The Number That Tells You If the Ads Paid
Cost per booked job is your ad spend divided by the jobs those ads booked. $4,000 of ads that booked 16 jobs cost $250 a job. It matters more than cost per lead because it prices a job, not a call, and a job is what pays you. The number only means something next to what a job leaves after parts and the sub.
What Is Cost per Booked Job? The Price Ladder
An ad has several prices, and people quote different ones. Here is one example month for a garage door shop. Ad spend $4,000. All numbers are made up.
| Price of... | Divide spend by | Example | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| A click | 520 clicks | $7.69 | What Google charged for a visit |
| A call | 70 calls | $57.14 | What it cost to make the phone ring |
| A booked job | 16 jobs | $250 | What it cost to get a job on the schedule |
| A closed job | 12 jobs paid | $333.33 | What it cost to get a job done and paid |
Each step down the ladder is closer to money. The click price is the one Google shows you first. The booked job price is the first one that is about your business.
In HeadHoncho a lead is a job with a name, a phone and an address, and its cost is our own two counts: your spend divided by your jobs. So the Cost per lead figure on Statistics is already priced per job, not per call. We never use Google's click price. The rule is in the cost per lead entry.
The Derivation, Step by Step
Here is the whole month, one line per step.
| # | Step | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ad spend for the month | $4,000 |
| 2 | Jobs booked from the ads | 16 |
| 3 | Cost per booked job (1 ÷ 2) | $250 |
| 4 | Of those, jobs closed and paid | 12 |
| 5 | Money collected (12 at $1,200) | $14,400 |
| 6 | Parts | $2,400 |
| 7 | Sub's cut: 40% of what is left after parts ($12,000) | $4,800 |
| 8 | Left per paid job before ads ($7,200 ÷ 12) | $600 |
| 9 | Break-even paid jobs (1 ÷ 8, rounded up) | 7 |
| 10 | Left after ads (12 × $600 − $4,000) | $3,200 |
The formula for step 7 depends on your deal with your sub. Some subs take a percentage of the total. Some take it after parts. Use your own. Whatever it is, put it in. If you leave it out, every job looks richer than it was.
Also: only 12 of the 16 booked jobs were paid. Four were cancelled or still open. So cost per booked job ($250) is lower than cost per closed job ($333.33). Both are true. Track both.
When Cost per Lead and Cost per Job Disagree
Example, with made-up numbers. Two campaigns, each spent $2,000 in the same month.
| Campaign A | Campaign B | |
|---|---|---|
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Calls the platform counts as leads | 40 | 20 |
| Cost per call | $50 | $100 |
| Jobs booked | 4 | 10 |
| Cost per booked job | $500 | $200 |
By cost per call, A is twice as good. By cost per booked job, B is two and a half times better. A got people who browsed. B got people who needed a door fixed today. An owner who picks by cost per call picks the wrong one.
This is why we do not use the platform's lead count. A platform counts a 12-second call, a wrong number and a repeat caller. Your job list does not.
Compute Yours
Enter your month. The calculator gives cost per lead, cost per booked job, closing rate, profit per job after the sub's cut and parts, and what the ads returned after everything.
- Cost per lead
- $50
- Closing rate
- 25%
- Profit per job, after the cut and parts
- $300
- What the ads returned after everything
- $1,000
The numbers stay in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
It also has its own page: Cost Per Booked Job Calculator.
By Source
The same math works for every place work comes from: Google Ads, Meta, a directory, word of mouth. For each source, divide that source's spend by that source's jobs. Do not divide one platform's spend by all the jobs. The result is flattering and wrong.
On the Statistics screen, Source by Profit After Leads does this for you. For each source it takes net profit and subtracts its platform's spend, shared over its jobs. A platform that spent money and brought no job appears as its own row, Spend with no lead, drawn below zero. The chart names five sources and folds the rest into Other, which opens. A rate in Other counts instead of adds.
What a Healthy Number Looks Like
There is no honest benchmark for the cost of a booked job in home services, and we will not invent one. Public sources report the cost of a lead as the platform counts it, and those leads are not your booked jobs. For example, LocaliQ's 2025 search benchmarks put the home-services median at $90.92 per lead (3,211 campaigns, April 2024 to March 2025). See What a Lead Really Costs, By Trade for the trades they publish.
Your own healthy number is simple. It is a cost per booked job that is lower than what a job leaves. In the example, a job leaves $600 and costs $250 to book. That is healthy. If a job left $200 and cost $250, it would not be, however low the cost per click.
One more rule. Optmyzr's 2023 study of more than 14,000 Google Ads accounts found that Smart Bidding outperformed manual bidding only when it was fed about 50 or more conversions a month. If Google gets calls as conversions, it optimizes for calls. If it gets paid jobs, it optimizes for paid jobs. See Tracking a Lead All the Way to the Job.
What This Number Leaves Out
- Your overhead and your time. Not in the sub, not in the parts.
- Repeat customers. A customer who calls back next year is worth more than one job.
- Jobs that book late. A call this month may book next month.
- Calls with no click ID. Some can never be tied to an ad.
- Spend the screen cannot see. Local Services Ads, Yelp and manual spend are named in a note on the Ad spend tile, not counted.
How to Do It by Hand
- Get one month of ad spend for one platform.
- Count the jobs from that platform. Use call tracking or ask each customer.
- Divide. That is the cost per booked job.
- Add up what those jobs left after parts and the sub. Divide by the paid jobs.
- Compare. If a job leaves more than it cost to book, you are making money.
Where the App Does It
Connect Google Ads and the Cost per lead, Profit after leads and Return per lead tiles on Statistics fill in. The Google Leads Attribution by Campaign report shows the same price for each campaign, with Lead cost and Spend with no lead beside it, and lets you download it as PDF or CSV. See the Reports catalogue. Learn to read your first report in ten minutes. If you want to see where the work is, the map on Places shows net per job by ZIP.
For plans and what it costs to use, see Pricing.
More on Cost and Budget
- How Much Should a Contractor Spend on Ads?
- What a Lead Really Costs, By Trade
- Are Google Ads a Waste of Money for Contractors?
- Getting Clicks But No Calls? Here's Why
The wider question is answered in Is My Marketing Working? and the term ROAS shows why revenue alone misleads.
What Moves the Number
Cost per booked job is made of two things you can see separately. It equals the cost per call divided by the share of calls that book.
Example, with the same made-up month. Cost per call was $57.14. 16 of the 70 calls booked, which is 22.9%. So $57.14 ÷ 0.229 = $250. Now two ways it could move. If the same ads brought the same calls but 20 of them booked (28.6%), the cost per booked job falls to $200. If the calls cost $70 each and the same 22.9% booked, it rises to $306.
This tells you which end to look at. A rising cost per booked job with a steady cost per call is a booking problem, not an ad problem. On Statistics the Closing average is the place to look first.
Reading It Month to Month
One month can fool you. A job booked on the 29th is paid next month, and a slow week can drag the number around. Read three months side by side before you act on any of them.
Example, with made-up numbers.
| August | September | October | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ad spend | $4,000 | $4,000 | $4,000 |
| Jobs booked | 13 | 11 | 16 |
| Cost per booked job | $308 | $364 | $250 |
| Left per paid job before ads | $600 | $600 | $600 |
The three months average $307 a booked job, about half of what a paid job leaves. September looks bad on its own and fine in the set. Read the set.
The Most You Can Pay for a Job
Once you know what a job leaves, you can work out a ceiling. It is simple division. If a paid job leaves $600 before ads, and you want to keep at least half of that after the ads, the most you can pay to book a job is $300. This is arithmetic, not advice about your ads. It tells you where the line is.
One catch. Not every booked job gets paid. In the example, 12 of 16 were. So the ceiling for booking a job is lower: $300 × (12 ÷ 16) = $225. Use the paid rate you actually have. That is why you track cost per booked job and cost per closed job both.
Three Common Mistakes
- Dividing by the wrong jobs. All your jobs, from every source, make the ads look cheap. Use only the jobs from those ads.
- Using the quote, not the money. A quoted $2,400 that was cut to $1,800 and paid late is not $2,400.
- Stopping at the cost. A cost with no "what a job leaves" beside it is half a sentence.
Questions Owners Ask
What Is the Difference Between Cost per Lead and Cost per Booked Job?
Cost per lead is spend divided by leads. In HeadHoncho a lead is a job with a name, a phone and an address, so the two are close. Elsewhere, a platform's lead can be any call or form. Cost per booked job always means a job that is on your schedule.
Should I Divide by Booked Jobs or Paid Jobs?
Both, and name which one you used. Booked is the cost to get the job. Paid is the cost to get it done and collected. The gap between them is what cancellations cost you.
What If I Cannot Tell Which Jobs Came From Ads?
Start by asking every caller how they found you, and write it on the ticket. Tracked phone numbers and a saved click ID take the guessing out.
Do I Include My Own Time?
Not in this number. Add it to your thinking, though, because a job you drive an hour for leaves less than it looks.
Is a Lower Cost per Booked Job Always Better?
No. A $150 job that leaves $100 loses to a $400 job that leaves $900. Always put it beside what a job leaves.