What does a job really cost you to win?
Media spend is the number everyone quotes and it is never the whole bill. Add the management fee, the call tracking, the CRM and whatever else the machine needs to run, then divide by jobs rather than leads, and you get the figure that actually belongs next to your margin.
Your numbers
The answer
Cost per booked job
$365.00
$4,380 a month ÷ 12 jobs
Total marketing cost
$4,380
As entered, ex-GST
All-in cost per enquiry
$109.50
Media alone is $75.00
Gross profit per job
$480.00
40% of $1,200.00
Left after acquisition
$115.00
Before rent, vehicles and admin
Marketing as a share of revenue
30.4%
$14,400 of revenue a month
How this was worked out
- Total marketing cost
- $3,000.00 + $1,200.00 + $180.00 = $4,380
- Jobs
- 40 × 30% = 12
- Cost per booked job
- $4,380 ÷ 12 = $365.00
- Gross profit per job
- $1,200.00 × 40% = $480.00
- Left after acquisition
- $480.00 − $365.00 = $115.00
The same month, counted three ways
| What is counted | Divided by | Result | What it hides |
|---|---|---|---|
| Media only | 40 enquiries | $75.00 | The fee, the tools and every enquiry that never became a job |
| Everything | 40 enquiries | $109.50 | That most enquiries do not become jobs |
| Everything | 12 booked jobs | $365.00 | Nothing. This is the figure to use. |
The first row is the one quoted in most reporting, including a lot of agency reporting. It is not wrong, it is just answering a smaller question than the one a business owner is asking.
What to do with this
- Each booked job costs $365.00 to win once everything is counted. The media-only figure — the one usually quoted — is $75.00 per enquiry, which flatters the true cost by a wide margin.
- Against $480.00 of gross profit per job, that leaves $115.00 before overheads.
- Total marketing is 30.4% of the revenue it produces. There is no published benchmark for what that should be in a service business, so track it against your own months rather than against a figure from a blog.
- Recalculate this whenever a fee changes or a tool is added. Cost per job creeps upward one subscription at a time, and nobody notices because each one is small.
Change anything above and the link in your address bar changes with it, so you can send the exact result to whoever needs to see it. Nothing you type is sent anywhere — the whole calculation happens in your browser.
What this does, and how the maths works
What it does
- Adds every recurring cost of running the marketing — media, management, tools, tracking — into one monthly figure.
- Divides it by booked jobs rather than leads, which is usually two to four times the number people carry in their heads.
- Subtracts it from the gross profit on the job so you can see what is actually left.
How to use it
- Enter your media spend, then everything else you pay monthly to make it work: agency or freelancer fees, call tracking, CRM, landing page hosting.
- Enter the enquiries and the share that became paid work. The lead-to-job calculator produces both if you do not have them.
- If the costs you entered include GST, switch that on so the comparison against revenue is like for like.
- Read the profit per job after acquisition. That, not cost per lead, is the number to take to a decision.
The formula
- Total marketing cost = media + management + tools
- Jobs = leads × lead-to-job rate
- Cost per booked job = total marketing cost ÷ jobs
- Profit per job after acquisition = (job value × gross margin) − cost per booked job
Reading the answer
- If the profit after acquisition is negative, the business is buying work at a loss on the first job. That is only survivable if customers return, and that has to be measured rather than assumed.
- Watch the ratio of media to non-media costs. A $600 fee on $1,000 of media is a different business decision from the same fee on $20,000.
- Compare cost per booked job across months rather than against anyone else. There is no published figure for it in any trade, in any market.
What it cannot tell you
This counts recurring costs only. Setup work — building the account, the landing page, the tracking — is real money and is spread across however long the arrangement lasts, which this tool does not attempt to amortise. It also credits every job to advertising, so a business with strong word of mouth will see a cost per job that is too high.
Where every figure on this page came from
Every default in the calculator above is either your own number or a figure from one of the studies below, with the market and the sample stated. Nothing here is an estimate somebody felt was about right, and no United States figure is wearing an Australian label.
Australian Taxation Office, GST
Australian Taxation Office · 2026 · measured in AU · high confidence
GST is 10% of the price of most goods and services sold in Australia.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about working with SoudCoh
Have more questions? Let's chat!
Book a Free Strategy CallCost per lead divides media spend by enquiries. Cost per booked job divides everything you pay — media, management fee, call tracking, CRM — by the enquiries that actually became work. At a 30% close rate and a $1,200 management fee on $3,000 of media, a $75 cost per lead becomes a $350 cost per booked job. Both are true; only the second one belongs next to your margin.
Yes, at whatever you would have earned doing something else with those hours. Leaving it out makes running it yourself look free, and it is the most expensive option in most trade businesses because the hours come out of quoting or out of the evening. Put a number on it even if it is a rough one.
No. Not for plumbing, electrical, cleaning, roofing or anything else, in Australia or anywhere else, from any source with a published method. What we can offer is our own book: across 34 Australian accounts we run, published cost per ENQUIRY sits between $8.91 and $220.59. Multiplying that by your own close rate gets you closer to a cost per job than any benchmark you will find quoted.
It divides the cost figures by 1.1 so they sit on the same basis as revenue you have entered excluding GST. That is all. It makes no claim about whether you can claim GST back on those costs — that depends on your registration and your circumstances, and it is a question for your accountant rather than a calculator.
Check the close rate first, because it is the largest multiplier in the calculation and the number most often guessed. Then look at the split between media and everything else: a fixed fee on a small media budget produces a high cost per job even when the advertising is working perfectly. Cutting media spend in that situation makes the ratio worse, not better.
Run these next
One number rarely settles anything on its own. These three answer the questions this one raises.
Cost per lead calculator
Work out cost per click, conversion rate and cost per lead from three numbers, then compare against a US benchmark and our measured Australian range.
SoudCoh case studies · WordStream 2026
Break-even ROAS and max cost per lead
Turn job value, gross margin and close rate into the maximum you can pay for an enquiry, the break-even return on ad spend, and how much headroom your current cost per lead leaves.
Your own numbers only — no benchmark used
Leads to booked jobs
Walk a month of enquiries through answering, booking and completion to see the real lead-to-job rate and which stage is costing you the most work.
ServiceTitan 2022
We will read
your real ones.
Send us the account rather than the estimate. We will tell you what it is actually costing to win a job, which part of the chain is leaking, and whether it is worth fixing — before anyone asks you to sign anything.