How to measure estimate close rate for a home service business?

Estimate close rate is sold estimates divided by presented estimates, by count and by dollars. Lock what counts as presented, group the file by sent date, wait a set window, then score it from your own FSM. There is no reliable public number.

This is the score for a 2-to-10 truck HVAC, plumbing or electrical shop whose change-outs, water heaters, panel upgrades, and repipes go quiet after the estimate goes out.

What estimate close rate actually is

Close rate on a replacement quote is sold vs presented. Count of jobs, and dollars. Average ticket sitting next to the rate is the third number, because a shop can raise the rate by discounting, or raise the ticket by losing the smaller jobs.

Number	Formula	What it answers
Close rate by count	Sold estimates / presented estimates	How often a visit turns into a yes
Close rate by dollars	Sold dollars / presented dollars	How much of the quoted book you keep
Average ticket on sold	Sold dollars / sold estimates	What a yes is worth
Still open	Open estimates / presented estimates	How much of the month is unfinished

Shops on r/HVAC and r/sales still mix three different jobs and call them all close rate. A comfort advisor’s sold vs presented is one job. A service tech’s invoice that cleared a sold threshold is another. A diagnostic call that set a sales lead is a third. Keep those piles apart.

ServiceTitan’s own help (updated 2026-07-10) draws that line in product language. Close rate is for sales and estimates. Conversion rate is for invoices and completed jobs. A Technician Close Rate by Job Type report is the service version. The Sales tab on Technician Scorecards is the estimate version.

The choices that change the number

Write the rules down once. Change them and you cannot compare months.

What counts as presented. A presented estimate is one the homeowner saw: sent, marked awaiting response, or signed in the house. Drafts that never left the FSM are unsent work. A second option written after they asked for a cheaper unit on the same visit stays on the same presentation.

The cohort. Group by sent date, or by the date the estimate was created if that is all the report gives you. Scoring “everything converted in April” mixes March leftovers with April visits.

The wait window. Pick 14 or 30 days after the last sent date in the cohort, then freeze the file. Score March on April 30, or on day 14 after each send. Scoring tomorrow morning treats yesterday’s open change-outs as lost.

Good, Better, and Best. One visit. ServiceTitan’s roofing Follow Up help (updated 2026-10-08) puts all three on one opportunity because only one can sell. Housecall Pro’s estimate conversion help (dated 2026-07-09) counts the estimate as won when one option is approved or copied to a job. Workiz’s new dashboard (published 2026-10-02) shows one estimate opportunity per job for the same reason.

Repair instead of replace. Book the repair. Leave the change-out on file. Score the repair in the repair cohort and the replacement in the replacement cohort. Mixing them makes a high close rate out of $400 invoices sitting next to $12,000 change-outs.

Cancelled after sold. A signed estimate that cancels before install still sold. Track cancellations as their own rate.

On r/HVAC, shops still split tech-generated leads from marketed ones. A condemned furnace on a no-cool call is a different presentation from a marketplace change-out with two other bids on the table.

A worked March (labelled example)

Say you sent 40 estimates in March, totaling $400,000. These figures are made up so the math is visible. They are not a benchmark.

Ending	Count	Dollars
Sold the change-out, panel upgrade, or repipe	12	$180,000
Took the repair instead	4	$8,000
Declined or hired someone else	6	$72,000
Still open, next date on file	10	$90,000
Still open, zero follow-up logged	8	$50,000

Replacement close rate by count: 12 / 40 = 30 percent. By dollars: $180,000 / $400,000 = 45 percent. The dollar rate is higher because the sold jobs were the bigger tickets.

Pull the four repairs into the same pile and the count rate becomes 16 / 40 = 40 percent, while the dollar rate barely moves. Score on April 2 and Housecall Pro still has 18 open rows in the denominator. Wait until April 30 and some of the ten with dates will have sold or declined. The eight with no call are still unfinished work. How to follow up on HVAC estimates that haven’t closed is that list.

What each FSM actually reports

Use only what that product’s own help publishes. Where a vendor skips the formula, say so.

App	What they call it	What they count
ServiceTitan	Close rate	Closed sales opportunities / sales opportunities. The estimate has to beat the job type’s sold threshold.
Jobber	Quote conversion rate	Quotes converted in the period / quotes sent in the period. Can go over 100 percent.
Housecall Pro	Estimate conversion rate	Won / (won + lost + open). Multiple options are one estimate.
Workiz	Won rate on estimate reports	Groups this month’s estimates by status with a won rate column. The formula is unpublished. Dashboard conversion rate is calls, not estimates.

ServiceTitan. Sold threshold help (updated 2026-07-11) writes close rate as closed opportunities over sales opportunities, times 100 percent. A sales opportunity is a job that can take an estimate. Leave the sold threshold at $0 and every completed job looks converted. Set it at least $1 over the dispatch fee, then rerun. The close vs conversion troubleshooting article (updated 2026-07-10) is that split. How to track unsold estimates in ServiceTitan is the Follow Up list the rate is built from.

Jobber. The quotes report (updated 2025-07-25) compares quotes with a sent date in a calendar month to quotes with a conversion date in that month. Quotes converted without a sent date sit out of the sent pile, so the on-screen rate can exceed 100 percent. Quote Basics (updated 2026-07-27) uses the same idea on the quotes list. Salesperson performance (updated 2025-03-27) cohorts by drafted date. Sales Pipeline’s Sales Outcomes report (updated 2026-09-25) lists won and lost with totals and no close-rate column. Open quotes stay on the board.

Housecall Pro. Conversion rate reporting (dated 2026-07-09) is won count over won, lost, and open. Open estimates stay in the denominator until someone approves or declines them. Won includes copied to job. Lost is all options declined. Filter the same report by employee, job type, or lead source.

Workiz. New estimate reports (published 2026-07-10) include a Conversion rate view: estimates created this month, grouped by status, with a won rate column. Workiz does not publish how that percentage is calculated. The feature is still a beta as of 2026-10-09. The home dashboard’s conversion rate is booked jobs or leads from calls. That is a phone metric. How to follow up on estimates in Workiz is the Pending list.

Split it before you coach anyone

Run the same March file four ways before you talk to an estimator.

• By comfort advisor or tech. Say one person is presenting $18,000 change-outs next to someone presenting $400 repairs. That looks like a close-rate gap.
• By job type. Replacement, repair, panel upgrade, repipe, water heater. Each is a different presentation.
• By lead source. Tech-generated, call-in, Google, a marketplace lead. Average ticket times close rate shows whether a high rate is cheap tickets.
• By follow-up. Sold after a same-week call, sold with zero calls, still open with zero calls. A rate that ignores the untouched pile hides the office.

How to track why customers turn down estimates is the reason column on the lost pile. Price, hired someone else, repair instead, financing, and no-answer are different stories. The close rate tells you the size of the hole. The reason tells you which hole.

How to tell the number is honest this week

The score is working when March has a sent count, a sold count, a dollar rate next to the count rate, a still-open pile, and a count of open estimates with no call. If the FSM rate moved and the still-open pile grew, the report changed status, not the kitchen table.

Export last month’s estimates from ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro or Workiz. Count sent, sold, declined, and still open, then mark how many of the open ones have no call logged. That file is the measurement. Start with the blanks.