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Do not trust a contractor lead ROI calculator unless the costs and outcomes come from the same cohort. If provider spend covers one month while sold jobs include older referrals, the result is not source ROI. It is a ratio built from unrelated records.
The downloadable worksheet below starts blank on purpose. It contains formulas, not industry defaults. Enter the costs, lead stages and gross profit recorded by your business. The output then shows acquisition cost, cost per sold job, gross-profit return and the close rate required to cover acquisition cost.
Download the contractor lead ROI calculator
Download the contractor lead ROI worksheet as a CSV. Open it in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers or another spreadsheet that supports standard formulas. The file includes:
- blank cells for provider spend, sales labor, estimate cost and other source-specific acquisition cost;
- blank cohort fields for delivered, replacement, usable, reached, qualified and sold records;
- formulas for cost at each stage, attributed gross profit and gross-profit ROI;
- formulas for break-even sold jobs and break-even close rate;
- validation checks that flag impossible stage counts.
Use the working worksheet
Download the CSV, enter one matched lead cohort, and keep the original file as an unchanged template.
The spreadsheet uses IF guards so a blank input or zero denominator does not create a false numeric answer. Google’s IF-function documentation and Microsoft’s IF-function documentation describe the compatible conditional logic. Inspect the formulas after import because spreadsheet locale and CSV import settings can vary.
Keep one untouched download, then save a copy for each source and cohort. That prevents an overwritten input from changing an earlier renewal decision.
Enter one matched lead cohort before calculating return
A cohort is the group of records purchased and worked under the same declared conditions. At minimum, keep the source, delivery window, trade, territory and product consistent. If any of those changed materially, split the data.
Record these stages without changing their definitions during the review:
| Cohort field | What belongs in it | What does not belong in it |
|---|---|---|
| Delivered records | Every record supplied during the cohort window | Only the records your office liked |
| Replacement records | Replacement deliveries received under the written remedy | Original records removed from history |
| Usable records | Records retained after documented invalid-data decisions | Unreached homeowners removed without the policy basis |
| Reached homeowners | Records with a documented two-way homeowner conversation | Voicemail or an automated answer |
| Qualified opportunities | Reached homeowners meeting your written scope | Every delivered opt-in |
| Sold jobs | Jobs attributed under the same written rule and maturity window | Old jobs from another source or period |
The lead-to-sale conversion stages help keep these events separate. The calculator does not decide which record is qualified. Your company needs one written definition and must use it across every source being compared.
Open estimates require a declared treatment. Either wait for the cohort to mature, report them as open without counting a sale, or show a separate pending view. Do not count expected revenue as collected job economics.
Count the complete acquisition cost for the source
Provider spend is only the first input. A source that consumes more qualification, follow-up and estimating time can cost more even when its invoice is lower.
The worksheet calculates:
Sales labor cost = sales labor hours × loaded sales labor cost per hour
Total acquisition cost = provider spend
+ sales labor cost
+ estimate and travel cost
+ other source-specific acquisition costUse an inclusion policy your accountant or finance owner can repeat. Loaded hourly cost may include pay, payroll burden and other employment cost your accounting method assigns to that hour. Estimate and travel cost may include estimator labor, vehicle cost and other direct selling cost. Other source-specific cost can hold a CRM, phone, agency or landing-page allocation when it is applied consistently.
Do not add the same cost twice. If agency fees are already inside the provider-spend export, do not repeat them in other acquisition cost. If estimator labor is already inside the estimate-cost input, do not add those hours to sales labor.
General customer-acquisition cost divides acquisition spending by acquired customers. Shopify’s CAC explanation describes that basic relationship. This contractor worksheet narrows it to one lead source and makes the selling costs visible. The contractor customer-acquisition cost guide covers the broader company-level metric.
Use gross profit instead of top-line job revenue
Revenue can make a source look healthier than the work it sold. A job creates payroll, material, subcontractor and other direct costs before it contributes toward acquisition and overhead.
The worksheet therefore asks for gross profit per sold job under your existing accounting definition:
Attributed cohort gross profit = gross profit per sold job × sold jobs
Gross profit after acquisition cost = attributed cohort gross profit
- total acquisition cost
Gross-profit ROI = gross profit after acquisition cost
/ total acquisition costIf sold jobs have different gross profits, replace the simple multiplication with the actual total gross profit from those attributed jobs. Keep the accounting basis consistent. Do not compare collected gross profit for one source with estimated gross profit for another.
Cash timing also matters. A source can show positive job economics while deposits or final payments arrive after acquisition bills are due. The US Small Business Administration’s financial-management guidance points small businesses toward bookkeeping, balance-sheet and cash-flow control. ROI does not replace a cash forecast.
Calculate the break-even close rate from your own margin
Break-even answers a narrower question: how many sold jobs, at the entered gross profit, are required to cover this cohort’s acquisition cost?
Break-even sold jobs = total acquisition cost / gross profit per sold job
Break-even close rate on usable records = break-even sold jobs / usable recordsLeave the unrounded break-even sold-job result visible. Operations still need a whole job to cover a real cost, but the fractional result carries useful precision into the close-rate formula.
The observed sold-job rate uses the same usable-record denominator:
Observed sold-job rate = sold jobs / usable recordsCompare observed performance with break-even only after the cohort has had time to close. A result above the threshold describes that recorded cohort. It does not promise that the next cohort will repeat it.
The cost-per-booked-job guide owns the earlier appointment-stage calculation. Do not substitute bookings for sold jobs in the ROI formula unless the decision being measured is explicitly cost per booking.
Keep replacements visible in the ROI worksheet
A replacement changes the cohort but should not erase its history. Record the original delivery, the replacement decision and the replacement record separately.
This preserves three different questions:
- How many records did the provider deliver?
- How many records met the written invalid-lead remedy?
- How much staff work did the complete cohort consume?
If a replacement arrives without another source charge, provider spend remains unchanged. Delivered-record and labor counts can still change. The replacement is not costless merely because the invoice did not increase.
Use the provider’s actual policy. Do not label every unreachable or unqualified homeowner invalid. Store the reason, evidence, submission date and decision. The calculator reports the economics after that process; it does not create replacement eligibility.
Interpret the calculator as a cohort record, not a forecast
The worksheet can support four decisions:
- Continue the source when a mature cohort clears the company’s threshold and the operating load remains acceptable.
- Fix the sales process when routing, response ownership or missing dispositions make source quality impossible to judge.
- Renegotiate scope or terms when repeated losses cluster around trade, territory, replacement rules or buying unit.
- Stop or switch the source when matched, mature cohorts stay below the company’s threshold after controllable process failures are corrected.
It cannot prove future ROI, isolate every outside influence or make a small cohort statistically stable. Weather, sales staffing, job mix, territory, pricing, financing, seasonality and attribution rules can all change between cohorts.
Do not average away the reason for a loss. Preserve invalid data, unreachable homeowners, out-of-scope work, lost estimates and sold jobs as separate dispositions. One weak stage needs a different fix from another.
Enter current theBuildd terms only after confirming fit
The current theBuildd trial is $200 once for 4–7 exclusive leads. Lead Generation is $3,000 per month, or $2,500 with LAUNCH25. The two-week plan is $2,000, or $1,800 with LAUNCH25. Lead Generation + SEO is $3,500 per month, and LAUNCH25 does not apply. The monthly plan lists 10–15 exclusive leads per week.
Those plan facts do not fill the calculator’s outcome cells. Leads are delivered by text and email within 10 minutes, and the contractor performs qualification. There is one buyer per lead through theBuildd. The homeowner may still seek other quotes independently. Eligible bad leads are replaced rather than refunded. Results are not guaranteed.
Confirm residential trade and ZIP coverage before using a plan price in a budget. Review current pricing and terms, download the worksheet, and enter your own labor, margin and outcome data. If the buying model fits your process, request a trade-and-territory conversation before treating any ROI result as a purchase decision.