Guides
The chimney sweep scorecard: monthly KPIs explained
A monthly chimney sweep scorecard tracks return visits, margin per inspection and sweep, and booked flue work, not a borrowed national benchmark.
What to take away
- A monthly chimney sweep scorecard needs six numbers. Four cover quality and pricing: return visits per hundred jobs, margin per inspection, margin per sweep, and quote-to-booked rate. Two cover capacity and rework: revenue per truck day and callback cost.
- Track margin separately for each service line. A sweep and an inspection carry different time, travel and consumable costs.
- Pull the numbers on the same day each month from the same source, usually the scheduling and invoicing system, such as ServiceTitan, Jobber or Housecall Pro.
- A return visit is a cost with no second invoice attached. Count it, price it, and find its cause.
- The chimney sweep software and KPI guide covers which fields to capture before the first report runs.
This article covers business measurement only. Inspection findings, clearances, venting defects and creosote conditions belong with a WETT-certified technician, NFPA 211 and your local fire authority.
The six numbers on the scorecard
A scorecard is only useful if the same six monthly KPIs appear every month. Pick them once, write down where each comes from, and stop adding more.
Six Monthly Scorecard KPIs
- Return visits per hundred jobs
- Margin per inspection
- Margin per sweep
- Quote-to-booked rate
- Revenue per truck day
- Callback cost
Return visits per hundred jobs. Count every trip back to a property for the same booked service. A sweep that missed a section of flue, an inspection that could not reach the appliance, a job that needed a second technician: all three land here. Divide return visits by completed jobs and multiply by 100.
Margin per inspection. Take inspection revenue, subtract technician hours at loaded wage, travel time, and consumables. Divide by inspection count. This number tells you whether inspections feed the business or drain it. A level-one inspection typically bills $100 to $250.
Margin per sweep. Same arithmetic, sweep revenue. A full-service residential sweep typically bills $150 to $350 per flue in most US markets. Sweeps and inspections rarely carry the same margin, and a blended figure hides which one pays the overhead.
Quote-to-booked rate. Quotes issued divided into jobs booked, measured over the same period. A rate that drops while quote volume rises usually means price or response time, not demand. Count written quotes only.
Revenue per truck day. Total service revenue divided by days a truck was on the road. This is the number that shows whether adding a vehicle pays for itself. Test that decision with fuel, insurance and the second technician's loaded wage included.
Callback cost. Hours and travel spent on work you did not invoice. Multiply by loaded wage. Loaded wage usually runs 1.25 to 1.4 times base pay once payroll taxes and workers' comp are added.
Worked example: costing a return visit
A sweep runs two technicians. Loaded wage is W dollars per hour per technician. A return visit takes T hours on site plus D hours of driving, and consumes no billable revenue.
Cost of One Return Visit
- $32Loaded wage per tech per hour
- 1.25Hours on site plus driving
- $80Wages alone per return visit
- $320True cost with displaced sweep
Return visit cost = W x (T + D) x 2
At W = 32, T = 0.75 and D = 0.5, one return visit costs about 80 dollars in wages alone. Add the slot it displaced. If that slot would have held a 240 dollar sweep, the true cost is closer to 320 dollars.
Twenty return visits a month at that rate is real money. Substitute your own wage, drive time and average ticket, then rebuild the figure when pay rates change.
Reading the table
| KPI | What it measures | What a bad reading usually means | Where it is pulled from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Return visits per 100 jobs | Work completed right the first time | Access assessment, tool choice, or booking notes are thin | Job status tagged "return" |
| Margin per inspection | Whether inspections pay for themselves | Underpriced level-one work, or too much drive time per stop | Invoice line by service code |
| Margin per sweep | Core service profitability | Consumables, rod and brush wear, or route density | Invoice line by service code |
| Quote-to-booked rate | Whether quotes convert | Price, response speed, or unclear scope on the quote | Quote module status |
| Revenue per truck day | How hard each truck and crew works | Route batching, seasonality, or too few booked jobs | Vehicle assignment on the schedule |
| Callback cost | Unbilled labour | Rework, missed clearances, or scheduling pressure | Warranty or callback tag |
One bad month distorts any single row. Read three months together before you change a price or a process.
Where the numbers come from
Most of these figures already exist in your scheduling and invoicing records. The work is deciding which field holds which fact, and capturing it the same way every time. ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro and FieldEdge each tag job type, vehicle and invoice line, which is what the monthly pull needs.
Published list prices start near $29 a month per user for Jobber's entry plan billed annually, and near $59 a month for Housecall Pro. ServiceTitan quotes per truck instead of per user. QuickBooks Online Simple Start lists near $35 a month, and Gusto payroll near $40 a month plus $6 per employee.
Keep records that show income and expenses clearly, with documents supporting purchases, payroll and assets, as the IRS recordkeeping guidance sets out. That habit makes the monthly pull a fifteen-minute job instead of a rebuild.
If you store customer records, job photos or payment details digitally, the CISA small business guidance and the NIST small business quick-start guides are checkable starting points for protecting them. Neither is chimney-specific, and neither replaces your own access rules.
Setting the review date
Pick one day a month, before the busy season starts, and hold it. Bring the six figures, the prior two months, and one question per number.
If a figure moved, check demand, capacity, scheduling and data entry before you change a price or a standard. Most swings trace back to a booking habit or a missing field, not to the market.
The payoff is a crew that knows which number they influence, and an owner who sees a problem in the month it starts rather than the season it ends.
Common questions
How many KPIs should a small sweep business track?
Six is enough for most operations running one to three trucks. More than that and the monthly review turns into data entry. Add a seventh only when a specific decision depends on it, and retire one when it stops driving a choice.
Why track margin per inspection and margin per sweep separately?
They carry different time, travel and consumable costs, so a blended margin hides which service pays the overhead. Separating them shows whether inspections are a loss leader or a profit center, which changes how you price both.
What counts as a return visit?
Any second trip to the same property for the same booked service. That includes a missed flue section, an appliance the technician could not reach, and a job that needed a second pair of hands. Count them all, or the number flatters you.
How often should the scorecard be reviewed?
Monthly, on a fixed date, with the prior two months alongside. Three months of readings show a trend; a single month usually shows noise. Review the numbers before seasonal demand peaks, when there is still room to adjust.
What is a normal ticket price for a sweep?
Most US markets see $150 to $350 for a residential sweep and $100 to $250 for a level-one inspection. Chimney height, flue count, roof access and whether a camera is included drive the number. Set your own average from the last three months of invoices rather than a national figure.
