HVAC KPIs: The 14 Numbers That Run a Heating and Cooling Company

The HVAC KPIs that matter fit on one page: 14 numbers in five groups, five of them checked every week. The one to know first is net margin. The average contractor keeps 6 percent, against the 10 percent that ACCA's 2025 study calls the floor for sustainable growth.

This guide is for an owner or manager running two to twenty trucks. The same home service KPIs work for plumbing, electrical and roofing, with the differences covered near the end. Each metric gets a formula in plain words, the system it lives in and a benchmark only where a source prints one with its sample.

Skill Mammoth builds websites and runs marketing for contractors and home service businesses, so read the marketing rows as a vendor's view. Every source was read on November 14, 2026.

The 14 HVAC KPIs, and the seven with a real benchmark

A KPI, or key performance indicator, is a number you review on a schedule and act on. Most lists of HVAC metrics stop at the names. The table adds where each number lives and whether anyone has published a benchmark with a sample behind it.

Field service software is the system that schedules, dispatches and invoices, such as ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro or Jobber. Our field service software comparison covers ten of them. Call tracking is a separate phone number per ad source that logs which channel made the phone ring.

Seven of the 14 have a published benchmark with a sample behind it. The other seven have a vendor's target or nothing, and for those your own trend is the benchmark.

The pages ranking for this search print less. We read four of their KPI lists and counted the metrics on each. Together they name 40 metrics and print no benchmark with a named sample.

ServiceTitan's KPI playbook is the fullest set of targets we found. Its tables are headed "Target" and cite no dataset, so this guide labels its figures as targets wherever they appear.

Marketing KPIs: judge every channel by the booked job

Cost per lead

Divide what you spent on a channel in a month by the leads it produced. A lead is a call or form from someone asking for work. The spend sits in the ad account and the lead count comes from call tracking. Our attribution guide covers the setup.

99 Calls, a lead vendor that publishes figures from its client accounts, puts the average HVAC Local Services Ads lead at $74.82 over twelve months. Local Services Ads are Google's pay-per-lead listings above the regular results. The sample is six campaigns, so read it as one vendor's accounts.

Search ads cost more. The same vendor's Google Ads report puts a typical HVAC lead at $190 to $335, with a $262 average for 2026 through July. It gives no account count.

Booking rate

Divide booked visits by leads. If 100 people called asking for work and 45 ended up on the schedule, the booking rate is 45 percent. Call tracking counts the calls, and the call-booking report in your field service software counts the visits.

Invoca, a call tracking company, published home services benchmarks in July 2026 from a dataset of more than 70 million calls across ten industries. It does not print the home services call count. Three of its figures stack into a funnel:

• 52 percent of callers reach a person
• 38 percent of answered calls are leads
• 45 percent of those leads convert on the call

Multiply the three and about 9 of every 100 inbound calls end in a booking. The arithmetic is ours, on Invoca's published figures.

Other sources disagree on how many calls go unanswered. CallRail's January 2025 report on 1.1 million leads put the home services missed-call rate at 14 percent, as summarized by Plumber magazine.

Service Direct, a pay-per-call vendor, reviewed 1,000 recorded calls to 94 home service businesses in an older study. In-house staff answered 66 percent of calls and booked 63 percent of the new customers they spoke to.

The definitions differ, which explains part of the spread. Invoca's 52 percent covers every inbound call. For calls longer than 30 seconds, its answered share is 73 percent. Measure yours one way and keep it.

Speed is the usual leak. Jobber's survey of 1,050 home service owners found 20 percent reply to a new lead within the hour, while more than half of customers expect a reply that fast. Our lead follow-up system covers the fix.

Cost per booked job

Divide a channel's spend by the visits it booked, or divide cost per lead by booking rate. This is the number to rank channels on, because a cheap lead that never books costs more than a dear one that does.

It needs one habit: the lead source travels from call tracking into the job record. No source we read publishes this figure with a sample. At a 45 percent booking rate, the lead prices above work out as follows:

• Local Services Ads: $74.82 a lead, $166 a booked visit
• Google Ads: $262 a lead, $582 a booked visit

Sales KPIs: top shops close twice the share of estimates

Close rate

Divide sold jobs by the estimates or service visits you ran. Keep service calls and replacement estimates apart, because a repair on a dead furnace closes far more often than a new system. Your field service software reports both by technician.

The best data is the 2025 Contractor of the Future study from ACCA, the Air Conditioning Contractors of America, and Farmington Consulting Group. It surveyed more than 1,000 contractors, and 71 percent of them ran two to nineteen service vehicles.

Contracting Business reported that top residential contractors in the study close 55 to 60 percent of estimates. Underperformers close 22 to 30 percent.

Two habits moved the number, according to PHCPPros' summary of the same study. Contractors who offered four or more options closed 52 percent of jobs against 42 percent for the rest. Those offering financing closed 49 percent against 38.

ServiceTitan's targets sit higher, at 85 percent of service calls and above 65 percent for replacement sales. Those are goals with no sample behind them.

Average ticket

Divide revenue by completed jobs, and run it three times: service, maintenance and replacement. A blended ticket hides which department moved. The invoice report in your field service software has all three.

Two sources print an average and they are far apart. The ACCA study's national average service ticket is $422. Housecall Pro's HVAC trends report puts the average repair job at $1,205 in 2025.

The samples explain the gap. Housecall Pro's figure covers about two million jobs that carry a repair or install tag, which is 11 percent of its HVAC job volume. The other 89 percent carry no tag, so the two averages count different jobs.

ServiceTitan's targets are $375 for a service call, $175 for a tune-up and above $7,700 for an install, with a note that the install figure swings by market.

Replacement lead turnover

Count the service and maintenance visits it takes to produce one replacement lead. A technician who flags aging equipment on every tenth call has a turnover of ten. The lead and the visit both sit in the field service software, tied to the technician.

No source we read prints a measured figure. ServiceTitan's target is one replacement lead for every 10 service calls or every 18 maintenance visits. Track your own trend by technician, since these are leads you never pay an ad platform for.

Booking rate, close rate and ticket multiply. Set your own numbers in the calculator below, and it ranks which one adds the most revenue for a single step.

Run your own HVAC funnel

Input or result	Default	Where it comes from
Leads a month	150	No benchmark. Set your own
Leads that book a visit	45%	Invoca, July 2026
Visits that become jobs	55%	ACCA study, low end of top contractors
Average job	$1,205	Housecall Pro, 2025 repair average
Marketing spend a month	$11,200	150 leads at the 99 Calls average
Revenue a month	$44,736	37 jobs from 68 visits
Revenue per lead	$298	Revenue divided by leads
Cost per sold job	$302	Spend divided by sold jobs
Book 5 more of every 100 leads	+$4,971 a month	Biggest single step
Close 5 more of every 100 estimates	+$4,067 a month	Second
10 more leads a month	+$2,982 a month	Third
$50 more on the average job	+$1,856 a month	Fourth

Benchmarks from Invoca, ACCA with Farmington Consulting Group, Housecall Pro and 99 Calls, read November 14, 2026. With scripts on, this is a calculator: set your own leads, booking rate, close rate, average job and spend, and it ranks the four levers for you.

At the defaults, booking five more of every 100 leads adds $4,971 a month. Ten more leads add $2,982. Fix the phones before you buy more calls.

The default spend prices every lead at the Local Services Ads average, so it runs heavy. Enter your own blend of paid and free leads.

If your top bar is booking rate or close rate, a marketing company is the wrong first hire. If it is leads, marketing is the lever. That is the work we sell.

Operations KPIs: revenue per person climbs with company size

Revenue per technician

Divide revenue by the number of technicians, by week or by year. The field service software reports revenue by technician. If install crews and office staff blur the count, use revenue per employee from payroll headcount and stay consistent.

No source we read prints a measured revenue per technician. The Census Bureau does publish revenue, payroll and headcount for plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors by company size.

We computed revenue per employee from its 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses, released in April 2025, by dividing receipts by employment in each size band. Plumbers share the industry code, and the headcount covers every employee in mid-March, office included.

Revenue per employee rises 48 percent from the first row to the last. Payroll's share of revenue stays within about a point of 28 percent the whole way. Bigger shops sell more per person and pay people more.

ServiceTitan's target is $170,000 a year per team member. The average firm in every row of the table already clears it.

Callback rate

Divide return visits for the same problem by completed jobs. A callback is a trip back to fix work that should have held, at your cost. It lives in the field service software only if dispatch tags the return visit, so agree on the tag first.

ServiceTitan's target is 1 percent or less for HVAC, plumbing and electrical. No source we read prints a measured rate with a sample. Track it by technician and by job type.

Billable efficiency

Divide the hours you billed by the hours you paid technicians for. Paid hours come from timesheets and billed hours from invoices. Drive time, supply house runs and callbacks make up the gap.

An ACCA recap of its 2025 conference finance sessions says the billable share realistically tops out near 91 percent across a year.

Jobber's trends report lists 80 to 90 percent labor utilization for top teams, from platform data with no sample size given.

Financial KPIs: the average contractor nets 6 percent

Gross margin

Subtract the direct cost of the work from revenue, then divide by revenue. Direct cost is technician labor, materials and equipment. The figure lives in the books, and it only helps when they split service, maintenance and replacement.

No source we read prints a measured gross margin by department. ServiceTitan's targets are 72 percent or better on service, 70 percent on maintenance and 50 percent on replacement after support wages and commissions.

Net margin

Divide net profit by revenue. Take it from the books after the owner is paid a market wage, or the number flatters a company that underpays its owner.

The study calls 10 percent the level a contractor needs for sustainable growth. Flat-rate pricing, one price per task in place of time and materials, is one split inside it. Contractors using it on service work averaged 7 percent, against 4 percent for other methods.

The second split is marketing. ACCA's release says contractors who put at least 12 percent of revenue into marketing reported a 9 percent net, against 5 percent for those who spent less.

We sell marketing, so weigh that one with care. The typical contractor in the study spends about 6 percent of revenue on it, and a survey shows a link without showing which way it runs.

Labor as a share of revenue

Divide total payroll by revenue. Payroll comes from your payroll provider and revenue from the books. Run it monthly, because overtime in a peak month and idle hours in a slow one both show up here first.

In the Census table above, payroll runs 28.1 percent of revenue for firms with $1M to $2.5M in receipts. Census payroll is wages, commissions and bonuses before deductions, and it leaves out what sole proprietors and partners pay themselves.

For direct labor alone, ServiceTitan's targets are 20 percent or less on service, 18 on maintenance and 9 on replacement.

Wages set the floor. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median HVAC technician wage at $29.33 an hour in May 2025. Contractors in the ACCA study reported paying $32 to $33.

Retention KPIs: trend your own renewal rate

Maintenance agreement count and renewal

Track two numbers here. The count is active agreements at month end, net of cancellations. The renewal rate is agreements renewed divided by agreements that came due. Both sit in the memberships report of your field service software.

ServiceTitan's targets are 1,000 agreements for every $1 million in service sales, 30 percent of service calls converting to an agreement and 80 percent of tune-ups.

No source we read prints a measured renewal rate with a sample. A 2016 Contracting Business column recommends 86 percent as a floor, and one Pennsylvania contractor told ACHR News it renews 83 percent. A target and one company make a poor benchmark, so trend your own.

Housecall Pro's HVAC pricing guide puts residential plans at $150 to $300 a year. Our service agreement template has the contract language.

Review rate

Divide new Google reviews in a month by completed jobs. The review count is on your Google Business Profile and the job count is in the field service software.

No contractor benchmark exists in the sources we read. On the customer side, BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers found 78 percent were asked for feedback by a business in the past year. And 28 percent say they always write a review when asked.

The same page prints two figures for how many of those asked went on to write one: 83 percent and 65 percent. Asking is the lever either way. Our guide to 100 Google reviews covers how.

Read HVAC KPIs against the same month last year

Every number above moves with the weather. A booking rate that drops in July may only mean the board was full. Comparing this month with last month mostly measures the season.

We pulled twelve months of Google search data for HVAC terms on November 14, 2026. Open the By month view in the explorer below and pick a term to see its year.

When HVAC searches happen, month by month

Search	US searches a month	Average click price	Peak month	Slowest month
ac repair	368,000	$43.88	Jul, 673,000	Dec, 165,000
furnace repair	201,000	$39.41	Jan, 450,000	Jun and Sep, 60,500
heat pump repair	40,500	$18.86	Jan, 110,000	Sep, 9,900
hvac maintenance	40,500	$34.60	Jul, 74,000	Sep, 18,100
ac tune up	12,100	$56.39	Jul, 27,100	Dec, 3,600
furnace tune up	8,100	$43.03	Jan, 18,100	Jun, 1,900
ac replacement	14,800	$19.24	Not shown	Not shown
furnace replacement	9,900	$25.27	Not shown	Not shown

Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO, United States, pulled November 14, 2026, covering November 2025 through October 2026. A 1% share of these 694,900 searches is about 6,949 clicks a month, which would cost about $278,002 at each search's average click price. With scripts on, this is an explorer: sort by volume or click price, chart a search by month and set your own share.

Added together, the two repair searches never go quiet. Searches for "ac repair" and "furnace repair" combined ran 783,000 in July and 356,000 in April, the slowest month. Each term alone swings four to seven times. The pair swings 2.2 times.

We computed that by summing the monthly figures for the two terms. It gives a heating and cooling shop one planning fact: expect the fewest repair calls in April and the most in July.

Lead cost swings as well. In 99 Calls' HVAC accounts, the median Google Ads lead cost $189 in January and $335 in May of this year. A 77 percent rise in four months says little about the ads.

One caution on the data. Google shows 1,000,000 searches for "ac repair near me" in October, almost three times September, in the off-season. That looks like a counting change, so the monthly view leaves out the terms it distorted, replacement searches among them.

Two rules follow. Compare each KPI with the same month a year earlier, and keep a rolling twelve-month figure beside it. Our HVAC marketing plan spreads a budget across the same calendar.

The weekly scorecard: five HVAC KPIs

Fourteen numbers is too many for a Monday meeting. Five of them move within a week and point at a person who can act, so they go on the weekly page.

The other nine are monthly, in two batches:

• When the books close: gross margin, net margin and labor as a share of revenue
• From the software on the first of the month: cost per lead, replacement lead turnover, callback rate, billable efficiency, agreements and review rate

You can build the first version this afternoon:

1. Export 90 days of jobs. Pull each completed job with its lead source, technician and invoice total.
2. Count the calls. Take answered and missed calls for the same 90 days from call tracking or the phone system.
3. Fill in the five. Work out each weekly number by hand once, so everyone agrees on the formula.
4. Name an owner. Put one person beside each number.
5. Add last year. Put the same week a year ago in the next column.

Tick the numbers you could pull today without digging. The weekly five weigh the most.

How much of the HVAC scorecard do you track?

Number	When to review it	Weight, 1 to 5
Booking rate: booked visits divided by leads	Weekly	5
Cost per booked job, by channel	Weekly	5
Close rate, with service and replacement kept apart	Weekly	5
Average ticket for service, maintenance and replacement	Weekly	5
Revenue per technician, by week	Weekly	5
Gross margin by department, at month end	Monthly	4
Net margin and labor share of revenue, at month end	Monthly	4
Replacement leads per service call, by technician	Monthly	3
Callback rate, by technician and job type	Monthly	3
Billable efficiency: billed hours over paid hours	Monthly	3
Maintenance agreements: net count and renewal rate	Monthly	3
Review rate: new Google reviews per completed job	Monthly	3

The twelve checks are the 14 KPIs in this guide, with cost per lead folded into cost per booked job and labor share into net margin, weighted in the order the guide ranks them. With scripts on, this is a scorecard: tick what you track, get a score out of 100 and see the three heaviest gaps to fix first.

How the same home service KPIs apply to plumbing, electrical and roofing

The five groups hold for any trade that sends a person to a house. What changes is the size of the ticket, the labor model and how long a sale takes.

ServiceTitan's playbook sets its targets by trade. The average service ticket target is $375 for HVAC, $500 for plumbing and $575 for electrical. The callback target is the same 1 percent for all three.

The Census data shows the labor difference. The chart sets payroll as a share of revenue for three industry codes, each in two size bands.

Roofing is the outlier, and revenue per employee shows the same split. In the smaller band it is $255,836 for roofers, against $198,954 for plumbing and HVAC and $186,158 for electrical.

Census payroll counts employees only. A roofer who runs subcontract crews carries that labor in cost of goods sold, so compare labor share only with companies staffed the way yours is.

Plumbing KPIs and electrical ones follow the HVAC list almost whole. Read the season from your own call history.

Roofing KPIs need two changes. The sale runs from lead to inspection to signed contract, so measure close rate on inspections. A shop that does insurance work should also keep those jobs apart from retail ones in every number.

Three numbers to skip

These three get reported often and decide little.

1. Raw lead count. "Leads were up 20 percent" says nothing until you know how many booked. Report booked visits first.
2. Cost per lead on its own. A $74.82 lead and a $262 lead cannot be ranked until each is divided by its booking rate. Rank channels on cost per booked job.
3. A benchmark with no sample. Many HVAC business benchmarks have no dataset behind them. If a figure has no publisher, year and sample size, your own trend beats it.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most important HVAC KPIs?

Five numbers belong in a weekly meeting: booking rate, cost per booked job, close rate, average ticket and revenue per technician. Nine more are monthly, among them gross margin, net margin, labor as a share of revenue, callback rate and agreement renewals. Compare each one with the same month last year, because HVAC demand swings with the weather.

What is a good net profit margin for an HVAC company?

The 2025 Contractor of the Future study from ACCA and Farmington Consulting Group, which surveyed more than 1,000 contractors, found an average net profit of 6 percent. The researchers call 10 percent the level needed for sustainable growth. Contractors using flat-rate pricing on service work averaged 7 percent, against 4 percent for those using other pricing methods.

What is a good call booking rate for an HVAC company?

Invoca's July 2026 home services benchmarks found that 45 percent of phone leads convert on the call, and that a person answers 52 percent of all inbound calls. An older Service Direct study of 1,000 recorded calls measured 63 percent of answered new-customer calls ending in an appointment. The definitions differ, so measure yours one way and track the trend.

What is a good close rate for HVAC estimates?

In the 2025 ACCA and Farmington Consulting Group study, top residential contractors closed 55 to 60 percent of estimates and underperformers closed 22 to 30 percent. Contractors who offered four or more options closed 52 percent of jobs, against 42 percent for the rest. ServiceTitan's target for a replacement salesperson is above 65 percent, with no sample behind it.

How much revenue should an HVAC technician generate?

No source we read publishes a measured revenue per technician. Census Bureau data for 2022 puts plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors with $1M to $2.5M in revenue at $198,954 per employee, office staff included, and $222,049 in the $2.5M to $5M band. ServiceTitan's target is $170,000 a year per team member.

Do the same KPIs work for plumbing, electrical and roofing companies?

Yes. The same five groups of home service KPIs apply: marketing, sales, operations, financial and retention. Ticket size and labor model change. ServiceTitan's service ticket targets are $375 for HVAC, $500 for plumbing and $575 for electrical. Census data shows payroll near 28 percent of revenue for plumbing and HVAC firms, and about 21 percent for roofers of the same size.