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Revenue Leak Calculator

Most trade businesses don't have a lead problem. They have a leak problem — the phone rang and nobody picked up, the ad spend bought a lead in the wrong ZIP code, the job got done and the customer never paid. Put your own numbers in and see the annual total.

Your business

Everything below is calculated from these two numbers.

Leak 1 — calls that ring out

After hours, on a roof, already on the other line.

Leak 2 — ad spend on leads that were never jobs

Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack, Local Services Ads — whatever you pay for leads.

Leak 3 — work you did and never got paid for

Disputed, disappeared, part-paid, or written off.

Leaking out of your business
$0
per year

An estimate built from the numbers you entered — not a promise of what any tool recovers.

Leak 4 — customers who ask an AI instead of Google

This one has no slider on purpose. Putting a dollar figure on it would mean guessing what share of your customers now ask ChatGPT for a contractor before they dial, and there is no honest number for that at the trade-and-city level. So we measure it instead of estimating it.

Ask ChatGPT who the best plumber in your city is. If it names four companies and none of them are you, that is the leak — and it is fixable, because the answer is assembled from sources you can get listed in. Run a free Spotlit check to see whether ChatGPT mentions your business today, and which sites it cites instead of yours.

Want the leak found for you?

The AI Visibility Audit measures where you actually stand in AI search, which review sites and "best contractor in [city]" lists ChatGPT already trusts, and exactly which ones you're missing from. Fixed price, seven business days, no sales call.

See what's in the audit →

Why these four leaks are really one problem

Every one of them happens after the customer has already decided they need you. Nobody in this list is a stranger who has to be convinced — they searched, they called, they filled in the form, they let you into the house. The demand was there and something in the middle dropped it.

That matters because the usual fix for "not enough revenue" is to buy more leads, which is the most expensive lever available and the one that makes leaks 2 and 3 worse. Doubling ad spend while 30% of leads are junk just doubles the junk. Closing the leaks first makes every lead you already pay for worth more.

How this calculator works

No hidden multipliers. Three formulas, all driven by the numbers you typed in:

Calls that rang out = missed calls per week × 52 × close rate × average job value
Ad spend on junk leads = monthly lead spend × 12 × junk lead percentage
Jobs never paid for = unpaid jobs per year × average job value

The trade dropdown seeds a typical average job value so you have somewhere to start. Override it — your own ticket is the single input that moves the total most.

What this number is, and what it isn't

It is an estimate of money that left the business, sized in your own figures. It mixes two kinds of dollars: revenue you never earned (the missed calls, the unpaid jobs) and cash you spent on nothing (the junk leads). Both are real money, but they don't hit the P&L in the same place, so treat the total as a size-of-problem figure rather than a line item.

It is not a forecast of recovery. No AI receptionist answers in a way that wins every caller. No lead filter is perfect. No pre-authorization stops every customer who was determined not to pay. Anyone who tells you a tool recovers the whole number is selling you something. The useful question the calculator answers is narrower and more practical: which of these three is the biggest, and is it big enough to be worth fixing this quarter?

Which leak to close first

If the missed-call number is the biggest

That is usually the case for trades with emergency work — burst pipes, no heat, a door that won't close. The caller cannot wait, so the first business to answer wins. NeverMissAI answers around the clock, qualifies the caller in your trade's own vocabulary, books the job, and texts you the lead. The dedicated missed-call calculator breaks this one down further.

If the junk-lead number is the biggest

That is the signature of a business leaning hard on paid lead platforms. Yelp Request-a-Quote leads run roughly $45–$120 each in ad spend, so a few bad ones a week is real money. Yelp Lead AI reads every lead as it lands, checks it against your services and service-area ZIPs, and drafts the reply — you approve it with one tap before anything sends.

If the unpaid-jobs number is the biggest

Collections and liens are what you reach for after the fact, and both cost more than they recover. PaidUp works the other way round: authorize the card before the work starts, so the money is committed while you still have leverage. The cost-of-getting-stiffed calculator models this leak on its own.

If you can't tell because you're not sure customers can find you at all

Start with measurement rather than spend. A free Spotlit check takes a minute and tells you whether ChatGPT names your business when someone asks for a contractor in your city.

Frequently asked questions

What is a revenue leak in a home service business?
Money the business already earned, or already paid to acquire, that never reached the bank. The four common ones for trades: calls that rang out and went to a competitor, ad spend burned on leads that were never real jobs, work completed but never paid for, and being absent from the answers customers get from AI assistants. None of these are demand problems — the demand was already there.
How do you calculate the cost of missed calls?
Missed calls per week × 52 × the share of answered calls that become jobs × your average job value. A plumbing company missing 10 calls a week at a $450 ticket and a 35% close rate is leaking roughly $81,900 a year. Override the industry preset with your real average ticket for an accurate figure.
How much of my Yelp ad spend is wasted on junk leads?
Monthly lead spend × the share that is out of area, outside your services, or spam. Spend $2,000 a month with 30% junk and that's $600 a month — $7,200 a year — on leads that were never going to be jobs. Yelp Request-a-Quote leads typically cost $45–$120 each in ad spend.
Why doesn't the calculator put a dollar figure on AI search?
Because we'd have to invent it. Estimating it means assuming what share of your customers ask ChatGPT before calling a contractor, and no trustworthy figure exists at the trade-and-city level. So we measure instead: a free Spotlit check shows whether ChatGPT actually names your business, and which sources it cites instead.
Is this what SwiftAppLab guarantees to recover?
No. The total is what's leaking, not what anyone can promise to recover. No system catches every call, filters every junk lead, or collects on every deadbeat. The calculator exists to size the problem in your own numbers so you can decide which leak is worth closing first.
What counts as an unpaid job?
Any job where the work was done and the money never fully arrived — disputed charges, customers who vanished after the invoice, partial payments that stopped, balances dragged out until you wrote them off. Most trades know this number from memory, because each one stings.