The True Cost of a Closed Install: A Window & Door Case Study

A Florida impact window operation runs $50,000 monthly on Meta Ads and reports $156 cost per lead at 4.8x ROAS. By dashboard math, the campaign is a winner. Reconciled across every cost layer — broker payouts, refunds, chargebacks, financing fees, compliance overhead — the true cost per closed install runs 78 percent above what the dashboard shows. Here is the full walkthrough.

Window and door is one of the most measurement-distorted verticals in home services. Average ticket size runs $15,000 to $30,000 for full-home impact window installs. Sales cycles run 7 to 21 days from lead to signed contract. Close rates land in the 12 to 20 percent range depending on lead source quality. Financing penetration is high — Florida's impact window market in particular sits at 60 to 75 percent financed volume because hurricane code upgrades push job sizes into the financed-by-default range.

That cost structure — high ticket, multi-week sales cycle, heavy financing, regulated by state contractor licensing and TCPA — is exactly the structure where dashboard CPL diverges most aggressively from true cost per closed install. The platforms report the cost layer they can see. Five or six others are sitting in finance systems, merchant portals, payment processors, and lead vendor invoices, attributing to no campaign. The contractor scaling on dashboard CPL is making capital allocation decisions on a number that's typically 30 to 70 percent below reality.

This piece walks through the full reconciliation on a representative Florida impact window operation. Numbers reflect typical industry ranges for the vertical — not a specific named client. The math is the point. Anyone running this category will recognize the structure.

The Operation

The contractor runs a Florida impact window business doing approximately $4 million in annual revenue. Geography is southeast Florida — Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade counties — where hurricane code compliance drives sustained demand. Job mix is 70 percent full-home impact window replacements, 30 percent partial replacements and patio doors. Average job size $18,500.

Marketing spend mix for a typical month:

• Meta Ads: $50,000 monthly, primary lead generation channel
• Google Search: $25,000 monthly, branded plus high-intent keyword targeting
• Lead vendors: Approximately 40% of Meta lead volume comes through third-party lead aggregators with markup pricing
• Financing partners: GreenSky and Service Finance handle the majority of financed jobs, mix of standard and deferred-interest promotional plans

This piece focuses on the Meta campaign specifically because it's the channel most representative of the dashboard-versus-reconciled gap. The same reconciliation logic applies across the rest of the stack — we covered the broader seven-cost architecture in our analysis of the seven cost layers every ad platform hides and the financing-specific layer in our PACE, GreenSky, and Service Finance reconciliation deep dive.

What the Dashboard Reports

The Meta Ads Manager dashboard for the month under examination shows the following:

By dashboard math: $50,000 in media spend produced $962,000 in gross revenue. ROAS of 19.2x. Cost per closed install: $962. The marketing director presents this to ownership. The directive is obvious — scale the campaign.

That directive would be based on a number that's missing five of the seven cost layers between the lead and the install. We covered why dashboard CPL is structurally incomplete in our True CAC analysis. Here is what the reconciliation surfaces for this specific campaign.

The Reconciled View: True Cost Per Closed Install

Working through each cost layer that the dashboard does not see:

Layer 2: Platform Fees

Meta charges 2.9 percent plus $0.30 on certain conversion types. On 320 conversions in a month, that's $96 in fixed per-conversion fees plus 2.9 percent of media spend deducted at the payout level. Total platform fees for the period: approximately $1,545. The dashboard does not itemize this. It comes out of the payout invoice from Meta.

Layer 3: Broker and Lead Vendor Payouts

Roughly 40 percent of Meta lead volume — 128 of the 320 leads — comes through a third-party lead aggregator that markets aggregator-branded landing pages on Meta and routes qualifying leads to contractor accounts. The aggregator's markup runs 30 percent over the underlying media cost on those leads. For 128 leads at a roughly $156 base CPL, that's an additional $5,990 in vendor markup the dashboard never reflects. The cost comes out of the contractor's lead acquisition payments, not Meta.

Layer 4: Refunds

Industry refund rates in high-ticket home services run 12 to 18 percent. For impact window installs specifically, the practical refund rate — measured as cancellations after deposit but before install, plus post-install dispute refunds — typically lands around 14 percent of jobs. On 52 closed installs at $18,500 average, with 14 percent refund rate, that's approximately 7 jobs that unraveled. Refund amount: approximately $134,750 in revenue that was originally counted in the dashboard's ROAS but ultimately returned to customers.

Layer 5: Chargebacks

Chargeback rates in home services run 4 to 8 percent, with the higher end of the range applying when deposit disputes or post-install quality disputes hit. Conservative midpoint at 5 percent of revenue: approximately $48,100 in chargebacks against the period's revenue. This data lands in the payment processor 30 to 90 days after the original transaction and never connects natively to Meta's campaign reporting.

Layer 6: Compliance Costs

Florida home services contractors face TCPA compliance, state-specific consent requirements under the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act (FTSA) for outbound contact, and the FCC's January 2025 1:1 consent rule for lead aggregator routing. Combined compliance cost typically runs $0.50 to $1.50 per lead in this vertical, accounting for consent verification, recording retention, and the legal review that goes with operating in a state with active class-action litigation around telemarketing. At $1.00 per lead on 320 leads: $320 in compliance cost.

Layer 7: Financing Fees

This is the biggest layer in the home services reconciliation. Approximately 65 percent of closed installs are financed — 34 of the 52 jobs. Financing splits roughly 60 percent through GreenSky standard plans (7 percent merchant fee) and 40 percent through Service Finance deferred-interest promotional plans (10 percent merchant fee). Blended merchant fee on financed volume: approximately 8.2 percent.

Financed revenue: 34 jobs at $18,500 average = $629,000. Merchant fees deducted by the finance partners: $51,578. This is real money the contractor never sees — deducted at the loan funding event before the contractor's payout. It sits in the merchant portal's payout reports, attributed to no campaign in any marketing system.

The Full Reconciliation

Pulling all seven cost layers together against the dashboard's stated $50,000 media spend:

The dashboard reported $50,000 in cost against $962,000 in gross revenue. The reconciled true cost is $292,283 — nearly six times the dashboard's reported number. Most of the gap is the financing, refund, and chargeback layers, which the dashboard cannot see by design.

Net Revenue and the Contribution Margin

Net revenue corrects gross revenue for refunds and chargebacks, since refunded and charged-back transactions did not actually retain to the business:

Applying the contribution margin formula. Refunds and chargebacks are already deducted from net revenue, so they should not be double-counted in the cost stack — the True Cost figure used for the margin calculation excludes Layers 4 and 5:

The campaign produces an 85.9 percent contribution margin on net revenue after marketing-attributable costs. That is healthy. It is also not the 19.2x ROAS the dashboard suggested. The dashboard suggested a marketing efficiency number against gross revenue. The reconciled view shows that 19 percent of gross revenue evaporated to refunds and chargebacks before contribution margin could be calculated, and the campaign-attributable marketing cost is more than double what Meta reported. Both numbers can be true. They answer different questions.

True Cost Per Closed Install

The metric most window and door operators actually need is true cost per closed install. The dashboard math: $50,000 ÷ 52 installs = $962 per close. The reconciled math, attributing all marketing-attributable costs (Layers 1, 2, 3, 6) to the installs that closed:

$1,113 per close versus the $962 the dashboard suggested. That's 16 percent higher just on the marketing layers alone — before financing fees, refunds, and chargebacks enter the picture. Once those are factored in, the all-in cost per net-retained closed install runs substantially higher.

Note the language shift: net-retained closed install. The dashboard reports 52 closed installs. The reconciled view recognizes that 14 percent of those — approximately 7 installs — refund within 90 days. The net-retained install count is closer to 45. Recalculating cost per net-retained closed install:

$962 dashboard cost per close becomes $1,286 reconciled cost per net-retained install. That is the gap that determines whether scaling this campaign produces real margin or just bigger reported numbers.

The dashboard suggested $962 per close. The reconciled number is $1,286. That's a 34 percent gap between what the marketing director would report to ownership and what the campaign actually costs per install that retained.

What Changes With Closed Install Visibility

Three things shift for the contractor running this reconciliation nightly instead of quarterly or never.

Scale Decisions Get Calibrated to Net-Retained Volume

The marketing director who was about to recommend scaling the Meta campaign 2x — based on the apparent $962 cost per close and 19.2x ROAS — would now factor in the financing fee compression, the refund cycle, and the chargeback rate. The decision might still be to scale, but the projected return on the additional spend is calculated against $1,286 per net-retained install, not $962. The capital allocation logic changes accordingly. This is exactly the kind of decision the engine's directive layer is built to make automatically — we covered the directive framework in our Scale, Hold, Cut, Pause breakdown.

Finance Partner Mix Gets Optimized

The reconciled view exposes that the 40 percent of jobs going through Service Finance deferred-interest promotional plans (10 percent merchant fee) are costing roughly 40 percent more in merchant fees per dollar of financed revenue than the 60 percent going through GreenSky standard plans (7 percent merchant fee). The contractor might still offer the deferred-interest option as a sales tool, but with explicit data on the cost differential, the sales team can be incentivized to present standard financing first where the customer's financial profile supports it. Over a year, on $7.5M in annual financed revenue, a 1 percent shift in the financing mix is approximately $75,000 in retained margin.

Lead Aggregator Renegotiation Has Data Behind It

The 30 percent markup on the 40 percent of Meta leads coming through the aggregator costs the contractor roughly $5,990 per month. Across 12 months, that's $71,880 in markup paid to the aggregator with no contractor-side data on whether the aggregator's leads actually close at a higher rate than direct Meta leads. The reconciled view enables that comparison — by lead source, close rate per source, true cost per source — and produces the data needed to either renegotiate the aggregator markup or shift volume to direct sources.

What This Looks Like Across the Industry

The Florida impact window example above is one vertical. The architecture of the distortion is consistent across home services categories:

• Full roof replacement — high ticket ($15K-$40K), 70%+ financed, refunds and chargebacks on storm-claim disputes can compress margin by 8 to 12 percent
• HVAC system installs — moderate ticket ($8K-$18K), 55-65% financed, refund rates lower but compliance overhead (DOE, EPA refrigerant) adds a unique compliance cost layer
• Solar installations — high ticket ($25K-$50K+), 80%+ financed via PACE or dedicated solar lenders, financing fees at 5-6% closing plus dealer fee structures unique to the vertical
• Bath remodels — moderate ticket ($10K-$20K), heavy financing penetration, in-home sales cycle creates intake fallout costs the dashboard never reflects

In every case, the dashboard reports media spend against tracked conversions. The reality of cost per retained customer includes layers that live in finance, payment processors, finance partners, and lead vendor systems — none of which connect natively to the marketing reporting layer. We covered the broader competitive analysis of how the major attribution platforms handle these layers in our Triple Whale vs Rockerbox vs Allocera comparison and the architectural gap with Salesforce specifically in our Allocera vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud breakdown.

The Question Every Window and Door Operator Should Be Able to Answer

For any home services operation running paid acquisition at $50,000 monthly or more, one diagnostic question separates the operations managing real margin from the operations reporting dashboard numbers:

What is your true cost per net-retained closed install, per campaign, after platform fees, vendor markup, financing fees, refunds, chargebacks, and compliance — calculated and updated nightly?

If the answer is "we look at it quarterly when finance closes the books" or "approximately, by channel" or "the marketing team thinks it's around X," there is a margin question the current reporting stack was not built to answer. The campaigns being scaled may not be the campaigns that retain margin. The campaigns being cut may not be the campaigns that are losing money. That gap is the difference between marketing as an expense and marketing as a profit lever.

Allocera's CDAI engine reconciles all seven cost layers nightly, attributes refunds and chargebacks back to the originating campaign, allocates financing fees against the campaigns that produced the financed installs, and issues a directive on every active campaign — SCALE, HOLD, CUT, PAUSE, or FLAG — with confidence scoring. The engine then retests itself 30 days later against actual outcomes, with measured accuracy currently running at 80 percent across the scored set. We covered the underlying calculation methodology in our complete guide to calculating marketing contribution margin and the self-validation methodology in our 30-day retest deep dive.