The 4 numbers every trades owner should watch every Monday
You do not need a dashboard with forty metrics on it. Most owners who build one stop looking at it within a month because it tells them everything except what to do.
Four numbers, checked every Monday, tell you whether last week actually made money and where it leaked if it did not. Three of the four trace straight back to your pricebook, which is the part most owners miss.
1. Average ticket
Revenue divided by completed jobs. It tells you what a typical job is worth, and it moves the moment your book starts presenting options instead of single flat numbers. When every job is take-it-or-leave-it, the ticket is whatever the cheapest yes is.
When the book offers good, better, best built so each tier answers a different question, the average ticket climbs because customers choose up. If this number is flat, look at whether your techs are presenting options or quoting a number.
2. Close rate
Jobs sold divided by opportunities. A low close rate sends owners chasing more leads, which is the most expensive way to fix it. More leads poured into a book that hands techs an indefensible price just means more no’s.
Close rate moves when the price is presentable, which is why techs discount when the book is broken: they are buying the close with margin. Fix the book and the close rate rises without spending a dollar on marketing.
3. Gross margin percentage
Revenue minus the direct cost of the job, divided by revenue. This is the truest one, because a shop can grow revenue and lose money if margin is leaking. And margin is set in the pricebook, on the loaded labor rate.
If prices were built on a guessed rate, or if costs rose and the book never followed, this number sags no matter how hard the crew works. A slipping gross margin with steady revenue almost always means a pricing problem, not a production one.
4. Billed-hour efficiency
Billed hours divided by paid hours. This is the one number of the four that is mostly not about the book, it is about scheduling and dispatch: are your paid technician hours turning into billable work, or into windshield time and gaps. Watch it to catch a dispatch problem early, before it shows up in the bank account.
Why three of four point at the book
The pattern is the point. Average ticket, close rate, and gross margin are all decided by what is behind the tablet, and that is the pricebook.
An owner watching these four every Monday will see a pricebook problem as three numbers moving together, weeks before it shows up as a cash problem.
That is the early-warning system, and the cheapest fix is almost always the book, not more trucks or more ads. It is the same reason a perfect ServiceTitan implementation can still lose money daily: the software runs fine while the pricing behind it bleeds.
Where to start
If average ticket, close rate, and margin are softer than they should be, look at the book before the team. The free Pricebook Health Audit reads your export and shows you the option gaps, the soft prices, and the margin leaks driving those three numbers. When the answer is a rebuild on a real loaded labor rate, that is the work we do.