Margin One
Home services operations glossary
The terms every contractor-owner runs into when they start working on the business instead of in it — defined plainly, with the numbers that matter.
What is a fractional COO for home services?
A fractional COO for home services is an experienced operations executive who runs the core operations of an HVAC, plumbing, or electrical business part-time — typically a few days a month — instead of as a full-time hire. They install the systems a growing contractor lacks: a weekly operating cadence, a KPI scoreboard, clear accountability across dispatch, sales, and service, and the job-costing visibility that shows where the business actually makes money. Fees commonly run $3,000–$15,000 per month depending on company size, versus $150,000–$300,000+ for a full-time COO.
What is operational intelligence for contractors?
Operational intelligence for contractors is the practice of turning a home-services business's scattered software — field-service management, accounting, and marketing — into one live operating picture that shows where the business makes money, where margin leaks, and what to do about it each week. Unlike field-service software (which runs the day-to-day) or generic business intelligence (which reports the past), operational intelligence connects the data across systems and translates it into the weekly operating decisions an owner or operator actually makes.
What is a contractor KPI scorecard?
A contractor KPI scorecard is a single view of the handful of metrics that actually predict a home-services business's profit and growth, tracked target-versus-actual every week. A strong scorecard for HVAC, plumbing, or electrical shops usually includes technician utilization, gross margin by job type, average ticket, estimate close rate, cost per booked job, membership/maintenance renewal rate, and revenue per technician — each with a benchmark so red and green are obvious at a glance.
What is technician utilization rate?
Technician utilization rate is the share of a technician's paid hours that are billable to a customer, calculated as billable hours divided by total paid hours. For home-services contractors it's one of the most important operating metrics: a tech paid for 40 hours who bills 26 is running 65% utilization, and every unbilled hour is drive time, idle time, or unpaid rework. Well-run shops typically target 60–75% utilization; small gains compound quickly because they add billable revenue with no new headcount.
What is loaded labor cost (and why the wage isn't the cost)?
Loaded labor cost is the true hourly cost of a technician once you add everything beyond their base wage — payroll taxes, benefits, workers' comp, vehicle and fuel, tools, training, and non-billable time. A technician paid $28.75 an hour often costs $40–$48 an hour fully loaded. Pricing off the wage instead of the loaded cost is one of the most common reasons contractors look profitable on paper but aren't: every job is quietly underpriced by the burden the wage rate ignores.
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