In its first month with us, AE Collision Center in Tampa spent $1,187.27 on Google Ads, and the shop reports 9 closed jobs. That’s about $132 in ad spend per booked job, before our fee. The account also recorded 24 tracked actions at $49.47 each, but the number that pays the bills is the last one: ad spend divided by booked repair orders.
The numbers, straight
AE Collision Center is a family-owned shop in Tampa, run by Joniel. Here is August 2026, month one, with where each number comes from:
| August 2026, month one | Number | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Ad spend | $1,187.27 | Google Ads account |
| Tracked conversions (calls and forms) | 24 | Google Ads account |
| Cost per tracked conversion | $49.47 | Google Ads account |
| Closed jobs | 9 | Reported by the shop |
| Repair revenue | About $40,000 | Reported by the shop |
| Ad spend per booked job | About $132 | $1,187.27 ÷ 9 |
Then September, month two. The shop reports 15 new cars, $117K in repair revenue from Collision Catalyst jobs alone, and $54K take-home.
Three things to know before you read anything into it. The ad spend excludes our fee. Jobs, revenue and take-home are reported by the shop, not pulled from an ad dashboard. And this is one shop, in one market, in its first two months, so individual results vary.
Cost per booked job = ad spend ÷ booked repair orders from that spend.
Why 24 conversions isn’t 24 customers
The ad account counted 24 conversions. A conversion is an action, such as a call or a form submission, and one driver can take more than one. A driver who fills in the form and calls ten minutes later counts twice.
In any account, some actions never become repair orders: an existing customer checking on a car, a caller whose car turns out to be a total loss, a wrong number that stays on the line. CCC’s 2026 Crash Course report found total losses hit a record 23.1% of all claims in 2025, so a share of every shop’s calls end at the adjuster, not the bay.
That’s why we don’t divide 9 by 24 and call it a close rate. The 24 are actions logged by Google. The 9 are cars the shop counted as closed jobs. Dividing one by the other mixes two different things and produces a number that sounds precise and means nothing.
What you can do is follow the money from both ends: what went out of the ad account, and what came into the bays.
How the $132 compares
Start with the published benchmarks. WordStream and LocaliQ’s Google Ads Benchmarks 2026, built on 13,474 US campaigns from April 2025 to March 2026, put the average cost per lead at $29.96 for Automotive: Repair, Service & Parts. That’s a broad category that lumps body shops in with mechanical repair, maintenance and parts sellers.
AE’s cost per tracked conversion, $49.47, ran above that average. If you judged the month on cost per lead, it looked expensive. Judged on booked repairs, it produced 9 jobs and about $40,000 in reported repair revenue from $1,187.27 in ad spend.
That’s the trap with lead-based reporting. A cheap lead that never books costs you more than an expensive one that does.
Now compare it with what a job is worth. CCC’s 2026 report put the average repair cost for a repairable vehicle at $4,818 in 2025, a preliminary figure. Divide AE’s reported month-one revenue by its reported jobs and you get roughly $4,400 a job, in the same range.
Against a job of that size, $132 in ad spend is small. But revenue isn’t profit, and the shop still had to buy the parts, pay the techs and do the work. The right comparison is your gross profit per RO, which we get to below.
What made the month work
Before we started, the shop was paying for ads without reliable call and form tracking, and the account was attracting searches that didn’t fit the repairs the shop wanted.
What we changed:
- Rebuilt the campaign around local collision repair searches, and cut the irrelevant traffic.
- Corrected call and form tracking, so the shop could see which actions came from the ads.
- Built a website with real reviews, before-and-after repairs, and clear ways to call or request an estimate.
What the shop did: Joniel’s team answered the inquiries, wrote the estimates and closed the jobs. That part matters as much as the ads. Calls that ring out don’t become repair orders, however well the campaign is built. Our notes on the real cost of a slow lead response and what to say when a driver calls cover the shop’s side.
Work out your own number
You need three things: the month’s ad spend, the booked ROs that came from that spend, and a rule for counting them. Here is the routine.
- Pull the ad spend for the month from the ad account itself, not from an invoice that blends in the fee.
- Make the RO source field required at check-in, with fixed choices such as Google ad, Google Maps, website, repeat, referral, insurer referral, dealer and tow.
- Give the ads their own tracked phone number, so the source is a fact, not a guess.
- Count each job in the month the inquiry came in, not the month the car was delivered. Adjusters, teardowns and parts waits push some jobs into the next month.
- Divide ad spend by booked ROs from ads. That’s your ad cost per booked job.
- Add the management fee and any tools, then divide again. That’s your all-in cost per booked job.
Here’s an example with made-up numbers:
| Example month | Amount |
|---|---|
| Ad spend | $1,800 |
| Management fee and tools | $1,100 |
| Booked ROs from ads | 12 |
| Ad cost per booked job | $150 |
| All-in cost per booked job | About $242 |
The ad number tells you whether the campaign works. The all-in number tells you whether the deal works.
What a booked job is worth to you
A job’s value to the shop is its gross profit: what the RO leaves after parts, labor, paint and materials, and sublet. That’s the pot every marketing dollar comes out of, along with rent, payroll and your own paycheck.
Pull gross profit per RO from your management system, and split it by source if you can. Then set a limit before you spend a dollar: the most you’ll pay to win one job.
Say your average RO is $4,500 and it leaves $1,700 in gross profit (example numbers). At $242 all-in per booked job, each job still leaves about $1,458 before overhead. At $900 per job, it leaves $800, and the question becomes whether those cars are worth the bay-days they take.
Capacity sets the other limit. A cheap job you can’t fit for three weeks pushes cycle time out, and J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Auto Claims Satisfaction Study put average cycle time for repairable vehicles at 19.3 days already. Our Google Ads budget guide shows how to size spend from open hours, and the repair opportunity calculator runs the numbers from your own inputs.
Month two, and what it doesn’t prove
In September, month two, the shop reports 15 new cars, $117K in repair revenue from Collision Catalyst jobs alone, and $54K take-home. Those are the shop’s numbers, counted from jobs that came in through us.
What it shows: once calls are tracked and the right searches are bought, the owner can count jobs and dollars instead of guessing. What it doesn’t show: that every shop gets the same month, or that doubling a budget doubles the cars. Markets, reputations, front desks and capacity differ, and so will your numbers.
The useful lesson is the scoreboard. Judge the work by booked repairs and the spend behind them, every month, and you’ll know which dollars to keep. The AE Collision Center case study has the account evidence for month one.
What to do this week
- Open your ad account and write down last month’s spend, separate from any fee.
- Make the RO source field required at check-in, with fixed choices.
- Put a tracked number on your ads, so calls from ads are counted on their own.
- Pull gross profit per RO for the last 90 days and set the most you’ll pay to win one job.
- At month end, divide ad spend by booked ROs from ads, then do it again with the fee included.
Questions owners ask
Is $132 per booked job typical for a body shop?
We don’t know of a reliable collision-specific benchmark, and we wouldn’t trust one built on leads. AE’s number is one shop’s first month in one market. Use it as a reality check, then measure your own over two or three months.
Does the $132 include your fee?
No. It’s ad spend only: $1,187.27 divided by the 9 jobs the shop reports. Our fee sits on top, which is why we always show ad spend and fees on separate lines. For the record, we charge no management fee until a shop’s first booked jobs, against a target written into the agreement.
Why not just track cost per lead?
Because a lead isn’t a car. One driver can be two conversions, some callers end up as total losses, and some leads never answer. Cost per lead is useful for running the account week to week, but cost per booked job is the number that tells you whether to keep spending.