In January, a no-heat call isn't a service call.
Custom software for HVAC companies
It's a house with a family in it and an outdoor temperature that doesn't negotiate. Meanwhile your maintenance agreements are lapsing quietly, and the replacement quote you sent three weeks ago hasn't been mentioned since. HVAC has three completely different clocks running at once, and software is how you keep all three.
- From $950 for one module
- You own the code and the data
- No contract, cancel any month
Three clocks, none of them the same speed.
The emergency clock runs in minutes. No heat in a Minnesota January, or no cool in an August heat wave for someone elderly, is not the same as a filter change. Whether the two get treated differently is the single most consequential routing decision in the trade.
The surge clock runs in days. The first hard freeze and the first real heat wave produce a three-day spike where enquiry volume goes up several times over, and every one of those people is contacting three companies.
The revenue clock runs in years. Maintenance agreements are the steadiest money in HVAC, and they die silently. Nobody cancels; the tune-up just never gets scheduled, and eighteen months later the customer books a competitor. Nothing about that failure is visible until you go looking for it.
Most HVAC software sells you a scheduling calendar. What actually leaks money is the space between those three clocks: the emergency that queued behind a tune-up request, the surge enquiry nobody got to, and the renewal nobody chased.
What I'd build first, and why that order.
HVAC is the trade where I'd start with the renewals, not the leads. That's money you've already earned and are quietly losing, and it's the one number on this list that goes up without any new marketing at all.
HVAC software, in other words — the parts of it you'd actually use.
A maintenance agreement list that chases itself
Every agreement, its renewal date, when the last tune-up actually happened, and an email that goes out before it lapses rather than after. This is the highest-value thing I can build for most HVAC companies and almost nobody has one.
Triage on the way in
No heat, no cool, a gas smell and a leaking condensate line are four different urgencies. An enquiry form that sorts them, and a dashboard where the urgent ones are visibly at the top instead of buried in an inbox in arrival order.
Equipment records by address
Make, model, serial, install date, what was done last time and by whom. Kept against the property rather than the customer, because the property is what you're going back to.
Quote follow-up on replacements
A system replacement is a considered purchase that gets compared. A scheduled follow-up in your words, without you remembering to send it, is the cheapest revenue in the business.
An owner dashboard that shows the leaks
What came in, what got booked, what's still unanswered, and which agreements are about to lapse. The point is that the invisible failure becomes visible.
What I wouldn't build. Diagnosis, pricing a replacement sight unseen, or anything that tells a customer whether a smell is dangerous. Software routes and records. It doesn't decide.
Start with one module.
One thing, built properly, for $950. Two or three that only make sense together, $1,950. Everything connected, from $2,995. Each step is a decision you make once the one before it has earned it, and stopping at the first is a normal outcome.
Half up front to book, half on launch, agreed in writing before anything starts. If you want me keeping it running afterwards that's $150/month and it cancels any month with no fee. If you don't, you still own it.
Judge it on what I've built.
The software I run my own businesses on. Every card says what it is, so you can see the standard rather than take my word for it.
The software
A lead tracker, an SEO tool that writes branded PDF reports, a desktop file organizer, a Discord bot, a plugin storefront. All mine, all working, none of them a contractor's.
No contractor example yet
I would rather say that than show you somebody else's work or a mock-up dressed as a job. What is on the work page is real and labeled, and the free homepage is there so you can see the standard applied to your own business before you pay for anything.
Different trade, different order.
The build order isn't the same across trades, and the pages say why rather than swapping a noun.
Roofing
A hailstorm doesn't book itself.
Plumbing
Four different jobs, one enquiry form.
Electrical
A dead outlet and a panel upgrade arrive the same way.
Remodeling
Your sales cycle is months. Your follow-up is two emails.
All contractors
The problem every trade has in common, and the three builds that fix most of it.
Tell me what you're paying for.
Send me your monthly software list and I'll write back with what each tool does, what's worth replacing, and the one thing I'd build first with a fixed price on it.