How an HVAC business runs on SMG Tools

The first screen asks for the business’s website. Kestrel Heating & Air types its address and chooses Read my website, and SMG Tools reads the services, the hours and the towns it works in, so setup arrives already answered — each answer there to read and change before anything is saved.

With the trade known, setup offers the HVAC kit with every line ticked: the kinds of work from a tune-up to an equipment replacement, the readings a tune-up takes, the kinds of unit a house has, a System change-out plan template, and the refrigerant record the regulated work keeps. Kestrel Heating & Air took it whole, so the same sheet opened again from the Tools page shows every line as already the business’s.

A heating and cooling company sells systems, not hours, so each system it installs goes in the Price Book as one item: the equipment’s cost and a crew’s hours at the install rate, against its price. The book then says what each one makes — the matched furnace and air conditioner at $13,900 costs $7,000 and makes 49.6% — and what it should sell for to meet the business’s 40% target.

When the air stops on a hot afternoon, the homeowner can book without waiting on a phone line. The no-cool call is the one thing the business offers there, so its page opens straight on the times the technician can make, worked out from the business’s hours and the calendar. The time chosen lands on the calendar as a job, already on the technician’s day.

The booking puts the call on the service technician’s own day, on the phone the work is done from: the time, the address, Directions, and a button to call the homeowner before setting off. The hour and a quarter the call took is kept as the day’s time, for payroll.

At the unit the technician takes the readings a no-cool call asks for, each kept against the unit it was taken on. The compressor draws 29.8 A against the 20 A the business expects at most, so the reading is marked above what is expected, with the note that it tries to start and trips on its overload.

The technician writes down what is in the house: a Lennox air conditioner and furnace, both put in seventeen years ago. The air conditioner is marked past its expected life — seventeen years against fifteen — which starts the conversation about replacing it, and whoever goes there next arrives knowing what is there.

The office quotes the replacement three ways from the Price Book: the same-size air conditioner, a matched furnace and air conditioner — the furnace is seventeen years old too — and a heat pump with the furnace for backup. What every option takes, the line set, the pad, the disconnect and the permit, is in the base, and a thermostat is an add-on the homeowner can tick. Each option shows its price, its cost and its margin before it is sent.

The homeowner signs on their own page for the matched system with the thermostat, $14,700, after a code sent to their email. The proposal asked for 40% at signing, so the deposit is invoiced with the signed copy and paid by card, and the job is made; the balance waits for the work to be done.

The change-out is planned from the kit’s template in three stages — take out the old system, install the new one, start it up — and worked in one long day by the lead installer and the technician, a visit for each stage. Every hour is logged against its task, and the plan says plainly how it went: 21 hours planned of 20 sold, an hour over.

Refrigerant is regulated, so the change-out keeps its record on the job as the work happens: 6.5 pounds recovered from the old system in the morning, and 7 pounds of R-454B charged into the new one at start-up, each by the certified installer and against the unit’s serial number. The kind of work carries the record, so no replacement goes without one.

Replacing a unit keeps the old one, marked replaced with its history, and puts the new one in its place: a Carrier air conditioner and furnace, installed by this job, under the makers’ warranties to 2036. The business hears before a warranty ends, and the next tune-up starts from what is there now.

When the change-out is finished, the balance the deposit left — $8,820 — is invoiced from the job’s payment schedule, so the bill names the job and what it is for. The deposit beside it is already paid.

Paid in full, the change-out stands against its quote: $7,013 made on $14,700, 47.7% against the 49.8% it was quoted at. The hour over, a flue kit the quote did not name and the refrigerant make the difference, and the job still clears the business’s 40% target by 7.7 points.

The new system is the start of a maintenance plan: a tune-up of the air conditioner every spring, billed by the year, signed by the homeowner on their own page with its automatic renewal acknowledged on its own. Its first visit is already booked as a job for next spring, with the tune-up’s checklist on it.