KPIs for Trades Businesses: What to Measure (And What's a Waste of Time)

You know the business is busy. Phones are ringing, trucks are rolling, invoices are going out. But busy and profitable aren’t the same thing. And busy today doesn’t tell you whether you’ll be busy in three months.

Most trades businesses — HVAC, electrical, plumbing, construction — track revenue and maybe gross profit. That’s it. Those numbers tell you what happened, but they don’t tell you why, and they definitely don’t tell you what’s coming next.

Here are the KPIs that actually matter for trades businesses, how to calculate them, and what to do when the numbers don’t look right.

1. Job Profitability

What it is: The actual profit on each individual job, after labour, materials, subcontractors, and direct costs.

How to calculate it: (Invoice amount - total job costs) / invoice amount = job margin percentage.

Why it matters more than revenue: A $50,000 job at 15% margin makes you $7,500. A $20,000 job at 45% margin makes you $9,000. Revenue tells you the first job was better. Profitability tells you the truth.

Track this per job, per job type, and per customer. You’ll almost certainly discover that some types of work are significantly more profitable than others — and that some customers consistently produce lower-margin work.

Job Type	Avg Revenue	Avg Margin	Avg Profit
Residential service calls	$680	52%	$354
Residential new builds	$18,400	22%	$4,048
Commercial fit-outs	$45,000	35%	$15,750
Maintenance contracts	$2,400/qtr	61%	$1,464/qtr

Suddenly, those small maintenance contracts look a lot more attractive than the big residential projects that keep your team busy but barely cover costs.

2. Quote-to-Close Ratio

What it is: The percentage of quotes that convert to accepted work.

How to calculate it: Number of accepted quotes / total quotes sent x 100.

Healthy range: 30-50% for most trades businesses, though this varies by trade, job size, and whether you’re quoting competitively or on referral.

A low quote-to-close ratio (below 25%) means one of three things: you’re quoting too high, you’re quoting too slowly, or you’re quoting the wrong work. A very high ratio (above 60%) might actually mean you’re leaving money on the table — you could be charging more.

Track this over time. If it’s trending downward, investigate. Are competitors undercutting you? Has your follow-up process slipped? Are you quoting jobs outside your sweet spot?

3. First-Time Fix Rate

What it is: The percentage of service jobs completed on the first visit, without needing a return trip.

How to calculate it: Jobs completed on first visit / total service jobs x 100.

Why it matters: Every return visit is a cost you didn’t quote for. The technician’s time, the travel, the rescheduling — and the customer’s frustration. For service-based trades (HVAC maintenance, electrical fault-finding, plumbing repairs), first-time fix rate directly impacts profitability and customer satisfaction.

Healthy range: 75-85% for most service trades. Below 70% and you have a systemic problem — either your techs aren’t carrying the right parts, they’re not getting enough information before the job, or you’re sending the wrong skill level.

What to do when it’s low:

• Check parts availability. Are techs arriving without common parts? Stock vans based on historical job data.
• Check job information quality. Is the customer describing the problem accurately? Are your call-takers asking the right questions?
• Check skill matching. Are apprentices being sent to jobs that need experienced techs?

4. Technician Utilisation Rate

What it is: The percentage of available working hours spent on billable work.

How to calculate it: Billable hours / total available hours x 100.

Healthy range: 65-80% for field service businesses. 100% is impossible — travel time, admin, training, and downtime are real. Above 85% and your team is likely burning out or cutting corners.

This is the single most important operational KPI for any trades business with field teams. A utilisation rate of 60% means four out of every ten paid hours aren’t generating revenue. That’s not laziness — it’s usually windshield time, waiting for parts, doing paperwork, or sitting in the yard between jobs because scheduling left gaps.

5. Average Job Value

What it is: The average revenue per completed job.

How to calculate it: Total revenue / number of completed jobs.

Why it matters: This tells you whether you’re trending toward higher-value or lower-value work. If average job value is declining while job count is increasing, you’re getting busier but not necessarily more profitable. You might be filling your schedule with small jobs that don’t move the needle.

Track this by job type and watch the trend quarterly. A rising average job value usually means you’re winning better work, upselling effectively, or successfully moving into higher-margin services.

6. Revenue Per Technician

What it is: Total revenue divided by the number of field technicians.

How to calculate it: Total revenue / number of techs (FTE).

Why it matters: This is your scalability metric. If revenue per tech is $280,000 and you add a technician, you should expect roughly $280,000 in additional capacity. If revenue per tech is declining as you add staff, your operations aren’t scaling — more people are producing less per person.

Healthy range: Varies enormously by trade and market. The important thing is the trend. Flat or rising is good. Declining is a warning sign — you’re adding cost without proportional revenue.

7. Debtor Days

What it is: The average number of days it takes to get paid after invoicing.

How to calculate it: (Accounts receivable / total revenue) x number of days in the period.

Why it matters: Cash flow kills more trades businesses than lack of work. You can be profitable on paper and still go broke if customers take 60 days to pay and your suppliers want payment in 30. Debtor days tells you how fast cash is actually coming in.

Healthy range: Under 30 days for residential, under 45 days for commercial. If you’re routinely above 60 days, you have a collections problem that’s eating into your working capital.

Putting It Together: The Trades Dashboard

If you tracked just these seven KPIs consistently, you’d have a clearer picture of your business than 90% of your competitors. Here’s how they work together:

• Job profitability tells you which work to pursue and which to avoid
• Quote-to-close ratio tells you whether you’re winning enough of the right work
• First-time fix rate tells you whether your operations are efficient
• Utilisation rate tells you whether your team’s capacity is being used well
• Average job value tells you whether the work is trending in the right direction
• Revenue per technician tells you whether growth is sustainable
• Debtor days tells you whether cash is keeping up with the business

Together, these seven metrics paint a complete picture: are you winning profitable work, executing it efficiently, and getting paid on time?

Start Tracking This Week

You don’t need a fancy dashboard to start. Open a spreadsheet, add these seven columns, and fill them in weekly. Even imperfect data — rough estimates of job costs, approximate utilisation — is better than no data.

After a month, you’ll have enough to spot patterns. After a quarter, you’ll be making decisions based on real numbers instead of gut feel. That’s the difference between running a trades business and managing one.

The spreadsheet will eventually become the bottleneck. When it does — when you’re spending more time building the report than reading it — that’s the signal to automate. But the first step is simply knowing your numbers. Everything else follows from there.