HVACBossPro Blog — HVAC Software

HVAC Software Reports: The Numbers a Small Heating and Air Owner Should Check

Most small HVAC owners know their business by feel. They know when the phone is busy, which techs are fast and roughly how the bank account looks. Feel works until it does not: until a slow month surprises you, or you find out in October that half the spring tune-ups never happened. A few numbers, checked regularly, keep feel honest.

Numbers Need Clean Records

Tags and Custom Fields: Sorting HVAC Customers by Plan, Building and Priority covered how to organize customers. That organization is what makes the numbers mean something. When every job, estimate, invoice and clock-in is in one system, the reports come from the work itself instead of from a spreadsheet someone updates on Sundays.

Weekly: Is Work Slipping?

These are the numbers that tell you whether something is falling through the cracks right now:

• Overdue tune-ups. The Waiting List shows every agreement visit that is past due and past the 7-day grace. If the overdue pile is growing, plan customers are waiting, and plan customers who wait are the ones who cancel.
• Skipped jobs. Every Skip comes with the tech's note. A run of skips for “nobody home” may mean reminders are not reaching people.
• Open estimates. How many quotes are sitting unapproved? Follow-up emails go out automatically, but the big ones deserve a personal text.

Fifteen minutes on Monday morning with these three is enough to catch most problems while they are still small.

Weekly: Is Money Coming In?

• Past-due invoices. Who owes what and for how long. Past-due follow-up runs on its own, but the owner should know the total.
• Payments received. What actually came in, by card on file, online payment or otherwise.
• Customers without a card on file. Every one of them is a future invoice that has to be chased. Ask them at the next visit.

Monthly: How Is the Business Doing?

Once a month, step back and look at the bigger picture:

• Work completed. Jobs done, split between service calls and tune-ups. Over a year this shows your seasons clearly and helps you plan staffing.
• Revenue by month. Compare to the same month last year once you have a year of data in the system.
• Plan customers. How many customers are tagged Maintenance Plan, and is the number growing? This is the steadiest work you have.
• Sales tax. What you collected, ready for whoever files it.
• Monthly statements. Property managers and commercial accounts billed monthly, and whether they are paid.

People: Hours and Routes

The time clock in the tech app records hours as techs clock in and out, which makes payroll a matter of reading numbers instead of rebuilding a week from memory. Looking at hours alongside jobs completed gives a fair picture of how each van's days are going.

Be careful with comparing techs on raw numbers. A tech on repair calls will finish fewer jobs than a tech on tune-ups, and that is the job, not a problem. Compare like with like.

Seasonal Numbers

HVAC is a seasonal trade, and a few checks belong at the turn of each season rather than every week:

• Before spring: how many plan customers will come due for a cooling tune-up in the next few weeks, and is there enough van time to reach them before the first hot spell?
• Before fall: the same question for heating tune-ups, plus a look at which customers are running older equipment that may not make it through winter.
• After each rush: how many tune-ups went overdue, and what would you change next year to keep them on time?

What Not to Track

Software makes it easy to look at dozens of numbers. A small HVAC company does not need dozens. Every number you track should lead to an action:

• Overdue tune-ups growing? Schedule a tune-up day.
• Past-due total growing? Make calls and push card on file.
• Open estimates piling up? Text the customers.
• Plan customers flat? Train techs to offer the plan on every service call.

If a number does not change what you do, stop looking at it.

Building the Habit

The hard part of reports is not reading them; it is remembering to. Put a recurring block on your calendar: Monday morning for the weekly numbers, the first of the month for the monthly ones. Keep it short.

Who sees which numbers also matters. Techs do not need to see revenue, and office staff may not need payroll. That is what user roles are for, covered next in User Roles in HVAC Software: The Owner, the Office and the Techs. To see how reports fit with the rest of HVACBossPro, visit the HVAC software page.