The Data You Should Actually Track
Why this matters
Most shops either track nothing and run on gut, or track everything and drown in numbers nobody looks at. Both fail the same way: the owner cannot answer a simple question like "are we busier than last spring, and are we making more on each job?" The goal is not a dashboard with forty tiles. It is a short list of numbers that change a decision. If a number would not make you do something different, stop collecting it.
The test for keeping a metric
Before you track anything, ask one question: what decision does this number change? A metric earns its place only if a high reading and a low reading lead to different actions.
- "Average days to get paid" passes: if it climbs, you tighten collections.
- "Total clicks on the website this month" usually fails: it goes up and down and you do nothing about it.
Keep the ones that drive an action. Kill the rest. A short list you read every week beats a long one you read never.
The five that matter for almost every shop
These five cover money in, money out, and whether the work itself earns. Most shops can run on these alone.
| Metric | What it tells you | Why it changes a decision |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue this period vs last | Are we growing or shrinking | Drives hiring, marketing, and panic level |
| Average ticket (revenue per job) | Are jobs getting bigger or smaller | Flags underpricing or scope creep |
| Jobs completed per tech per day | Field productivity | Flags scheduling drag, drive time, or a struggling tech |
| Days to get paid (from invoice to cash) | Cash health | Drives when you chase money |
| Close rate (estimates that became jobs) | Sales health | Flags a pricing or follow-up problem |
Read these monthly, in the same format every time. The trend matters more than the single number. One slow month is noise; three in a row is a signal.
The next tier: track when a problem shows up
Do not start here. Add these only when one of the core five tells you something is wrong and you need to find out why.
- Callback rate (jobs you had to return to fix). Worth tracking once you suspect quality is slipping. Tie it to the tech and the job type, not just a shop-wide number.
- Revenue by job type or trade line. Worth it when you are deciding whether to add or cut a service line.
- Marketing source per booked job ("how did you hear about us"). Worth it before you change where you spend on advertising. See related: The Call Tracking Number.
- Estimate-to-paid cycle time. Worth it when cash feels tight and you cannot tell where the lag is.
The pattern: the core five tell you that something changed. The second tier tells you why. You do not need the why until you have the that.
Capture it once, at the source
The reason most tracking dies is that it depends on someone re-typing numbers into a spreadsheet at the end of the week. That always stops. The data you track should fall out of work you already do.
- The job record already knows when it was scheduled, completed, and invoiced. That is your productivity and cycle-time data, free, if you close jobs in the system instead of in your head.
- The invoice already knows the amount and the paid date. That is your ticket and your days-to-pay.
- The estimate already knows whether it converted.
If a number requires a separate, deliberate logging step that earns no other keep, it will not survive contact with a busy week. Build the metric out of the record you already have to create, and tracking becomes automatic instead of a chore.
Vanity numbers to ignore
Some numbers feel like progress and tell you nothing.
- Gross revenue with no profit context. A bigger top line at a thinner margin can mean you are working harder to make less. Watch revenue and average ticket together, never revenue alone.
- Website visits, social media followers, impressions. Movement here rarely maps to booked work. Track booked jobs by source instead.
- Hours worked. Long hours are an input, not an outcome. Jobs completed and revenue per tech tell you whether those hours produced anything.
The discipline is the same as the keep test: if the number going up does not put money in the bank or fix a problem, it is decoration.
The mental model to keep
You are not building a data warehouse. You are building a short, honest scorecard you will actually read. Five numbers you check every month and act on beats fifty you collect and ignore. Start narrow, add a metric only when a real question forces it, and capture everything from work you already do.
References
- U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), measuring small business performance
- Trade-standard practice for field-service operational metrics
- See related: The Dashboard Numbers That Matter; The Call Tracking Number; Cash vs Profit