If You're Not Measuring It, You Can't Improve It
Most field service contractors can tell you roughly how busy they've been. Very few can tell you their average revenue per job, their customer retention rate, or what percentage of their estimates convert to bookings. Without those numbers, you're guessing about which parts of your business to improve — and improvements that are based on guesses mostly don't work.
This guide covers the six metrics that actually matter for a field service business, how to calculate them, and what levers to pull when they're off.
The 6 KPIs That Matter
1. Revenue Per Job
How to calculate: Total revenue ÷ total jobs completed in the period
Why it matters: Tracks whether your average job size is growing or shrinking. A declining revenue per job often means you're doing more small work or discounting more heavily.
Improve it by: Upselling adjacent services, eliminating below-minimum jobs, or raising rates on underpriced service categories
2. Estimate Conversion Rate
How to calculate: Jobs booked ÷ estimates sent × 100
Why it matters: A low conversion rate means your estimates aren't closing — due to price, speed, professionalism, or all three.
Good benchmark: 50–70% for residential, 25–45% for commercial
Improve it by: Sending estimates faster (within 24 hours), following up on open estimates, and improving estimate presentation
3. Customer Retention Rate
How to calculate: (Customers who booked again this year ÷ all customers from last year) × 100
Why it matters: Retaining customers is 5–7x cheaper than acquiring new ones. A low retention rate means you're spending heavily on growth just to stay flat.
Good benchmark: 60–75% for annual services; 80–90% for recurring plans
Improve it by: Adding post-job follow-up, offering recurring plans, and identifying the customers who didn't come back (ask why)
4. Average Days to Invoice
How to calculate: Average days from job completion to invoice sent
Why it matters: Payment speed correlates directly with invoicing speed. Every day of delay between job completion and invoice delivery extends your cash conversion cycle.
Good benchmark: Same day (ideally within hours)
Improve it by: Sending invoices from the job site on job completion
5. Utilization Rate
How to calculate: Billable hours worked ÷ total available working hours × 100
Why it matters: Tells you how efficiently your capacity is being used. A technician who's available 40 hours/week but only billing 25 has a 62.5% utilization — there's 15 hours/week of unrealized revenue.
Improve it by: Better route planning, faster job transitions, and filling schedule gaps with same-day availability
6. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
How to calculate: Total marketing spend ÷ new customers acquired in the same period
Why it matters: Tells you how much you're paying per new customer across all channels. Lets you compare the ROI of Google Ads vs. door hangers vs. referrals.
Improve it by: Tracking which channel each new customer came from; double down on low-CAC channels
Monthly KPI Dashboard Template
| Metric | This Month | Last Month | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per job | — | — | — |
| Estimate conversion % | — | — | — |
| Customer retention % | — | — | — |
| Avg days to invoice | — | — | — |
| Utilization % | — | — | — |
| Customer acquisition cost | — | — | — |
Fieldbase generates most of these KPIs automatically from your job data — revenue per job, estimate conversion, and days-to-invoice are all calculated from activity you're already recording.
Key Takeaways
- Track six metrics monthly: revenue per job, estimate conversion, customer retention, days to invoice, utilization, and CAC
- A declining revenue per job often signals discounting creep or too many small jobs
- Same-day invoicing is the single highest-impact change for improving cash flow
- Customer retention below 60% means your business is on a treadmill — acquire and lose in equal measure
- Track new customer sources to identify your lowest-CAC marketing channel and invest there