HVACBossPro Blog — HVAC Software

Service Calls vs Maintenance Agreements: How HVAC Software Handles Both

A heating and air company runs two businesses under one roof. One is the phone ringing with no cool, no heat, water on the floor and strange noises. The other is a list of customers who pay for a spring and fall tune-up and expect you to remember them. They share the same vans and the same techs, but they behave very differently, and good HVAC software treats them differently.

Two Kinds of Work, One Set of Vans

In Unit Location and Access Notes: Attic Ladders, Gate Codes and Thermostat Locations, the focus was getting the tech to the equipment. This guide is about how the visit gets on the schedule at all, because that depends on which kind of work it is.

Service Calls and Repairs

A service call is a one-time job. The customer reaches out, by phone, text or your website request form, and the office books it:

• It starts with a problem. No cool, no heat, short cycling, a frozen line, a leak from the drain pan.
• It is urgent. Usually today or tomorrow, and in a heat wave everyone wants today.
• It is unpredictable. You cannot plan next Tuesday's repairs in advance.
• It ends with a repair, an estimate or both. A diagnostic and a capacitor, or a diagnostic and a replacement quote.

In HVACBossPro a service call is a one-time job at an address. The office puts it on a day and a van on the dispatch board. The tech sees it on the phone with the equipment details, does the work, and taps Complete, which creates the invoice.

Maintenance Agreements

A maintenance agreement is the opposite. The customer pays for regular tune-ups, usually twice a year (cooling check in spring, heating check in fall) or once a year. Agreement work is:

• Predictable. You know roughly when every visit is due.
• Flexible within a window. A tune-up can go this week or next without anyone suffering.
• Easy to forget. Because it is never urgent, it is the first thing that slips when the phone is ringing.

HVACBossPro sets agreements by a minimum number of days between visits: 180 for spring and fall, 365 for yearly. When a visit comes due, it lands on the Waiting List. You can price the plan however you like, for example $179 a year for two tune-ups, and bill it on the schedule that suits you.

The Waiting List Keeps Agreements From Slipping

The Waiting List is a live map and list of every tune-up that has come due. Each pin is colored by status: not due yet, due now, or overdue past a 7-day grace. The office opens it in the morning, picks a group of nearby due visits, and assigns them to a van and a day.

Because agreements come due on their own, nobody has to keep a spreadsheet of who was last seen when. The full walkthrough is in The Waiting List: Every HVAC Tune-Up That Has Come Due on One Map.

Keeping Them From Fighting Over the Vans

The hard part is not scheduling either kind of work. It is keeping repair calls from eating every tune-up slot when the weather turns. A few setups work well for small shops:

• One van on repairs, one on tune-ups. The most common setup with two or more vans. The tune-up van gets an auto-routed day of nearby agreement visits; the repair van takes the calls as they come.
• Tune-ups in the morning, repairs after lunch. Works for a one-van shop in shoulder season.
• Front-load tune-ups before the season. Push spring tune-ups into the weeks before the first hot spell, when the phone is quieter.

When a heat wave hits and the repair van is overloaded, the office can drag tune-ups to another day on the dispatch board and move the second van to repair calls for a few days. The tune-ups stay on the board; they do not vanish.

Turning Service Calls Into Agreements

Many maintenance customers start as service calls. Someone calls with no cool, the tech fixes it, and while finishing up mentions that a twice-a-year tune-up would catch problems like this earlier. A few things help that conversation:

• The plan on your service list. The tech or office can add it to an estimate and the customer approves online.
• Sign-up in the customer app. Customers can sign up for services and pricing such as a maintenance plan from their phone.
• A tag. Tag the client Maintenance Plan so the office can see at a glance who is on one.

Once they are on a plan, the agreement comes due on its own from then on.

Billing Each One

Service calls bill by the job: a diagnostic plus parts and labor line items, sales tax, and a card charge on completion. Agreements can bill per visit or on a schedule, whichever matches how you sell the plan. Either way the card on file does the work, and the customer can see and pay invoices in the customer app.

To see how service calls, agreements, dispatch and billing come together, visit the HVAC software page.