HVACBossPro Blog — Property Managers & Commercial

Quarterly PM Visits for Commercial HVAC Customers

Homeowners usually do fine with a tune-up in spring and another in fall. Many commercial customers want more. A restaurant's units pull in grease and heat all day. An office runs its system ten or twelve hours at a stretch. A retail store has its doors opening and closing all day long. For these customers, a quarterly preventive maintenance visit is often the right fit, and for your shop it is steady, schedulable work.

Why Quarterly Fits Commercial Work

Getting paid for that work is covered in One Monthly Statement per Account: Billing Property Managers for HVAC Work. This article is about getting the visits done on time, every time.

Filters on busy commercial equipment load up faster than they do in a house. Belts wear. Drain lines clog. Coils get dirty. Catching these every three months instead of every six keeps small problems from turning into a no-cooling call on the hottest Saturday of the year. It also gives you four chances a year to spot equipment that needs a repair quote.

Set the Visit Interval

In HVACBossPro, recurring work is set by the minimum number of days between visits. For quarterly PM, set the address to 90 days. For a customer who wants spring and fall, use 180. For a once-a-year check, use 365. Each address under an account can have its own interval, so the restaurant's kitchen-side unit can be on 90 days while the dining room units on the same account are on 180.

Once it is set, nobody has to remember. The visit comes due on its own.

The Waiting List Shows What Is Due

Every visit that comes due appears on the Waiting List, a live map and list. Pins are colored by status:

• Not due yet: still inside the interval.
• Due now: ready to be scheduled.
• Overdue: past a 7-day grace period.

For commercial accounts, the map view is the useful one. You can see that the three strip centers on the east side are all due this week and put them on one van on one morning. An overdue pin is a clear signal that a commercial customer is about to notice you slipped.

Route the PM Day

Drag due visits onto the dispatch board, assign them to a van and a day, and auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop. Commercial stops often have time windows, so adjust the route order by hand to put the before-opening stops first.

Many shops keep one van on repair calls and one on maintenance. Quarterly PM visits fit on the maintenance van and give it a steady schedule all year, not just in the spring and fall rush. Scheduling around business hours is covered more in Scheduling Commercial HVAC Work Around Business Hours.

What a Quarterly Visit Covers

Every shop builds its own checklist, but a typical quarterly visit on light commercial equipment includes:

• Replace filters (the size is on the equipment record).
• Check and adjust belts.
• Clear the condensate drain line and check the pan.
• Look over the coils and clean if needed.
• Check capacitors and contactors.
• Check the thermostat and the system's operation in the current season.

Keep your checklist in the access notes or in a note on the account so the tech sees it on the card. Add account-specific items, like “Check walk-in cooler area unit too” at a restaurant.

Photos Make the Visit Visible

Quarterly PM is easy to take for granted. When nothing breaks, the customer starts to wonder what they are paying for. Before and after photos answer that. A dirty filter next to a clean one, a clogged drain line, a cracked belt you replaced. They are saved with each job, ready to send when the customer asks.

If the tech spots a problem that needs a repair, the photo goes on the estimate. The customer approves it online, and the approved estimate becomes a scheduled job.

When a Visit Gets Skipped

Sometimes the tech cannot do the work. The business is closed unexpectedly, the roof hatch key is missing, or the manager asks you to come back. The tech taps Skip and writes why. The office sees the skip with the reason, texts the contact, and reschedules. Because the visit stays due on the Waiting List, it does not quietly fall off.

Bill PM Visits Cleanly

Quarterly visits can be billed per visit with the card on file charged on completion, or rolled onto a monthly statement for accounts set to Monthly. Either way, the address is on every line. For how PM visits fit with the rest of commercial service, see the HVACBossPro commercial HVAC software page.