How to auto-reply to new leads and track lead source in Workiz

Most small service businesses spend real money on Google, Yelp, Facebook and door hangers, and can’t say which one paid off. At the same time, new leads wait an hour or more for a reply because everyone’s in the field. Workiz can fix both. This guide sets up an automatic reply to new leads and makes sure every lead and job carries the right ad source, so at the end of the month you can see leads, conversion and revenue by source.

What you need

A Workiz plan with automations. The Workiz pricing page lists 5 automations on Standard, 10 on Pro and 30 on Ultimate. Prices are on request. The Open API is listed on Ultimate.
The Leads and Workiz Automations add-ons enabled from the Feature Center. Workiz’s help center says both are required for lead automation rules.
Online booking, if you want to track booking sources (step 5).
Optional: Genius Phone and Genius Answering. These are add-ons sold separately. Workiz says a Genius Phone plan is required for Genius Answering, and call tracking uses Workiz Phone numbers.

Step by step

1. Clean up your ad groups first

Workiz calls lead sources ad groups (also known as job sources). Everything else in this guide depends on this list, so start here.

Go to the profile icon > Settings, and under Job Settings select Ad Groups. Workiz includes four by default: Google, Yelp, Facebook and Home Advisor.

Turn off any you don’t use.
Click Add New for the ones you do, with a name, display order and description.

A typical list for a garage door or appliance repair shop: Google Ads, Google LSA, Google Maps, Yelp, Facebook, Referral, Repeat customer, Truck/yard sign. Keep names short and consistent. You’ll type them into URLs in step 5, so avoid odd characters.

2. Put a Workiz form on your website

Go to Settings, and under Integrations select Website Integration. Click Add new form. For each form you can:

Name it (e.g., “Website – contact page”)
Turn fields on or off, and choose which are required
Notify by email and Notify by SMS, so the office gets pinged
Auto-assign to a user
Assign ad group, which sets the source automatically for jobs from this form
Use CAPTCHA (recommended)

Click Use in website to get a link or embed code. If you run landing pages for different ad campaigns, make a separate form for each, each with its own ad group.

3. Create the auto-reply rule

From the sidebar, select Automations, then Add automation.

Title: “New lead – instant text”
Event: a lead-based trigger, when the lead has a status of New
Action: send the client a text message
Timing: immediately
Optional time window: 24/7, or limit it to waking hours

That timing setting matters. Workiz’s help center says the only way to trigger a rule for an unscheduled lead is to choose immediately. A delay like “1 day after” only works once the lead has a schedule date. Most new leads aren’t scheduled yet, so pick immediately. Test it (step 7), because Workiz’s Leads report article also notes that unscheduled leads don’t trigger automations, and you want to see how your account behaves.

Message: “Hi {client name}, thanks for contacting Bayside Garage Doors. We got your request and someone will call you shortly. If your door is stuck open, reply URGENT and we’ll prioritize you.”

You can also add a condition, such as only if source = Google, to send a different message to paid leads. For example, a Google LSA lead might get “Thanks for finding us on Google”, while a referral gets “Thanks for the referral from your neighbor”.

4. Optional: let Genius Answering handle replies

If you have Genius Answering, it can reply to incoming texts and emails with AI. From the sidebar select Answering > Configure > Messaging, and turn on Allow Genius Answering to respond to incoming messages. Then set:

Reply messages sent via: Text and/or Email. For email leads, Workiz says it looks for a phone number and replies by text.
Reply to messages from: New clients (start here) and/or Existing clients.
Reply after: how long it waits for a human first. I’d use 10 minutes during business hours.
Message follow-ups: add one or more, each sent only if the customer didn’t reply to the last one. For example, after 2 hours, then after 1 day.

AI threads show in purple in your Message Center, so you can check what it said. Don’t run both an automation text and Genius Answering on the same lead without testing. The customer could get two first messages.

5. Tag online booking links by source

Your booking portal has one default ad group. To split it by campaign, select Online Booking from the sidebar, then Copy URL or Get embed code. Add &ad_group= plus the ad group name to the end of the URL:

...&ad_group=facebook for the Facebook ad
...&ad_group=yelp on your Yelp page
...&ad_group=door%20hangers for the QR code on door hangers (use %20 for spaces)

The ad group has to already exist in Workiz (step 1). A new link won’t create one. When a booking comes in through a tagged link and you create a job from the notification, Workiz assigns the right ad group.

6. Track phone leads with call tracking

Calls are often the biggest source and the hardest to track. Workiz call tracking gives each ad group its own Workiz Phone number. From the sidebar select Workiz Phone, open Phone numbers, use Get a Number if you need more, then use Assign Ad Group on each number and Assign a Flow to send them all to your main call flow. Put each number only on its matching listing: the Google number on Google, the Yelp number on Yelp. Jobs booked from those calls are tied to that source.

7. Test, then read the Leads report

Submit a test form, book through a tagged link, and call a tracking number. Check each lead shows the right ad source, and that the auto-reply arrived.

After a month, open Reports > Leads. You can filter by ad source and status, including converted and lost, and see total leads, converted leads, conversion rate and sold amount. Export to CSV if you want to compare with ad spend.

Worked example: Google Ads brings 40 leads and 10 jobs at $600 a month in spend, so $60 per job. Yelp brings 12 leads and 6 jobs at $300, so $50 per job. Yelp is the better deal, even though Google brings more leads.

Common mistakes

Messy ad group names. “Google”, “google ads” and “GOOGLE PPC” become three sources in your reports.
Delayed timing on unscheduled leads. Use immediately, or the rule never fires.
One tracking number everywhere. Call tracking only works if each number lives on one listing.
Double replies. An automation text and a Genius Answering reply on the same lead can confuse the customer.
Converting leads without checking source. Workiz copies the ad source when you convert a lead to a job, so fix it on the lead first.

When it’s worth getting help

Ad groups, forms and one rule are an afternoon’s work. Call tracking numbers, tagged links for every campaign, and getting outside lead sources into Workiz (Workiz documents a Zapier email-parser method that needs API credentials) take longer. If you’d like a hand, see the trades page and the trades cost calculator.