They say
“Follow Up Boss already reports by source.”
We say
On leads and activity, which it sees. The commission is in the brokerage system, and nothing joins the two.
For Follow Up Boss
A portal lead takes eleven months to buy a house, if it ever does.
Export leads from Follow Up Boss, match them against closed commissions, and rank sources over a window that fits a property purchase.
No API key Nothing to install in Follow Up BossNothing to install No card requiredNo card
Follow Up Boss holds the lead side for most teams that use it — every portal lead, every source, every agent assignment — while the commission is recorded in the brokerage's own system. CloseRev joins the two on the contact detail and reports closed commission by source, over a window long enough for a property purchase to have happened. Commission with no traceable lead is reported as Direct / Unknown.
Last checked against Follow Up Boss's own documentation on September 24, 2026.
The gap
You are buying leads monthly and judging them quarterly, against a purchase that takes a year.
Follow Up Boss 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
Lead phone or email
Captured at enquiry. The phone number is the working key; portal leads often supply a masked email.
- Needed
Lead source and date
Which portal or campaign produced it, and when. The date is what makes the long window usable.
- Needed
Closed commission
From the brokerage's transaction records: the commission the team actually received, not the sale price.
- Optional
Agent assignment
Which agent worked the lead. It separates a source problem from a follow-up problem.
Step by step
Getting the file out of Follow Up Boss.
Written for somebody with Follow Up Boss open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Export leads with source, date and agent
One row per lead with a contact detail, the source and the date it arrived.
-
Export closed transactions with commission
From the brokerage system: client contact detail, commission received, closing date.
-
Use a two-year window
Portal leads convert over many months, and a quarterly view reports on leads that have not had time to buy anything.
-
Keep every lead, including the dead ones
Portals are priced per lead, so the ones that went nowhere are the denominator of the whole calculation.
-
Upload both
The join runs on the phone and the email, normalised, grouped by when the lead arrived rather than when it closed.
What comes back
The page Follow Up Boss 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 Real Estate page — not from a Follow Up Boss account.
Traced to a channel$351,00065% of $540,000
Sales matched30 of 45high confidence only
Average sale$12,000per paid sale
| Channel | Share | Sales | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 12 | $145,800 | |
| Portals | 10 | $118,800 | |
| Meta Ads | 8 | $86,400 | |
| Direct / Unknown | 15 | $189,000 |
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 transaction and the ad share a row.
The conversion window is longer than the buying cycle of the reporting
A registration on a property portal is frequently somebody eleven months from a purchase who is currently looking at pictures.
Teams buy those leads monthly and review them quarterly, which means every review is being run on a cohort that has not yet had the chance to convert.
The predictable result is that a source is judged poor, cancelled, and replaced by another that will be judged the same way for the same reason.
Grouping commission by when the lead arrived, over two years, is the only way to see a cohort through to its actual conversion rate.
The report labels recent cohorts as incomplete rather than showing them alongside mature ones, because that comparison is how good sources get cancelled.
Agent assignment separates a lead problem from a follow-up problem
In a team, leads are distributed, and conversion varies by who received them at least as much as by where they came from.
A source routed to a new agent during a busy quarter will convert poorly, and the source will take the blame for a routing decision.
Carrying the agent through lets the report hold one constant while looking at the other, which is the only way to tell the two apart.
Teams that run this frequently find their worst-performing source is their best source badly handled, which is a management fix rather than a purchasing one.
It is also the finding most likely to be unpopular, which is a reason to have the data rather than the argument.
Commission, not sale price, and not both in the same column
A transaction's headline value is the property price; the team receives a commission, which is a fraction of it and varies by split and by side.
Ranking sources on sale price rewards whichever produced expensive houses rather than whichever produced profitable work.
The report uses commission received, and where the split differs by agent or by side, using the team's actual receipt keeps the comparison honest.
It also makes buy-side and sell-side leads comparable, which price never does because the two sides carry different work for similar money.
Whichever basis you use, the report states it, because a number whose basis is unstated cannot survive a disagreement.
Sphere and referral are the largest source and the least measured
Most established agents close the majority of their business through people they know, past clients and referrals from them.
None of that appears in a portal report, so the portals are judged as though they were the whole business and the sphere is treated as free.
Recording the referral source at the point of contact puts it into the same comparison on the same commission.
The usual finding is that the portal spend is buying a much smaller share of the year than anyone assumed, which changes where a team's time goes rather than only its money.
Fair questions
“Follow Up Boss already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“Two years is too slow.”
We say
The purchase takes that long. The alternative is judging a cohort before it has had a chance to buy anything.
They say
“Our sphere is not a marketing channel.”
We say
It is the largest one you have, and it costs time rather than money. Leaving it out makes the portals look bigger than they are.
No. It reads an exported file, so your leads, calls and messages stay where they are.
The lead side. Closed commissions from the brokerage system are the other half.
Leads with a contact detail, source, date and agent, plus closed transactions with commission received.
Two years, because a portal registration is often a purchase eleven months away.
So a cohort can be seen through to its real conversion rate rather than judged before it had the chance.
Their cohorts are labelled incomplete. Comparing them with mature ones is how good sources get cancelled.
Price rewards expensive houses; commission measures what the team received, and it makes buy and sell sides comparable.
Yes. Portals charge per lead, so the dead ones are the denominator of the entire calculation.
Yes, where the assignment is exported, and the two are routinely confused.
Yes, recorded at contact. For most established agents they are the largest source.
A contact detail, a source and a date on one side; a contact detail, a commission and a date on the other. No property records, no messages, no call recordings. Encrypted in transit and at rest and deleted with the import.
Closed commission per source grouped by when the lead arrived, agent held constant where possible, incomplete cohorts labelled, and everything unmatched kept visible.
By trade
Trades that run Follow Up Boss.
What the report looks like once the export is in, written for each one.
- Real EstateWhich ads produced closings?
- Real Estate TeamsWhich lead sources produced commission you actually collected?
- Real Estate BrokeragesWhich spend produced company dollar, and which produced agents?
- Luxury Real EstateWhich channels produced buyers who actually closed?
- Mortgage BrokersWhich ads produced funded loans?
Other systems
Also worth reading.
Running more than one system, or comparing? The method is the same and the columns are not.
Either file kvCORE Real estate teams and brokerages Either file What to export Closed-sales file Entrata Multifamily operators Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file DoorLoop Small property managers Closed-sales file What to export
All 97 systems 
Follow Up Boss 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 Follow Up Boss, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.