PestBossPro Blog — Running a Pest Control Business

Weekly Reports Every Pest Control Business Owner Should Watch

Owners of small pest companies tend to run the business by feel. If the phone is ringing and the truck is busy, things must be fine. But a busy truck can hide a lot: quarterly accounts slipping past due, invoices nobody paid, treatments with no record, quotes that went quiet. A short weekly look at a handful of numbers catches those problems while they are still small. It doesn't take long, and it may be the most valuable half hour of your week.

Self-Service Frees Up Time to Look

Once customers are handling simple requests themselves through the app described in The Customer App: Letting Pest Control Business Customers Book, Pay and Watch the Route, the office has fewer interruptions. Use some of that time for a weekly review. Pick a fixed time, such as Friday afternoon or Monday morning, and look at the same things every week.

1. Due and Overdue Accounts

Start with recurring service, because it is the foundation of the business. Open the Waiting List map in PestBossPro and look at the pins: not due yet, due now, and overdue past a 7-day grace. Ask:

• How many accounts are due this coming week, and are they scheduled?
• Are any accounts overdue? Why? Was a stop skipped, or did it never get scheduled?
• Is the overdue count growing from week to week? If so, you may be short on hours.

An overdue quarterly account is a customer at risk. Getting it scheduled this week is worth more than almost anything else on the list.

2. Completed and Skipped Work

Look at what actually got done last week on the dispatch board. Compare the completed jobs to what was scheduled. Skipped stops should have a note explaining why, such as a locked gate or bad weather. Make sure every skipped stop has a plan to go back.

If one technician skips far more than the others, find out why. It may be a route problem, a training problem or a customer problem.

3. Billing, Collections and Declined Cards

Next, the money. Check:

• Was every completed job invoiced? With charge on completion this happens automatically, but one-time jobs and re-services added by hand are easy to miss.
• What is past due? Past-due follow-up goes out automatically in PestBossPro, but someone should look at the oldest balances and decide whether to call.
• Which cards declined? A declined card on a quarterly account means the next visit may not get paid. Ask the customer to update their card in the customer app.

4. Missing Chemical Records

Check the “need a chemical record” button on the schedule. It shows completed treatments that used a tracked product but are still missing their application record. The goal is for that list to be empty at the end of every week.

Fixing a missing record is easy when the visit was a few days ago and much harder months later. Many states require these records, and the details are easiest to get right while the technician still remembers the stop. Check your state lead agency for what your records must include. Chemical reports pull the records for any date range when you need them.

5. Open Quotes and New Sign-Ups

Sales are part of the weekly check. Look at estimates that have been sent but not approved. Estimate follow-up emails go out automatically, but a short personal text to a promising lead often closes it. Look at Form Responses for website requests and sign-ups that haven't been converted to clients yet; one click converts a sign-up into a client.

Also note how many new recurring accounts started this week and how many cancelled. Over time, that balance tells you whether the business is growing.

Look for Trends, Not Just Totals

A single week's numbers rarely tell the whole story. What matters is how they move. Keep a simple log of the same few figures each week, such as overdue accounts, skipped stops, past-due balances and missing records. A number that creeps up three weeks in a row is a signal, even if each week looked fine on its own. A number that drops after a change you made tells you the change worked.

6. Product Use

Once a month, or weekly in the busy season, look at chemical reports for the product actually applied. Compare it to what you bought. A big gap between the two can point to waste, which is covered in Chemical Waste: Keeping Product Costs Under Control in a Pest Control Business.

Make It a Habit

The weekly review only works if it happens every week, including the busy ones. Keep it short and keep it the same. Write down what you find and what you will do about it. Over a season, you will see patterns that feel invisible day to day. Many of the numbers above point straight to the profit leaks in the next article. To see where these reports live in PestBossPro, visit the PestBossPro pest control business software page.