Crew capacity calculator
Capacity = crews × jobs per crew per week × working weeks ÷ 12. Three crews doing 4 jobs a week across 46 working weeks is 46 jobs a month — a $437,000 ceiling at $9,500 a job. At a 9% lead-to-job rate you need 512 leads to fill it, and no more.
What you can actually deliver
Teams that can run a job independently.
What a crew genuinely completes in a productive week.
Cross-check on the box above, assuming a 5-day working week.
After weather, winter, holidays and downtime. Rarely 52.
Of every hundred leads, how many become signed jobs.
Current volume from all sources. Used to check whether capacity is your constraint.
46.0 jobs a month is everything 3 crews can physically deliver. $5,244,000 a year.
Binding constraint: your stated jobs-per-week figure.
Enough to fill the schedule. Every lead past this has nowhere to go.
Your current leads could produce 63.0 jobs a month and the crews can deliver 46.0. Buying more leads is the wrong move — add a crew, shorten jobs, or raise job value.
Enquiries arriving with no slot to put them in.
Adds capacity in job units, and adds fixed cost with it.
No hiring, no equipment, no extra crew days. Same schedule.
How to use this calculator
Enter how many crews you run, what each one genuinely completes in a productive week, how long an average job takes, and how many working weeks you actually get in a year. Add average job value, your lead-to-job conversion rate and the lead volume you currently receive, and the calculator will tell you the ceiling, the lead volume that fills it, and whether you are already past it.
Job duration is a cross-check rather than a second target. A crew working five days a week cannot complete four two-day jobs, so where duration implies a lower figure than the jobs-per-week box, the calculator uses duration and says so. Getting the two to agree is usually the first useful thing this tool does.
A worked example
A remodeling company runs 3 crews. Each completes 4 jobs in a good week, jobs average 1 working day, and after winter, weather and holidays they get 46 productive weeks a year.
That is 3 × 4 × 46 = 552 jobs a year, or 46 a month. At $9,500 a job the revenue ceiling is $437,000 a month and $5,244,000 a year. They convert 9% of leads into jobs, so filling the schedule takes about 512 leads a month.
They are currently receiving 700. At 9% those leads could produce 63 jobs, against a capacity of 46. Roughly 188 leads a month are arriving with nowhere to go, and every dollar spent generating them is buying backlog rather than revenue. This business does not have a marketing problem.
When more leads is the wrong answer
Almost every contractor who calls an agency opens with a request for more leads, and a meaningful share of them are already past their ceiling. The tell is not a full calendar — it is a full calendar with quotes going cold, homeowners waiting three weeks for a start date, and reviews that mention communication.
- Leads exceed what capacity can absorb. Stop buying and fix throughput. More spend here produces slow responses, stale quotes and reviews you cannot delete.
- Leads are short of capacity. Marketing genuinely is the constraint. Size the budget to the gap, not to whatever the platform recommends.
- Leads roughly match capacity. The best position to be in, and the most fragile. Growth from here means adding a crew or raising job value, not adding budget.
- Duration is the binding constraint. Your jobs-per-week target is not achievable in a five-day week. Shorten jobs, split crews differently, or lower the target — but do not plan against it.
The common mistake
Planning against fifty-two weeks. Weather days, the winter slowdown, holidays, training and equipment failures routinely remove six to ten weeks from the year, and a capacity figure built on fifty-two overstates the ceiling by more than ten percent. That gap shows up as a schedule that looked achievable in January and is three weeks behind by August.
The second mistake is treating capacity as fixed and marketing as the only lever. A ten percent rise in average job value adds revenue without adding a single crew day, which is why upselling and better job mix usually beat volume for a business that is already busy.
Once you know the ceiling, size the spend to it with the ad budget calculator, check what those leads are worth paying for with the max cost per lead calculator, and if the schedule is not full despite plenty of appointments, look at the no-show cost calculator.
Common questions
How do you calculate crew capacity?
Multiply crews by jobs each crew completes in a productive week, then by working weeks per year, and divide by twelve for a monthly figure. Three crews doing four jobs a week across forty-six working weeks is 552 jobs a year, or 46 a month. Average job value turns that into a revenue ceiling the business cannot exceed without adding crews or shortening jobs.
Why use working weeks per year rather than fifty-two?
Because contractors do not work fifty-two productive weeks. Weather days, winter slowdown, holidays, equipment failures and training all remove weeks from the calendar, and a plan built on fifty-two overstates annual capacity by ten percent or more. Using a realistic figure — often somewhere in the low to mid forties — produces a ceiling the business can actually hit.
What is a revenue ceiling?
The revenue ceiling is the most a business can bill in a period given its crews, its throughput per crew and its average job value, regardless of how many leads it buys. It is a physical limit rather than a sales target. Marketing spend above the point where demand meets that ceiling converts into backlog, cancellations and bad reviews rather than revenue.
When is buying more leads the wrong move?
When the crews are already full. If current lead volume can produce more jobs than the crews can deliver, additional leads become quotes that never get scheduled, customers who wait weeks and go elsewhere, and reviews complaining about delays. At that point the money is better spent on a new crew, on shortening job duration, or on raising average job value rather than volume.
How many leads should a contractor actually buy?
Enough to fill capacity and no more. Divide monthly job capacity by the lead-to-job conversion rate to get the lead volume required. A business with capacity for 46 jobs a month converting 9% of leads needs about 512 leads — and buying a thousand does not produce ninety-two jobs, it produces 46 jobs and 480 wasted enquiries.
What if job duration and jobs per week disagree?
Job duration sets a hard physical limit that a target cannot exceed. A crew working five days a week on jobs that take two days each cannot complete four jobs a week no matter what the schedule says, and the calculator uses whichever of the two figures is smaller. When duration is the binding constraint, the way to add capacity is to shorten jobs or add crews, not to push the schedule.
Is adding a crew or raising prices the better way to grow?
Raising average job value is usually faster and always cheaper, because it lifts the revenue ceiling without hiring, training, insuring or equipping anyone. Adding a crew raises capacity in job units and brings fixed cost with it, so it makes sense when demand genuinely exceeds capacity at current prices — not as a first response to being busy.
What happens to marketing spend when capacity is the constraint?
It stops producing revenue and starts producing damage. Leads that cannot be scheduled become slow responses, quotes that go stale, and homeowners who tell their neighbours the company never called back. Pausing or reducing spend when the schedule is full is not lost opportunity, it is the correct move — and the money is better redirected into capacity.
Keep going
Once you know the ceiling, size the budget to fill it and not a dollar past it.
Free tool Max Cost Per Lead CalculatorThe most you can pay per lead before the maths stops working in your favour.
Free tool Appointment No-Show Cost CalculatorIf capacity is not the constraint, the empty calendar slots probably are.
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