Local Services Ads to Performance Max: A Plumber's Export Checklist

Save every Local Services Ads performance report before your account moves, because Google says reports do not carry over. Copy your lead list as a backup, write down your budget, bids, service areas and callouts, and check the administrator inbox, since the notice arrives 14 days ahead and the old dashboard stops opening on migration day.

The move is phased, so there is no single "before" date. Google's help article puts select home and storefront service advertisers, plumbing named on its list, in a first phase from August 2026. Wider groups follow later in 2026, including service-area businesses without a storefront and accounts with custom bidding or booking set-ups. Accounts outside the first-phase market, plus any categories not yet moved, are listed for 2027. Plenty of plumbing firms work from a yard or a home office and may sit in the later group, which gives you time to do this properly, not a reason to leave it. The 14-day email is the only date you can plan around.

Follow me on Instagram@sagnikteaches

What moves by itself and what you must save yourself

Google explains the change in its help article on the Local Services Ads transition, so I'll keep the summary short and put the useful part, the action, beside each line. Where the article says nothing, the table says so instead of guessing.

Connect on LinkedInSagnik Bhattacharya

One thing you do not need to export is ad copy. The article says headlines, videos and sitelinks do not apply to campaigns with pay-per-lead goals, and that these campaigns serve only on Google Search and Google Maps, keywordless, as Local Services Ads did. There is no keyword list to rescue and no text to rewrite.

Subscribe on YouTube@sagnikteaches

The export checklist, grouped by what you will need it for

Work through the groups in order. Each says what to save and how to confirm the copy is usable. Keep everything in one company-owned folder, such as a shared drive and not one person's phone, with file names a stranger could understand.

Reports: the one thing Google says will not follow you

• What to capture. Every view the dashboard offers: overall performance, weekly spend, leads by job type, leads by area, and any listing or ad-level views. Set the date range to the longest available, then repeat for the last 12 weeks.
• How. Use a download button where one exists. Otherwise take a full-page screenshot with the date range and filters visible in the frame. Google itself tells advertisers who need reports immediately to take screenshots.
• Name them. For example lsa-weekly-spend_2026-02-02_2026-10-25.png. A date range in the file name ends the later argument about what each file shows.
• Check it worked. Open three of the files on a different device. If the figures or filters are unreadable, redo them while the dashboard still opens.

Leads, messages and call recordings

Google says past lead history, including contact details, message history and older call recordings, transfers automatically and stays available on the new Leads page, which also has a download for importing leads into your own CRM. I would still keep a copy taken before the move, for two reasons. After migration day you cannot open the old dashboard to compare against it, and a lead list you own is what your job software and bookkeeper will want anyway.

• Export the lead list for the last 12 months, or everything available, with date, lead type (call or message), charged status, job type and area.
• Add two columns of your own, booked (yes or no) and job value, filled from your job software. Without them you can only ever work out cost per lead, never cost per job.
• Download the call recordings you might still need: leads you plan to dispute, and the handful of good and bad calls you use for coaching. Google's lead credits page says credits are applied within 30 days in most cases, that the original charge still shows on your invoice, and that leads carry the statuses not charged, charged, in review and credited. Screenshot every lead showing in review. The evidence pack for disputing leads covers what proof to keep for each reason.
• Check it worked: the row count in your export should match the lead count the dashboard shows for the same dates.

The export holds customers' names, numbers and sometimes addresses. Store it wherever you keep customer records and do not paste it into a public chatbot; the AI section below shows how to strip it first.

Settings to write down before they are converted

The article says your locations, service types, categories, budget limits, schedule and photos move over automatically. Automatic is not the same as identical, so record each setting now and compare afterwards. After the move, most of them sit under Settings in the Campaigns menu, and photos and callouts sit under Assets.

People, inboxes and phone numbers

• The administrator email. The administrator on your profile receives the 14-day email, a reminder a week later and a completion email. Confirm the address is a live inbox that someone reads, not a former employee's or an old domain's.
• Who should receive lead emails. Everyone with access is opted in by default, whatever your old dashboard settings were. Decide who really should be, and keep at least one person opted in, because the account requires one.
• Forwarding. Write down the number leads ring through to, who answers it, and whether an answering service or AI receptionist sits behind it. Tell that provider the migration window. Google's lead billing page said, when last checked in late October 2026, that a voicemail or automated greeting during business hours counts as a connected call, charged after 20 seconds, so a change in call handling can change what you pay.
• Agency or bookkeeper. If someone else manages the account or the books, give them the date range, ask for their own exports and agree who contacts Google if something looks wrong.

Badges, photos and paperwork

Your Google Verified badge and verified status transfer, and Google says insurance and licence reverification is no longer required. It adds that further business-level checks could appear as a notification in Google Ads. Keep the current insurance certificate, licence number and expiry dates in the same folder, so a request takes five minutes and does not pause your leads. Save the original photo files too (vans, team, finished work): the article says up to 100 additional photos can be uploaded, and the originals are the ones to upload again.

A baseline sheet filled in for a six-van firm

A baseline is the 12 weeks of numbers you will hold the new campaign against. The figures below belong to an imagined six-van plumbing firm with a $700 weekly budget, plumbing only, and are illustrative; swap in your own from the export.

The sheet uses net spend because the original charge still appears on the invoice after a credit, so the gross figure overstates what leads cost. Credits can take up to about 30 days, which means the newest weeks are always incomplete. End the baseline at least 30 days before the migration date if you can; if you cannot, mark the last month as provisional.

Now a rule you decide before the data arrives, so you are not rationalising afterwards. For this firm, 25 per cent above $150.86 is $189. A suggestion, not a Google threshold: after the two-week settling period, flag any four-week stretch where cost per booked job passes $189, or where booked jobs from these leads fall below three a week (the baseline is 49 over 12 weeks, roughly 4.1). A flag means look at call answering, job types and service areas first, not panic.

Run the export through an AI assistant without customer details

An assistant is good at the tedious arithmetic and bad at knowing which numbers are real. Remove the name, phone, email and address columns before pasting anything. Keep date, lead type, charged status, amount charged, job type and a broad area band. Do the booked-job matching in your job software, where the phone numbers live, and paste back only a yes or no and the job value.

You are helping a plumbing firm build a baseline from its Local Services Ads lead export.
The data has no names, phone numbers or addresses, and holds only leads that were charged at the time.
Columns: date, lead_type (call or message), charged_status (charged, credited or in review),
amount_charged, job_type, area_band, booked (yes or no), job_value.
Do these steps and show your working:
1. Count the rows and sum amount_charged. State both before anything else.
2. Count leads by charged_status. Treat "in review" as unresolved, never as credited.
3. For each week starting Monday, give leads charged, leads credited and net spend.
4. Give net cost per net paid lead, booking rate on net paid leads, and cost per booked job for the whole period.
5. List every job_type and area_band combination with 5 or more leads, with its cost per booked job.
6. Give no opinions, trends or advice. If a calculation needs data I have not supplied, say what is missing.
DATA:
[paste rows here]

An illustrative reply to that prompt looks like this:

Rows: 168. Total amount_charged: $8,400.00. Status counts: still charged 144, credited 21, in review 3. Net spend after credits: $7,392.00. Net cost per net paid lead: $50.29. Booking rate on net paid leads: 33.3%. Cost per booked job: $150.86.

Combinations with 5 or more leads: drain clearing, inner band, 31 leads, $1,333 charged, 13 booked, $102.54 per booked job. Water heater, outer band, 9 leads, $558 charged, 2 booked, $279.00 per booked job.

Check four things before you trust it. First, the status counts must add up to the row count (144 plus 21 plus 3 is 168). If the reply says 24 credited, it has counted the three in-review leads as credited, which is the usual slip. Second, compare the row count and total charges with the figures the dashboard shows for the same dates; if either differs, paste the data again in smaller blocks. Third, ignore small groups: nine leads and two bookings gives $279 a job, but one more booking would move it by a third, so do not change your service areas on that. Fourth, delete any sentence that says something is improving or worsening unless you asked for it, because the newest weeks have incomplete credits.

For a wider view of the same idea, the tutorial on tracking cost per job by lead source applies the arithmetic across paid leads, referrals and search.

Weekly budget to daily budget: do the sum first

Google divides your historical average weekly budget by 7 and applies the result as a daily average. For the six-van firm, $700 divided by 7 is $100 a day, and the monthly ceiling is $100 times 30.4, or $3,040. The old arrangement averaged $700 times 52 divided by 12, or $3,033 a month, so the ceiling barely moves.

Seasonal firms feel it more. Suppose the firm ran $500 a week for six quiet weeks and $900 a week for six cold-snap weeks. The average is $8,400 over 12 weeks, or $700, so the daily budget becomes $100. A $900 week used to allow about $128.57 a day, so a cold snap now meets a lower daily ceiling unless you raise it. The article says daily spend can run higher on busy days within the monthly cap, and that you review the daily budget under Settings in the Campaigns menu, so put "raise the daily budget" on the same checklist you used to use for "raise the weekly budget".

Bidding changes too. Manual bidding is gone, and a single campaign-level target CPA replaces separate targets by vertical. The article's own example of wanting separate rules is separate campaigns for plumbing and HVAC. It also says new pay-per-lead campaigns cannot be created inside Google Ads at the moment, and that extra campaigns or local accounts are still set up on the Local Services side, so decide before migration whether you need that split and ask Google's dedicated migration support if you do.

A realistic slip: the notice goes to an inbox nobody opens

Here is how the commonest mistake would show up, as an illustration and not a report of a real firm. The administrator address on the profile belongs to an office manager who left in the spring, and her mailbox forwards to a shared address nobody checks. The 14-day email arrives and sits unread. The reminder follows a week later and sits too. The warning banner appears in the dashboard, but the owner only ever uses the phone, so nobody sees it.

On migration day the dashboard starts redirecting to Google Ads. The reports are gone, there is no screenshot of last year's cost per lead, and the only record of what the leads cost is whatever the bookkeeper can reconstruct from invoices. Leads still arrive, which is why the problem hides for weeks.

The fix takes ten minutes and is worth doing today: change the administrator address to one that is read daily, add a second address if the profile allows, put a Monday reminder in the calendar to open the dashboard and look for banners until the move happens, and ask the bookkeeper to download the invoices.

The 14 days, stretch by stretch

1. Notice day (14 days out). Tell the office. Freeze changes to business name, address and primary category. Start the report exports first, because they are the only items with no copy at the other end.
2. Days 13 to 8. Finish the lead export, add the booked and job value columns, build the baseline sheet, and gather photos and paperwork.
3. Day 7 (reminder email). Brief the office and whoever answers forwarded calls. Confirm who receives lead emails. Tell any answering service or AI receptionist provider the date.
4. Days 6 to 2. Reopen three exported files on another device. Screenshot every dashboard page again, so the final state of budget, bids and areas is on record.
5. Day 1. Screenshot every lead showing in review, and the budget and bidding pages one last time.
6. Migration day. Leave name, address and category alone. Look for the completion email.

The one-page briefing for the office, filled in

Put this where the person answering calls and the person reading lead emails will both see it. The brackets are for your own details.

• Migration date: [date from the 14-day email]. Administrator: [name], inbox read daily.
• Calls ring through to [number], answered by [role], with [answering service or AI receptionist] behind it. Do not change how calls are answered until [date plus 14 days], and write down any change you do make.
• Lead emails go to [names]. At least one of them must stay opted in.
• Do not edit the business name, address or primary category on the Business Profile until [date plus 14 days].
• For the first 14 days after the move, one named person opens the Leads page every morning and checks that new leads show a charged status and that a call recording plays.
• If calls or messages stop for more than one working day, call [name], who contacts Google's migration support.

The first two weeks after the move

Google says many ads start running at once but to allow up to two weeks for the migration to complete and performance to ramp back to stable levels. Treat that as a settling period: check daily, change nothing unless something is broken, and write down what you see.

1. The Leads page shows new leads with a charged status, and the old lead history reaches back to the first date in your export.
2. A call recording plays, and a message lead can be answered from inside Google Ads.
3. The daily budget equals your weekly figure divided by 7, or whatever you chose to change it to.
4. Areas, job types, hours and the routing number match your notes.
5. The photos and six callouts are present, and the verified badge shows.
6. Lead emails reach the people you chose.
7. Your job software still labels these leads with the right source.

From week three, paste the new leads into the same prompt each week and set the result beside the baseline. Standard Performance Max is usually given at least six weeks before anyone judges it, and changes reset its learning (see how long Performance Max takes). This pay-per-lead version is not identical, so read six weeks as a sensible comparison window and not a Google rule for it. If you also run ordinary Google Ads, the tutorial on what to bid on and what to block covers that side.

One van or ten: where the checklist changes

A one-van owner is administrator, dispatcher and technician in one person, so the risks are narrow. The reports, the administrator inbox and the phone the leads ring through to are the whole job, and an afternoon covers it. The temptation is to skip the baseline because "it was fine". Do the 12-week sum anyway, because it is the only way to tell later whether a quiet fortnight is the campaign or the weather.

A ten-van firm has more moving parts and more people who can break something. An office team answers calls, perhaps an agency touches the account, and two trades may share one campaign. Give each checklist group an owner, make one person responsible for the baseline sheet, and put the call-handling change on the briefing. If an AI receptionist covers overflow, read the tutorial on all calls, after hours or overflow before deciding how it should behave during the settling weeks.

Questions plumbers ask before the move

Will my Local Services Ads lead history carry over?

Google's help article says past lead history, including contact details, message history and older call recordings, transfers to the Leads page in Google Ads. Performance reports do not. Keep your own copy of the lead list anyway, because once you migrate the old dashboard stops opening and you can no longer compare against it.

How will I know when my account is moving?

The administrator on your profile gets an email 14 days before the migration date, warning banners appear in the dashboard, a reminder email follows a week later and a third email arrives once the move is complete. Check today who that administrator is, because an unread inbox means a missed notice.

Can I still set a maximum cost per lead?

Google's article says manual bidding, such as a maximum cost per lead, is no longer supported in Google Ads, and vertical-level target CPA is replaced by one campaign-level target. Record your current settings before the move, then review the budget and target Google applies when your account arrives.

Do I need to re-verify my insurance and licence?

Google says your verified status and Google Verified badge transfer, and insurance and licence reverification are no longer required. It adds that any extra business-level check would appear as a notification in Google Ads, so keep your certificate and licence details to hand.

Further reads

• Pool Service Leads: Compare Paid Leads, Local Services Ads and Fast Replies — Compare paid leads, Local Services Ads and fast replies in another trade.
• Local Services Ads for Carpet Cleaners: What the Google Ads Move Changes — See the same move from a cleaning firm's side.
• Local Services Ads for Pest Control: Bad Leads and the Google Ads Move — Bad leads and the Google Ads move for another home-service trade.
• Angi Leads for Plumbers and HVAC: Worked Cost per Job and AI Follow-Up — Work out cost per job for a second paid-lead source.
• AI Answering Service for Plumbers: Rosie, Goodcall, Smith.ai or Jobber? — Put an answering service behind the calls your ads pay for.
• HVAC Lead Generation: AI Call Tags Show Which Sources Book Replacements — Tag calls with AI, follow each booked job to its outcome, and compare replacement sales by source, with a worked quarter across four HVAC lead sources.
• AI SEO for Plumbers: Get Named by ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews — A test-first plan for plumbers: check emergency searches in ChatGPT and Google, fix profile, pages and reviews, then re-test after 30 days.
• Roofing Google Ads: Storm-Season Campaigns and Negative Keywords With AI — A storm-season Google Ads plan for roofers: three campaign states, surge and pause rules, call tracking and AI-sorted negative keyword lists.
• Performance Max Reporting: Explain Asset Results to Clients With AI — Turn a Performance Max asset export into a client explanation that says what the ratings mean, what they don't, and what to change next.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Google Ads Help (Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals), Google Local Services Help (about automated lead credits; lead charges and billing).