Four tests, in this order
Write the tests down before the ads run. Changing them halfway through a month makes the cost per lead incomparable with the month before.
- A real person. Not a spam form, a competitor fishing, or the same customer ringing twice about the same job. Keep one row for the duplicate and point it at the original.
- Work you do. A plumber’s ad that produces a bathroom installation is a different product from a burst pipe. If you do both, tag the job type. If you do not fit bathrooms, that call is the wrong job, however polite the caller was.
- An area you cover. “In area” means you would send someone. A postcode you technically serve but only at a loss is out of area for this purpose. The service-area guide is where that line gets drawn.
- A way back to them. A form with a mistyped email, or a call that drops before anyone speaks, is not a lead you can price. Mark it unreachable.
Anything that fails a test is still worth a row. You need the failures to see where the money went.
One outcome on every row
Give each enquiry one outcome. Teams that tick three boxes on the same call cannot add the month up.
| Outcome | What it means | Counts toward |
|---|---|---|
| Unreachable | No working number or email, or nobody could talk. | Nothing but the spend. |
| Duplicate | The same person, same job, already on the sheet. | The original row only. |
| Out of area | You would not send someone. | A location problem, not a sales problem. |
| Wrong job | A service you do not sell, or a search you meant to exclude. | Keywords and ads. |
| Qualified | Passed all four tests. Not booked yet. | Cost per qualified enquiry. |
| Booked | A time was agreed, or the job was accepted. | Cost per booked job. |
| Won | You were paid, or the work is firmly sold. | Cost per won job, once you know it. |
| Lost | Qualified, then the customer chose someone else, or the date did not work. | Follow-up, price, or capacity. |
Booked and won are not the same. A roof survey can be booked and still be lost at the quote. Keep them apart or a full diary of unpaid surveys will look like a successful campaign.
The one-page sheet
This is the whole asset. Print it or copy the columns into the notes app the person who answers the phone already uses. A sheet nobody fills in is not a measurement system.
| Column | What to write |
|---|---|
| When | Date and roughly the hour. Late calls matter if nobody is there to answer. |
| Source | Google Ads, or another source if you are comparing. One sheet can hold both. |
| Job type | The split you already use. For a plumber: call-out, service, or installation. |
| Postcode or town | Enough to say in or out. You do not need the house number on a shared sheet. |
| In area | Yes or no, decided by the rule you wrote down, not by how the call felt. |
| Outcome | One label from the table above. |
| Why it stopped | One line, only when the customer told you. Price, date, no answer, already sorted. |
Do not store card numbers, medical detail, or a full address you do not need. A town and a job type are enough to manage the ads.
Three made-up rows, so the columns are obvious. They are not a real customer.
| When | Job | Town | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tue 9:10 | Call-out | The town you cover | Booked |
| Tue 9:40 | Same call-out, same mobile | Same town | Duplicate. Not a second lead. |
| Tue 11:00 | Installation | A city you will not drive to | Out of area. Not qualified. |
The month’s cost per booked job uses the first row only. The other two explain the ads: one person had to ring twice, and one click came from outside the area. Both are reasons to change the campaign. Neither is a booking.
A month in pounds, with made-up counts
The counts below are invented so the arithmetic is easy to follow. They are not a client, not a town, and not a UK average. Swap in your own calls.
| Line | Figure | What you divide |
|---|---|---|
| Paid to Google | £1,000 | The media invoice. |
| Management, before VAT | £299 | Managed plan, as published on 15 November 2026. |
| VAT on the fee at 20% | £59.80 | Add it if you cannot reclaim it. Leave it off the “before VAT” line either way, and say which you did. |
| All-in, VAT on the fee included | £1,358.80 | The number to divide if you want the true cost. |
| Calls and forms | 20 | £67.94 each. Most of these are not leads. |
| Qualified | 12 | £113.23 each. |
| Booked | 4 | £339.70 each. |
If the gross profit on a typical booked job is £400 after materials and the labour you had to send, this illustrated month covered the ads and the fee, with a thin margin. If the gross profit is £250, the month did not, even though £50 per call would have looked acceptable on a dashboard that stops at calls.
Google’s invoice and our fee are separate bills. The cost guide sets out that split. The calculator will take your own job value so you are not stuck with this example.
Read the gap before you raise the bid
- Many out of area. The location setting is too wide, or Google is using “Presence or interest”, which reaches people outside the towns who have shown an interest in them. Fix the area before you buy more clicks. The steps are in the service-area guide.
- Many wrong jobs. Look at the search terms. Add negatives for the work you do not want. Splitting emergency and planned work usually does more than a higher bid.
- Qualified, rarely booked. The ads did their job. Check how fast the phone is answered, whether the diary can take the work, and what happens to quotes after the visit. Raising the bid buys more of the same queue.
- Booked, rarely won. You are paying for surveys, viewings or quotes that do not become work. Report them separately so they do not disguise a weak close.
Across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the Google Ads columns are the same. What changes is the journey. A cleaner covering Edinburgh tenements and a cleaner covering a rural county in Wales should not share a radius just because both are “UK”. Set “in area” from drive time and the value of the job, then keep that rule for the whole month.
The search term is not the keyword
A keyword is a word you added so the ad can show. A search term is what the person typed. Those are not the same list. Google’s help page, read on 15 November 2026, says the search terms report shows terms used by a significant number of people that triggered impressions and clicks. It also says some terms without enough activity are left out, to meet Google’s privacy standard. A quiet junk query can be absent. A call from that query can still arrive.
Open it from Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. The Keyword column is off until you tick it under Columns, then Attributes. After seven days, sort by cost. For each term that spent money, use the same test as a call: right job, right place, or neither. Google’s page on that column says to add an irrelevant term as a negative keyword, so the ad stops showing for something you do not sell. Do that in the week. Waiting for the monthly report means you pay for the same query again.
Keep searches for your own company name on their own line. Those people already knew you. Folding them into a campaign for “emergency plumber” or “end of tenancy clean” makes the cost per booked job look kinder than the cold searches were. The trade studies list the queries each job should refuse. This page is the habit that catches the ones you did not predict.
What to do this week
- Write the four tests and the job types on half a page.
- Put the sheet where calls are answered. One person owns it.
- At the end of seven days, count outcomes and sort the search terms report by cost. Do not change bids off a single quiet Tuesday.
- Bring the counts to the monthly report. If booking data is missing, the report should say enquiries only, and say so. That is the rule on our pricing page.
The same person is one row
A customer who rings, fills in the form, then rings again because nobody called back is one enquiry. A second row makes the week look busier and makes the cost per booked job look cheaper than the money you spent. Match on the phone number or the email the same day. Mark the extra contacts as duplicates, and keep them out of the qualified count and the booked count.
A missed call that is returned and then booked is still one row, with the outcome booked. Put the miss in the note. A run of misses is a staffing problem. Raising the bid buys more calls into the same unanswered phone.
Do this before you compare Google Ads with a directory. A lead that starts on Checkatrade and then searches your name must not appear as two wins. The Checkatrade worksheet uses the same rule.
Questions from owners
What is a qualified lead from Google Ads?
A real person, asking about work you do, in an area you cover, who left a working phone number or email, and who reached you from the ads. Spam, wrong numbers, duplicates, the wrong trade and people outside your area are not qualified.
Is a phone call a qualified lead?
Only if it passes those tests. A sixty-second call from the wrong town is a call. It is not a lead you can do anything with. Google can count calls over a duration you choose. Your sheet still has to say whether the job was one you wanted.
How is cost per qualified lead different from cost per booked job?
Divide the month’s spend by qualified enquiries for the first figure, and by jobs that were actually booked for the second. A campaign can look cheap per qualified enquiry and expensive per booking if the quotes are slow, the price is wrong, or the diary is full.
Should the management fee be inside the cost?
Yes, if you are deciding whether the ads paid for themselves. Keep Google’s invoice and the management fee on separate lines, then add them before you divide by booked jobs. On this site the Managed plan is £299 a month plus VAT, which is a different bill from the money you pay Google.
What if two people in the office take the calls?
Use the same five outcomes, written where both of them can see them. Check ten records at the end of the week. If one person marks almost everything booked and the other marks almost everything lost, the definitions have drifted and the cost per job is not usable yet.
Does this work the same in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
The lead definition does. Google Ads location targeting works across the UK, and the sheet does not change at the border. Travel time, call-out custom and the value of a job do change, so set “in area” from where your team can actually get to, not from a UK-wide radius.
How many booked jobs do I need before the number means anything?
A single week can be luck. Use a month, and treat a cost per booked job as a range until you have at least ten booked jobs in that trade. Fewer than that, keep the sheet anyway. It tells you whether the problem is the area, the job type or the follow-up.
Where do the figures on this page come from?
The definitions are the ones we use when we report. The £1,000, twenty calls and four bookings are an illustration so the arithmetic is visible. They are not a client result and they are not a UK average.
Does a second call from the same customer count as another lead?
No. A call, then a form, then another call from the same person is one enquiry. Keep one row, note the extra contact, and leave the duplicates out of the qualified count and the booked count. Counting them twice makes the cost per booked job look lower than the money you spent. A missed call that you return and book is still that same single row.
Why are some searches missing from the search terms report?
Google’s help page, read on 15 November 2026, says the report shows terms used by a significant number of people that triggered impressions and clicks, and that some terms without enough activity are omitted for privacy. A call can still arrive from a query you never see. That call needs a row on the sheet. The report explains the clicks it shows. It is not a full list of every query you paid for.
Where the figures come from
Checked on 15 November 2026 unless a source prints its own date.
- About call reporting. Google Ads Help. A forwarding number can record duration and whether the call connected. It does not record whether the job was booked.
- Google Ads pricing. Local PPC Experts. Management fees used in the worked example, checked 15 November 2026. Enquiry counts in that example are made up.
- About the search terms report. Google Ads Help, read 15 November 2026. Open it from Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. The report lists terms used by a significant number of people. Some low-activity queries are omitted for privacy.
- About the search terms report, keyword column. Google Ads Help. If a search term is not something you sell, add it as a negative keyword. The Keyword column is off until you turn it on under Columns, then Attributes.