The Five Door Table: a weekly auto repair lead tracking sheet

The Five Door Table is one sheet a repair shop fills in every Friday to see where its leads come from and where they leak out. It is built in the same three moves as the video:

1. List the doors down the side: your Google profile, your website, the shop phone, ads and referrals.
2. Put four columns across the top: inquiries, same day replies, estimates and repair orders.
3. Pull the numbers from your shop system, not from an ad dashboard.

Below is the sheet to copy, where to find each number, how to read it and what to fix first.

Why five doors and one sheet

A lead for a repair shop is simply a person who asked about work. They reach you through a handful of doors, and each door usually lives in a different tool. Profile calls sit in Google, form requests sit in your website inbox, voicemails sit on the phone system and referrals sit in someone's memory. Nobody sees them together, so nobody notices which door is dropping people.

Before paying for more leads, count the ones you already get. Your Google Business Profile alone reports calls, website clicks, direction requests and messages, and Google Ads can count calls from ads, calls to your website number and taps on your mobile number. Our longer page on automotive lead generation AI explains how capture and routing work.

Who it is for

• Owners who pay for ads or a marketing service and can't say which door brings repair orders.
• Service managers who want a ten-minute Friday routine instead of another dashboard.
• Multi-shop groups that want the same sheet filled in at every location.

What you need first

• Access to your Google Business Profile performance numbers.
• Your website form inbox or booking requests for the week.
• Your phone system's call log, including missed calls and voicemails.
• Your ad account's reported calls and forms, if you run ads.
• Your shop management system, for estimates and repair orders.

The sheet to copy

Fill one sheet per location per week. The numbers below are a demo week for a fictional shop.

Door	Inquiries	Same day replies	Estimates	Repair orders
Google profile	14	11	8	6
Website	9	4	3	2
Shop phone	22	20	14	11
Ads	12	3	2	1
Referrals	5	5	4	4

Step 1. List the doors

Use the same five rows every week so the weeks compare:

• Google profile: calls and messages from the profile. Note that the profile only counts calls when a phone number is on it, and messages count distinct conversations.
• Website: contact forms, booking requests and click-to-call taps.
• Shop phone: calls and texts to the shop line that didn't come from the profile or an ad, including the ones that went to voicemail.
• Ads: calls and forms your ad account reports.
• Referrals: repeat customers and people sent by someone. Ask "how did you hear about us?" at the counter and tally it.

If a lead could fit two rows, pick one rule and keep it. Consistency matters more than perfect attribution.

Step 2. Fill the four columns

• Inquiries: every person who asked about work through that door this week.
• Same day replies: how many got a real reply (a call back or a written answer) the same business day. A voicemail greeting doesn't count.
• Estimates: how many of those inquiries became a written estimate.
• Repair orders: how many became a repair order.

Same day replies is the column most shops have never measured, and it's the one that tells you about your front desk rather than your marketing. People shop around: BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, so a slow answer competes with every other shop's profile on the same screen.

Step 3. Pull the numbers from your shop system

The estimate and repair order columns come from your shop management system, not from an ad platform or a vendor's dashboard. Dashboards count clicks and calls; only your shop system knows whether a car came in. Reconcile once a week and expect the numbers to be messy at first. The point is a baseline you trust, not a perfect report.

How to read the table

• A door with many inquiries and few same day replies is a reply problem, not a marketing problem. In the demo week, the Ads row had 12 inquiries but only 3 same day replies, so more ad budget would mostly buy more unanswered leads.
• A door with good replies but few estimates may be bringing the wrong jobs, or the reply isn't answering what people asked.
• A door with estimates but few repair orders points at the estimate itself and its follow-up. Our page on estimate follow-up covers that.
• Referrals with a perfect row are worth protecting. Thank those customers.

Where AI helps, and where it doesn't

AI is good at the boring part: pulling calls, texts, forms and messages into one record, tagging which door each came through, routing it to the right advisor and drafting a reply that uses what the customer asked. It can also flag any inquiry with no reply after a set time. For intake fields and routing rules, see our page on AI lead intake for auto repair.

What stays human is the price. AAA advises drivers to insist on a written estimate and to ask the shop to contact you in advance if the repairs will cost more than a certain amount. So a draft can confirm the appointment and ask about the car, but an advisor owns every number. A draft should never guess what's wrong with a car nobody has seen.

What to watch out for

• Don't trust a single week. Read four Fridays before you change spend.
• Don't let the ad platform fill the sheet. Its call count and your repair orders will never match exactly, and only the second one pays the bills.
• Check your listing hours. Google says complete and accurate information is more likely to show in local results, and wrong hours lose leads before anyone calls.

How to tell it worked

After a month, you should be able to answer three questions without opening five tools: which door brings the most repair orders, which door has the worst same day reply rate, and whether that rate is improving. If you'd like the calls, texts, forms and open estimates for every shop in one view, start with the Multi-Shop Operating Gap Assessment.