSR on revenue they cannot influence; judge them on booking rate.
2. It has a written definition, including the denominator. "Close rate" means nothing until you say closed what, out of what. See close rate versus booking rate.
3. It is measured the same way every week.
4. Show the count with the percentage when the count is small. Two out of three is not a trend.

Owner or general manager

• Net profit for the week and month, in dollars and as a share of revenue.
• Cash reserve after known short-term bills, including tax deposits.
• Open seats against the hiring plan.
• Leaders with a current weekly one-on-one.

Customer service and booking

• Call answer rate during staffed hours.
• Booking rate on qualified inquiries.
• Missed calls returned within a set number of minutes.
• Appointment confirmation rate.

Training help: training a CSR to book calls and the booking rate workflow.

Dispatch

• Jobs started on time within the promised window.
• Same-day capacity offered: slots available for urgent work.
• Schedule changes per day caused by the company, not the customer.
• Drive time as a share of paid field time, if your software tracks it.

Service technician

• Revenue per paid hour or per sold hour, defined one way and kept that way.
• Average ticket on comparable call types.
• Close rate on options presented.
• Callback rate on their work.
• Documentation completeness: photos and notes on every job.

Installer or crew lead

• Actual hours against estimated hours on completed jobs.
• Material used against material estimated.
• Punch-list items or callbacks per job.
• Jobs completed and invoiced the day the work finishes.

Helper and warehouse

• Truck stock accuracy at the weekly count.
• Unplanned supply house runs per week.
• Jobs staged the night before.
• Warehouse inventory count variance.

Billing, collections and bookkeeping

• Share of completed jobs invoiced the same day.
• Receivables older than 30, 60 and 90 days. The invoice aging tracker helps.
• Books closed and reconciled by a set day each month.
• Payroll and tax deposits made on time, every time.

Field leader or operations manager

• Team callback rate.
• Gross margin on field work.
• Technician retention past 90 days and past one year.
• Weekly one-on-ones held.

Marketing

• Cost per booked job and cost per completed, paid job by channel. Cost per lead is only a leading indicator.
• Qualified inquiries per week against the target your schedule needs. See how many leads you need.
• New reviews per week.

The weekly money check: six expense buckets

Alongside the seat numbers, review expenses weekly in six buckets, each in dollars and as a share of collected revenue:

1. Direct labor: field wages, technician commissions, installer pay and the payroll taxes and workers' compensation tied to them.
2. Materials: parts, job supplies and job-specific rentals.
3. Office labor: owner management pay, CSR, dispatch, admin and bookkeeping.
4. Marketing: ads, listings, website, call tracking, print and signs.
5. Vehicles: fuel, maintenance, repairs, vehicle insurance and truck payments if treated as operating cost.
6. Operations: software, rent, non-vehicle insurance, phones, licensing and general overhead.

Track sales tax, payroll tax liabilities, loan principal, owner draws and income tax separately, outside those buckets, so they do not hide inside an expense line. Each week, name the biggest leak against your budget and the correction you will make. The weekly owner meeting is where this review happens.

Running the weekly review in ten minutes

Use the same order every week so nobody has to hunt. Start with cash and the six buckets, then go seat by seat in the order work flows through the company: marketing, booking, dispatch, field, billing. For each number, the person who owns the seat says one of three things: on track, off track with a known cause and a fix already in motion, or off track and needs help. Only the third gets discussion time. Everything else is noted and the meeting moves on.

Write down every fix with an owner and a date, and start next week's review by checking last week's fixes. That habit, more than the numbers themselves, is what changes the company.

Mistakes that make KPIs useless

• Too many numbers. If a seat has ten measures, the person will watch none of them. Start with one or two.
• Changing definitions to look better. Once a definition is written, change it only on purpose and note the date, so trends stay honest.
• Using numbers only to punish. If every review becomes a blame session, people stop reporting problems early. Use the numbers to find where help is needed.
• Comparing across job types. A technician running drain calls and one running water heater installs should not be judged on the same average ticket.

How to start without a data project

Pick one number per seat this month. Pull it the same way every Monday into a simple sheet. Add the second number next month. Most field service software can produce the technician and booking numbers; the bookkeeping numbers come from your accounting system. Do not wait for perfect data. A consistent rough number reviewed weekly beats a perfect number nobody looks at.

Next: put these numbers into each role on your seat chart and use them to decide who to hire next.