Paste 10–20 recent jobs. Get an instant Margin Score (0–100), a red-flag job list with $ gap to benchmark, and your projected annual recovery. No account required.
JOB-1041 HVAC 4800 1400 800 4 0| Job ID | Your GM | Benchmark | Gap $ | Callback |
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Connect your field service platform or accounting system (QBO, Xero). RollForge scores every job on dispatch, flags margin-negative work before it leaves, and sends weekly margin alerts to your team.
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Most trade business owners know their blended gross margin. Very few know which individual jobs are dragging it down — and by how much. The difference matters more than most owners realize. A $500K/month shop running 42% overall margin might have 20% of jobs running below 30%, with 3–4 specific technicians or job types generating most of the drag. The blended number hides this completely.
Gross margin % vs. benchmark (50% weight): This is the direct measure — is each job recovering enough above cost to fund your overhead and profit? The benchmark differs by trade because input structures differ: electrical work is typically labor-heavier with less material markup headroom; HVAC has high material cost but strong ticket values for replacement work.
Callback rate (30% weight): Every callback is a double-cost event — your tech returns unpaid, and you've already recognized zero revenue. High callback rates are a lagging indicator of scope-confirmation failures or quality issues. The penalty in the score is non-linear: a 5% callback rate is manageable; 15%+ is a material structural problem.
Labor:Revenue ratio (20% weight): The ratio of direct labor dollars to total job revenue. In service work, labor efficiency determines scalability. Shops with high labor ratios (above 40%) are typically underpricing, underestimating scope, or running excess hours on routine jobs. The ideal range for most trade service work is 25–35%.
A red-flag job is any job where your gross margin falls below the benchmark for your trade. This doesn't mean the job was a mistake — it means it's worth understanding why. The most common causes: scope creep without repricing, parts cost overruns that were absorbed without a change order, excess tech hours on a fixed-price job, or a callback that doubled the labor on the original ticket without additional revenue.
The score you see here is calculated from the jobs you pasted — it's a signal, not a definitive verdict. Your actual mix across the full month will vary. The full RollForge margin engine scores every job on close, tracks trends by technician and job type, and surfaces anomalies automatically. This tool exists to show you what that signal looks like in practice — and give you a baseline to work from before you connect your live data.
Benchmark sources: RSMeans Field Cost Data; ACHR News Trade Survey; IBISWorld HVAC/Plumbing/Electrical industry reports; RollForge operator aggregate data from connected FSM and accounting integrations.