HVACBossPro Blog — HVAC Software

Tags and Custom Fields: Sorting HVAC Customers by Plan, Building and Priority

Once a few hundred customers are in your software, the question changes from “where is this customer?” to “which customers are like this?” Which ones are on a maintenance plan? Which are commercial? Which ones should get a call back first when the phone is ringing off the hook? Tags and custom fields answer those questions without anyone keeping a separate list.

After the Import

In Moving Your Customer List Into HVAC Software With a CSV Import, tagging plan customers was one of the first steps after importing. This guide covers how tags and custom fields work in HVACBossPro and how a small HVAC company can use them without overdoing it.

Tags: Quick Labels on a Client

A tag is a short label on a client. HVACBossPro comes ready for tags like:

• Maintenance Plan. The customer has an agreement. The office knows to treat them as a plan member, and techs know the visit is covered.
• Commercial. A business, a light commercial building or a property manager. Often billed monthly and handled a little differently.
• VIP. A customer who gets extra care: a long-time client, a referral source, an elderly homeowner who should never wait long for heat.

You can add your own as well. Tags are meant to be quick: one look tells the office what kind of customer this is.

Tags HVAC Companies Find Useful

Beyond the defaults, small HVAC shops often add a few of their own:

• Property Manager, for accounts with many rental addresses.
• Older Equipment, for customers whose system has some years on it, so the office and techs know a replacement conversation may come up.
• Medical Priority or Priority Heat, for customers who should go to the top of the list on a no-heat or no-cool call.
• Referral Source, for customers who regularly send neighbors your way.

Keep the list short. A dozen tags nobody remembers are worse than four everyone uses. Agree as a company what each tag means, and use it the same way every time.

Custom Fields: Details That Need a Home

Custom fields are for information that does not fit in the standard fields and deserves more structure than a note. HVACBossPro already has proper fields for the equipment (system type, brand, model, serial, year installed, tonnage, filter size, unit location) and for access notes. Custom fields handle the rest of what your shop tracks.

Examples HVAC companies use:

• Plan start date or plan renewal month, if you sell plans that renew.
• Building contact, for commercial customers where the person who pays is not the person on site.
• Tenant name, for rentals where the tenant needs to be contacted to schedule.
• How they heard about you, so you know whether the website, a neighbor or the van wrap is bringing in work.

Use custom fields for things you want to see the same way on every customer. Use notes for one-off details.

How Tags and Fields Help Day to Day

Tags and custom fields earn their keep in small moments:

• On the phone. A customer calls with no heat. The office sees the Maintenance Plan and Priority Heat tags and moves them up the board.
• In the van. A tech sees Older Equipment and knows to look carefully and mention it if the system is struggling.
• In planning. The owner wants to know how many plan customers there are before the spring push. The tag answers it.
• In billing. Commercial accounts are easy to find when it is time to check monthly statements.

Tags also make the numbers easier to think about. Knowing which customers are plan members or commercial accounts gives context when you look at reports, covered next in HVAC Software Reports: The Numbers a Small Heating and Air Owner Should Check.

Tags vs Notes vs Equipment Fields

It helps to agree where each kind of information goes. Equipment details belong in the equipment fields, so they show in the same place on every tech's phone. How to reach the unit belongs in the access notes. What happened on a visit belongs in the job notes. Tags are for what kind of customer this is, and custom fields are for anything else you want recorded the same way for every client. When everyone follows the same rules, nobody has to hunt.

Keeping It Clean

Tags and fields drift over time if nobody looks after them. A few habits:

• Decide who adds new tags. Usually the owner or office manager, so the list does not sprout near-duplicates.
• Remove tags that no longer apply. A customer who cancels their plan should lose the Maintenance Plan tag the same day.
• Review once a season. Before spring and fall, check that plan customers are tagged and set up with the right interval.

To see how tags, custom fields and client records fit into the rest of HVACBossPro, visit the HVAC software page.