They say
“Our jobs take months, so any report will be out of date.”
We say
The opposite. A long cycle is why period-based ad reporting fails here, and why matching signed jobs back to their original leads is the only honest reading.
For AccuLynx
The roof you sold in June started as a lead in March.
Export completed jobs from AccuLynx, upload the leads that produced them, and rank marketing on signed work rather than on inspections booked.
No API key Nothing to install in AccuLynxNothing to install No card requiredNo card
CloseRev reads an AccuLynx export of completed jobs — the customer's phone or email, the job value and the completion date — and matches it against the leads and calls that produced them months earlier. Roofing has one of the longest gaps between enquiry and money in this catalogue, and that gap is exactly what ad platform reporting cannot see. Jobs with no traceable lead are reported as Direct / Unknown rather than credited to whatever ran most recently.
Last checked against AccuLynx's own documentation on September 24, 2026.
The gap
Your ad reporting covers thirty days. Your sales cycle does not. The campaign that produced last quarter's best jobs looks like it produced nothing.
AccuLynx sees
What was sold, to whom, and for how much.
no shared row
Your ad account sees
The click, the keyword, the call, and what each one cost.
The file
What the export needs in it.
Three things carry the match: who, how much, and when. Anything else is optional and only changes how the report can be sliced.
- Needed
Customer phone or email
On the customer the job belongs to. Roofing leads arrive by phone, by form and by canvasser, and the contact detail is the only thing all three have in common.
- Needed
Job value
The contract value or the invoiced total. Where insurance is involved this is the approved scope rather than the first estimate, and the difference is frequently large.
- Needed
Completion or contract date
When the job was signed or finished. Signed date is usually the better one for marketing — it is when the customer decided.
- Optional
Job type or insurance flag
Retail against insurance, or repair against replacement. It is the split that explains why two channels with the same lead cost produce different money.
Step by step
Getting the file out of AccuLynx.
Written for somebody with AccuLynx open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Export completed or contracted jobs
One row per job with a customer contact detail, the value and a date. Look for the export listing jobs with their value rather than a particular report name.
-
Go back at least twice your sales cycle
This is the step that matters most in roofing. If your average lead takes ninety days to become a signed job, a file covering ninety days will attribute almost nothing correctly.
-
Export every lead source, including the ones nobody counts
Paid search, marketplaces, the door knockers and the referral log. A channel missing from the lead file will show up as Direct / Unknown and look like it does not exist.
-
Separate retail from insurance if you can
They behave so differently that averaging them produces a number describing neither. If the export carries the distinction, keep it.
-
Upload both
The join is the phone and the email, normalised on both sides, with anything weaker put in front of a person rather than counted.
What comes back
The page AccuLynx cannot show you.
Revenue by channel, the count of sales behind each figure, and an honest bucket for the ones nobody could trace. Sample figures, from the worked example on the Roofing Contractors page — not from a AccuLynx account.
Traced to a channel$540,00060% of $900,000
Sales matched31 of 52high confidence only
Average sale$17,300per paid sale
| Channel | Share | Sales | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 19 | $342,000 | |
| Meta Ads | 9 | $153,000 | |
| Email marketing | 3 | $45,000 | |
| Direct / Unknown | 21 | $360,000 |
Unmatched sales stay in Direct / Unknown. They are never spread across the paid channels to make the total look better.
The argument
What changes when the job and the ad share a row.
The lag is the whole problem, and it is worse here than almost anywhere
A homeowner notices a stain on a ceiling in March, searches, books an inspection, gets three quotes, waits for the insurance adjuster, and signs in June. The money lands in July.
Every ad platform reports on a window shorter than that, so the campaign that produced the enquiry gets credited with an inspection booking at best and nothing at all at worst. Meanwhile whichever campaign happened to run in July looks productive.
Matching a job export that reaches back past the whole cycle is the only way to put the revenue where it belongs. In this trade the correction is not marginal — it routinely reorders the channels entirely.
Storm work distorts any period it touches
A hailstorm produces months of demand in a fortnight, and it arrives largely regardless of marketing. A campaign running that week will look extraordinary, and repeating it in a quiet month will disappoint everybody.
This is the clearest case in the catalogue for reading a long window and comparing a channel against itself across periods rather than against a single month's leaderboard.
Where the export flags storm or insurance work, splitting on it separates the demand you bought from the demand the weather delivered. That distinction is worth more than any individual channel ranking on the report.
Insurance and retail are two businesses in one file
Insurance work has a different sales motion, a different close rate, a different margin and a different customer — the approved scope is negotiated with an adjuster rather than sold to a homeowner.
Retail work is sold, priced and closed by your team on its own merits. Marketing that produces good retail leads is not necessarily marketing that produces good insurance claims, and the lead costs differ accordingly.
Averaged together the report says something true of the business and useful to nobody in it. Split, it tells you which channel to push for which kind of work.
Inspections booked is the metric everyone has and nobody should rank on
Free inspections are the standard offer, they are easy to count, and they arrive close enough to the click that ad platforms will happily report them as conversions.
The conversion rate from inspection to signed contract varies enormously by channel — a marketplace lead comparing four contractors and a referral from a neighbour do not convert alike — so ranking on inspections ranks on the wrong thing with confidence.
Uploading both files gives the inspection-to-contract rate per channel, which is usually the number that changes the budget rather than confirming it.
Fair questions
“AccuLynx already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“Storms drive our volume, not marketing.”
We say
Partly, and the report is how you find out which part. Splitting storm work from the rest is the first useful thing it does.
They say
“We buy marketplace leads and cannot track them.”
We say
If the marketplace gives you a name and a phone, it is a lead file like any other and it ranks on the same axis as everything else.
No, and it is worth saying why not: a roofing file carries claim detail and photographs, and a tool with standing access to it is a liability nobody needs. It reads a file you exported and holds no credential.
Completed or contracted jobs with a customer contact detail, the value and a date.
Either, consistently. On insurance work the approved scope is usually the more meaningful of the two.
At least twice your average sales cycle. In roofing that is often a year, and a short file is the main reason this exercise disappoints.
Yes, where the export carries the distinction — and you should, because they are two businesses with two different marketing profiles.
Flag it if the file lets you and read it separately. Otherwise one storm will make a mediocre channel look like the best decision you ever made.
Yes. Any file with a contact detail and a source is a lead file, and marketplaces rank beside your own channels rather than being taken on faith.
Yes, with both files uploaded. It is usually the most decision-changing number the report produces.
Include the canvassing log as a source and it ranks like any other channel. Left out, that work lands in Direct / Unknown and your paid channels look worse than they are.
Direct / Unknown, reported as unmatched rather than distributed across the paid channels.
A contact detail, a value and a date. No photos, no measurements, no claim documents, no adjuster correspondence. Encrypted in transit and at rest and deleted with its import.
Revenue by channel from signed work, split by job type where the file allows, and everything unmatched kept visible.
By trade
Trades that run AccuLynx.
What the report looks like once the export is in, written for each one.
- Roofing ContractorsWhich ads produced signed roofs?
- Gutters & SidingWhich channels produced signed exterior jobs?
- Windows & DoorsWhich channels produced installed jobs?
- Water Damage RestorationWhich channels produced paid restoration jobs?
- Kitchen & Bath RemodelingWhich channels produced signed remodels?
Other systems
Also worth reading.
Running more than one system, or comparing? The method is the same and the columns are not.
Closed-sales file ServiceTitan HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing contractors Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file FieldEdge HVAC, plumbing and electrical contractors Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file Jobber Landscaping, cleaning, pest control and small trades Closed-sales file What to export
All 60 systems 
AccuLynx and the other product names and logos on this page belong to their owners and are shown to identify the software a file comes from. CloseRev is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and connects to none of them: it reads a file you export.
Start today
Two exports, and you will know.
Nothing to install in AccuLynx, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.