Reporting that tells you whether your financing program earns its cost

What it is

A monthly report built from your quote and job records, plus any summary your lender lets you share. It follows a simple funnel:

1. Large quotes written (above a threshold you choose, say $4,000)
2. Quotes where financing was mentioned
3. Customers who say they applied with the lender
4. Jobs booked, split by "paid with financing" and "paid another way"
5. Revenue, and gross margin after any lender fee you pay on financed jobs

Who it is for

• Owners about to renew or renegotiate a financing agreement
• Companies spending on search ads for big jobs that want to know which ones close
• Anyone who suspects the program is either a quiet winner or a quiet cost

What is included

• Setup of three or four simple fields in your CRM or quote tool (financing mentioned, customer applied, paid via financing)
• A monthly dashboard and a one-page written summary
• Close-rate comparisons by job type and by staff member
• Margin comparison that accounts for program fees
• A quarterly review call with recommendations

Timeline

Setting up fields and training takes about a week. You need about two months of clean data before comparisons mean much, and three to six months before you make decisions about the program itself.

How results are measured

Here is the kind of table you will see, using made-up numbers to show the method:

A gap like that looks encouraging, but we always check the obvious traps. Were the "mentioned" quotes written by your best salesperson? Were they a different job type? We adjust the comparison before drawing conclusions. Then we subtract program fees from the financed jobs to get the real margin.

Mistakes to avoid

• Counting applications as wins. An application is not a booked job.
• Ignoring fees. A higher close rate can still cost money if fees eat the margin.
• Small samples. Ten quotes tell you almost nothing. Wait for volume.
• Collecting credit data. You don't need it, and holding it adds privacy obligations.
• Comparing different jobs. A repipe and a faucet swap don't belong in the same column.

A worked margin check

Using the example table above, imagine five of the twelve booked "mentioned" jobs were paid through the lender, and the program fee on each was 5% of an average $7,800 ticket. That's about $390 per financed job, or $1,950 across the five. If your gross margin on those jobs is 35%, each one contributes about $2,730 before the fee. The question is how many of the twelve you would have won without financing. If the answer is ten, the two extra jobs bring about $5,460 in margin against $1,950 in fees, which is clearly worthwhile. If the answer is twelve, the program cost you $1,950 for nothing. That's why the report always asks the uncomfortable question.

What you need to provide

Very little. We need access to your quote or CRM tool, a short list of job types, the threshold you consider a "large" quote, and the fee structure in your lender agreement. Your staff need to tick one or two boxes on each large quote. In most companies that takes under a minute per quote once it becomes habit, which our program launch kit helps with.

When reporting is the only service you need

Some owners already have good marketing and simply want to know if their financing program is worth renewing. Reporting on its own suits them well. A quarter or two of clean data usually answers the question.

The close-rate maths guide shows how to run these numbers yourself, and the results page shows how we've measured marketing in our HVAC work. Call, text or email to set up your first report.