Automations · Built on Housecall Pro
Automations for home service companies that run on Housecall Pro
We built three systems for the Team Farrell companies: a report that ties every lead to the jobs it paid for in Housecall Pro, a payroll site that replaced four spreadsheets, and a sales leaderboard for the techs. We build the same kind of system for shops anywhere in the country.
- CallRail calls
- Google LSA leads
- Google reviews
- Time clock
- Return by sourceEvery week and month
- Payroll packetEvery pay week
- Sales leaderboardRebuilt every 30 min
Why we built them
Two questions the Team Farrell owners kept asking
Which leads turned into paid jobs?
Google Local Services Ads, CallRail and Google Ads each count calls and leads. None of them can see an invoice. The invoices live in Housecall Pro, and lining the two up by hand meant looking up phone numbers one call at a time. So the owners could see what each source cost and had no clean way to see what it brought back.
Why does payroll take ten steps?
Every pay week the office copied clock hours out of Housecall Pro into a sign-off spreadsheet, worked out commissions and review bonuses in a second one, typed hours and bonuses into a third for the payroll company, and split the labor cost by business unit for QuickBooks in a fourth. Written down, the old process came to ten steps, and each one was done by hand.
We built the answers on the data the companies already had in Housecall Pro, CallRail and their Google accounts. The leaderboard came first, as a way to show the plumbers their week in sales, and it became the place payroll reads its job numbers from.
Farrell Plumbing, Farrell Air Conditioning, Farrell Electric & Solar and the Team Farrell crew are Team Farrell companies, and Rankd grew out of Team Farrell’s marketing office. Everything on this page was built for them first.
System 01 · Lead ROI
Every lead matched to the jobs it paid for in Housecall Pro
The report takes every lead from every source and finds the customer and the jobs behind it in Housecall Pro. It adds up what was invoiced, source by source, and sets that against what each source cost. The owner sees the return on Local Services Ads, the Google Business Profile, the website, Google Ads and ChatGPT ads side by side, in invoiced dollars.
- Google Business Profile7.1x
- Local Services Ads5.4x
- Website3.8x
- Google Ads2.2x
- ChatGPT ads0.8x
How the match works
- Pull every lead. Calls come from CallRail, sorted by the tracking number the caller dialed, because CallRail’s own source field hands a repeat caller to whatever they clicked last. Local Services Ads leads come from the Google leads inbox and are checked against the calls.
- Find the customer in Housecall Pro. The last ten digits of the caller’s number are checked against every phone on every customer record. When that fails, the report searches for the name and street the caller gave on the call, then searches the address, which turns up older records filed under another number.
- Check new against returning. The date on the Housecall Pro record was right 86% of the time, so the report reads the call transcript for every customer who looks new. A caller who says they have used you before is counted as returning. A customer of a sister company is flagged on their own, because each company keeps its own Housecall Pro account and they look brand new.
- Add up the invoices. Only jobs created on or after the lead’s first call count, and only with a charge on them and no cancel or delete. Each job is counted once, so a customer who calls in two different months is never credited to both. Open estimates are listed as a range from the cheapest option to the dearest.
- Compare months at the same age. Invoices keep landing for about a month after a month closes, so a report pulled the day after month end reads low. Last month is pulled again with the same code, and the two are compared at the same number of days old.
The weekly version
A short report goes out every week as well: one table of new customers booked by source, with what each one bought and the quotes still open, then a small table per source listing who they were. Anyone who was already a customer of any Team Farrell company is left out, so the count is new business only. It is the same thinking behind cost per booked job, carried all the way to the invoice.
System 02 · Payroll automation
Payroll that builds itself from the Housecall Pro time clock
We replaced four payroll spreadsheets with one private payroll site. The office opens the pay week, pulls the hours, looks over the bonuses and sends the packet. What the office used to type, the site now fills in from Housecall Pro and the leaderboard.
- Tech 140.00 + 4.25Commission tier 2 · 2 Google reviews · Team goal
- Tech 240.00 + 1.50Commission tier 1 · Team goal
- Tech 338.75 + 0.00Commission tier 1 · 1 Google review
- Apprentice 140.00 + 2.001 ride-along review · Team goal
- Office 1 Call taker40.00 + 0.00Booking rate bonus from scored calls
- Sign-off sheets
- Bonus sheets
- Labor by business unit
- Excel workbook updated
What happens each pay week
- Pull the clock hours. The Housecall Pro API does not carry time clock data, so a one-click bookmark on the Housecall Pro time tracking page sends the week’s hours to the payroll site. Regular and overtime hours are worked out per person, and someone who works for two of the companies can have their overtime split between them.
- Work out the bonuses. The bonus engine reads the week’s jobs, sales and estimates and applies each company’s own rules: commission tiers, team sales and close rate goals, and Google review bonuses. A five-star review pays the tech it names, or the tech on the reviewer’s job, plus the apprentices who rode along. The call takers earn a bonus from the booking rate in their scored calls.
- Print the paperwork. Sign-off sheets for the field and the office, a bonus sheet for each field person that lists every line they were paid, and a labor cost sheet split by business unit with the QuickBooks account and class on each line.
- Send the packet. One button emails the whole packet to the payroll company, with the office copied.
- Update the old workbook. The site writes the week into the legacy Excel workbook in place, on its own tab, without touching a formula cell, so the owners keep their history in Excel.
The checks that run every week
Field hours split by business unit have to add up to the clock hours to the hundredth, and the page shows that check line. A file of hours that looks like another company’s crew is refused. On the air conditioning side the engine also pays for after-hours calls and for installs that sell after a tech’s service visit, each with a button to skip one when the office says so.
On its first real week the site reproduced every bonus total in the old spreadsheet to the penny. It also caught a day of hours that had been typed into the spreadsheet by hand and did not match the Housecall Pro clock. It now runs payroll for the plumbing, air conditioning and electrical companies, and a version for the Team Farrell crew splits each crew day across that day’s customer jobs for job costing.
System 03 · Plumbing leaderboard
A tech sales leaderboard built on Housecall Pro jobs
Every completed job in Housecall Pro lands on the board, credited to the techs who ran it. The week runs Thursday to Wednesday, the same as the pay week, and the board rebuilds itself from Housecall Pro every 30 minutes.
- 4Tech 22 places up61% close$7,350
- 5Tech 61 place down55% close$6,105
- 6Tech 4 no change58% close$4,890
What is on the board
- The weekly board: a podium for the top three, every tech’s sales and job count, and an arrow for how far each one moved since last week.
- A team week bar that fills toward the best team week of the last four.
- TV mode, made to run on a screen in the shop.
- Season standings by quarter, and a hall of fame that keeps every week champion, record and season winner.
- Close rate on estimates and options per estimate over the last four weeks, plus levels and achievements on each tech’s profile.
- Google reviews: a five-star review is credited to the tech it names, or matched to the reviewer’s job in the last 60 days. A one to three star review emails the managers with the tech most likely on that job.
- Apprentices ride along without taking a share of the sales, so the tech who sold the job keeps the credit.
The air conditioning copy
The air conditioning company runs a copy with every page and different rules. It ranks techs on average ticket for service calls, and installs stay off the board even when one is filed under Service. A callback is charged to the tech named on it, even when another tech runs it. A free return trip to finish your own job counts against nobody. Credit follows the sale, so an install goes to the person who sold it.
What we can automate for you
The accounts we already know how to read
Every system on this page is built from these six. If your office copies numbers between any two of them by hand, that is usually where we start.
Housecall Pro
Customers, jobs, estimates and their options, invoices, business units, tags, the schedule and the time clock. We know which fields the office fills in late and which changes the API quietly ignores.
CallRail
Calls by tracking number, transcripts, call summaries and the booked tags CallRail sets on its own. Our guide to call tracking covers the setup that makes the match possible.
Google Local Services Ads
The leads inbox, matched to calls and then to jobs, so the LSA account is judged on invoices instead of lead counts.
QuickBooks
Labor cost split by business unit with the account and class on every line, ready for the office to enter.
Google reviews
Every five-star review matched to the tech on the job for bonuses and the board, and an email to the managers when a low review comes in.
Email reports
Weekly and monthly reports emailed to the owner and the office with the PDFs attached, on the day the numbers are ready.
How we build one
From the spreadsheet on your desk to a page your office runs
Each automation is built the way the payroll site was: written down step by step first, then checked against a week your office already did by hand.
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Stop 01
Write down the job
We go through the task with whoever does it today and list every step, every spreadsheet and every exception the office handles by memory.
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Stop 02
Connect your accounts
Housecall Pro, CallRail and the rest are read with keys you create, and the tool sits behind its own password.
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Stop 03
Match a real week
Before anyone relies on it, it has to reproduce a week your office already finished. Where the numbers differ, we find out which side was wrong.
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Stop 04
Hand it to the office
Your office runs it. When an owner adds a bonus rule or a new lead source, we change the code and check it again.
Keep reading
Where these systems came from
Local Services Ads management
The lead ROI report started as a monthly check on LSA leads. The LSA page covers the account work behind it.
Local SEO services
Calls from the Google Business Profile and the website are two of the five sources the report scores every week.
Farrell Plumbing
The plumbing company where the leaderboard and the first payroll site run.
Farrell Air Conditioning
The AC company behind the average ticket board and the transcript check on new customers.
Farrell Plumbing and Farrell Air Conditioning are Team Farrell companies, and Rankd grew out of Team Farrell.
Do these automations only work with Housecall Pro?
All three were built on Housecall Pro, because every Team Farrell company runs on it. The idea underneath, matching the phone number on a call to a customer and adding up that customer’s invoices, works with any field service software that lets us read customers, jobs and invoices through an API. If you run something else, we check what its API allows during the free audit and tell you what can be built.
Will an automation change anything in my Housecall Pro account?
The lead report and the leaderboard only read from Housecall Pro. The payroll site reads jobs and pulls clock hours, and it writes its results to its own pages, its PDFs and your Excel workbook. If you want something written back into Housecall Pro, such as a business unit or a tag on a job, we test it first and read it back, because the Housecall Pro API accepts some changes and quietly ignores others.
What if a customer calls from a number that is not in Housecall Pro?
The report searches Housecall Pro for the name and the street the caller gave on the call. Then it searches the address, which turns up older records filed under another number or a misspelled name. A customer whose record has no phone number at all is found the same way.
Why does last month’s return keep going up?
Invoices keep landing after the month ends. A job gets finished the next week, an estimate turns into a job, the office closes out an invoice. In our reports a month keeps settling for about a month after it closes, so we never set a fresh month next to a settled one. Last month is pulled again with the same code, and both months are compared at the same age.
How do you tell a new customer from a returning one?
The date on the Housecall Pro customer record gets you most of the way. In our check it was right 86% of the time. The rest were returning customers with a second record under a new number, and customers of a sister company who look new because each company keeps its own Housecall Pro account. So the report reads the call transcript for every customer who looks new before it counts them.
Who can see the payroll site?
Only your office. Each payroll site sits behind its own password, refuses to run at all if that password is not set, locks sign-in after repeated wrong tries, and only sends email when someone in the office presses send.
Can the leaderboard rank on something other than sales?
Yes. The plumbing board ranks weekly sales. The air conditioning copy ranks average ticket on service calls, keeps installs off the board, and charges a callback to the tech who caused it. You set the rules, and each job on the board shows why it did or did not count.
What does an automation cost?
Each one is custom priced after a free audit. The price depends on how many systems it reads from, how many rules it has to follow, and how much checking it takes to match the way your office does the job today. There is nothing to sign to get the audit.
Free automation audit
Find out what your office still does by hand
Tell us your trade, the software you run and the job that eats your office’s week. We will look at how it is done today and tell you what we would automate first. Automations are custom priced after a free audit, and there is nothing to sign.
Request your free audit
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