HVAC invoicing software has made manual invoicing outdated.
Traditional HVAC invoicing is not just time-consuming, it also comes with the risks of inaccuracy and mistakes that often occur in invoicing methods based on manual input.
Invoicing software saves time and ensures invoices are accurate and consistent by streamlining and automating the entire HVAC invoicing process.
The purpose of this article is to help you discover the 10 essential features to focus on when trying to arrive at a decision on the best HVAC invoicing software for your business.
TL;DR
- At the most basic level, an HVAC invoice outlines the details of the services to be performed and the amount to be paid after the service has been rendered. HVAC invoicing software helps to automate the invoice creation and delivery process.
- The key features of quality HVAC invoicing software are user-friendliness, automation, seamless payment processing, robust integration capabilities, mobile access, real-time reporting, customer communication, data security, scalability, and cost-effective pricing.
- You should engage your team and identify the features you would love to see in your software platform, and then use that list to identify the software that best meets your requirements.
Ease of Use
At the most basic level, an HVAC invoice outlines the details of the services to be performed and the amount to be paid after the service has been rendered.
The term HVAC indicates a service business focused on either heating, ventilation, or air conditioning services. So invoices will generally cover installation, repair, and maintenance services.
HVAC invoicing software is designed to automate all the billing and invoicing tasks involved in rendering these services.
This will give you more time to focus on running your business and earning more revenue.
Also, HVAC invoicing software doesn’t just help with getting timely payments from clients, it can also simplify other aspects of your business.
It can help you assign optimal routes to your techs, maintain detailed customer profile records, track supplies in real-time, and organize financial records with little manual effort.
Here is an overview of the core functionalities HVAC software uses to help streamline your invoicing process:
Customizable templates
The software usually comes with professional, industry-specific invoice templates that can be modified to convey the unique details of each job.
You will be able to add your brand’s design elements, like your logo, brand colors, fonts, and much more.
Web booking
Your invoicing software can be integrated with your company website to let customers request and book your services online.
Making things convenient for your clients will, of course, boost customer satisfaction rates and help you maximize job opportunities.
Scheduling and dispatching
The best HVAC service software platforms come with smart job management features like drag-and-drop calendars you can use to schedule jobs based on factors like your current commitments, billable hours for the new job, costs, and availability of supplies.
You will also be able to use the job scheduling functionality to dispatch your HVAC technicians to job sites along the most efficient routes while giving your customers precise ETAs and tracking the location of your staff in real-time.
Inventory management
Managing parts and supplies is no easy task for any HVAC technician, and one of the easiest ways to limit your revenue potential is to have to delay a job because of inadequate supplies.
Robust HVAC software can help you track your inventory in real-time, so you can always know what you have in stock, and avoid running out of important parts ever again.
Integration with your accounting software
Many HVAC business owners use Quickbooks to help with bookkeeping tasks, and things would be a lot easier if your HVAC invoicing software could seamlessly share financial data with your accounting software in real time.
You won’t have to manually enter your invoice, expenses, and payment data into your accounting software since it’s all shared automatically.
So, HVAC invoicing software is easy to use when it comes with the features mentioned above, and a user-friendly interface that can be easily mastered by your technicians.
Automation Features
The beauty of invoicing software is that it comes with pre-defined functionalities that will help save you valuable time and resources.
However, there are certain core automated features you want to see in an HVAC invoicing software platform before you can add it to your shortlist. They include:
Automated Reminders
Having the means to send timely email alerts to customers can help ensure customers pay on time.
You will also be able to send job progress notifications to customers and your technicians to keep everyone up-to-date on the status of the ongoing project.
We will explore more on the essential communication functionalities of an HVAC invoicing platform in another section later in the article.
Recurring invoicing
The core premise of an HVAC invoicing platform is that it automates the process of creating and sending invoices to customers.
However, there are instances where you have to send the same invoice at fixed intervals (weekly, monthly, bi-annually, annually).
Such a recurring invoice can be due to a regular maintenance contract or because you are using a subscription-based business model.
In such a situation, you want your invoice software to be able to create and send that invoice at pre-determined intervals to the relevant customers.
Automated Estimation
Generating accurate material lists and associated costs for the unique job of each customer is no easy task.
For example, let’s say you have an HVAC job to heat and cool a number of rooms for a customer.
You have to calculate the volume of the rooms and come up with a precise list of the ducts, pumps, switches, controls, labor, and other items required for the job.
Doing all that manually and accurately every time is demanding.
An invoicing software with HVAC estimating functionality can help you do it faster and more accurately.
You will be able to generate accurate and timely job proposals every time, which will only boost your chances of impressing and retaining customers.
The quote approval process and the signing of service agreements will also be faster since customers can easily approve and eSign the job proposal document sent to them via email.
Payment Processing
If you want customers to approve and complete service payments quickly, then your HVAC invoicing software must be able to facilitate all the payment options used by your clients.
There are three main ways your HVAC customers can pay after receiving your invoice, and they are:
- By paper cash or paper check: here your customers receive a physical invoice from you or one of your technicians and opt to pay with cash or check in person. If this happens often in your business, you must ensure you can upload and track paper transactions with your HVAC software.
- Online: here your customers pay via a payment gateway connected to the payment link on the email invoice you sent to them. Online payments can be made using debit or credit cards, ACH electronic checks, and digital wallets.
- Customer financing: here your customers have the option to pay in installments as opposed to full upfront payment for your HVAC services or big-ticket HVAC supplies. It helps your customers afford expensive HVAC systems without bursting their budget, while you also gain steady revenues and higher profits.
Payment processing encompasses all the steps involved in transferring payments from your customer’s account to your business account.
Your HVAC invoicing software provider will usually use a third-party payment gateway for accepting and processing online payments.
That third-party provider will impose a fee per transaction for the use of its payment gateway and other services.
So, you want to ensure your provider is using a reliable and fairly-priced third-party payment services provider.
For example, Stax Bill, a robust HVAC invoicing software platform, uses Stax Pay’s payment gateway to help process your online payments.
Stax Pay happens to be one of the most highly rated payment service providers on the planet, making Stax Bill an excellent example of what to look for in your HVAC software.
Integration Capabilities
For both small HVAC businesses and bigger HVAC contractors, it’s inevitable that you already have existing ecosystem software tools and apps you currently use to run your business operations.
For example, does the invoicing platform integrate seamlessly with your HVAC Estimating software?
Does the invoicing tool let you easily access customer data from your HVAC Scheduling software to know when to send invoices after the relevant services have been rendered?
You must evaluate your workflow to identify the tools you currently use to complete each task, then try to determine what would be required to connect each app and software tool to a third-party platform—your invoicing software.
For example, an HVAC contractor with a custom in-house HVAC dispatch software tool will want invoicing software with API functionality so the company’s developers can integrate both platforms.
In contrast, the same company may be using an external tool like QuickBooks for its accounting tasks, which is fully supported by the Invoicing tool and won’t require any API integration work by developers.
You want to pay special attention to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) integration in particular. CRM tools are invaluable to HVAC businesses because they are crucial in managing customer relationships.
Some of the things they are used for include:
- Creating detailed customer profiles
- Creating work orders and scheduling jobs for relevant individuals and teams per project
- Sending notifications to customers on the status of incoming techs
- Creating and sharing project notes with customers
- Tracking upselling, cross-selling, and other sales and marketing efforts
All of this data will be needed to build detailed invoices and that information can’t be shared seamlessly unless your invoicing platform plays well with your CRM software.
Other typical HVAC third-party integrations to watch out for are your project management tools, GPS tracking software, and time tracking software.
Real-time Tracking and Reporting
The very best HVAC invoicing software platforms let you track your financial performance and other key business data in real-time.
Your dashboard will serve as a sort of command center from which you will have a bird’s eye view of the status of your business at any point in time.
There are three main categories of data sets you would want to be able to monitor with your HVAC invoicing software, and they include:
Invoice status tracking
The ability to know in real time whether an invoice has been delivered, viewed, or paid can bring you a lot of peace of mind.
You would be able to accurately predict the amount of cash you can expect to have in hand within the next few days and customers who haven’t viewed their invoices and thus need to be sent reminders.
Invoice status data can also help spot patterns in customer behavior over time. You will be able to identify customers who pay promptly and those who often delay payments.
Sales and revenues
Monitoring incoming revenues over time will help you easily spot trends in your cash flow.
You will be able to predict seasonal demand for each of your HVAC services and determine the amount of cash you can expect to have from one period to another.
You will also spot slacking revenue channels—HVAC services will significantly lower sales than the norm, so you can take steps to fix any pressing issues and optimize your services before you lose more customers.
Financial statistics
Organized financial data is useful for a wide range of reasons including the collation of financial statements, tax reporting, budgeting, and business planning.
You should be able to generate tailored financial reports for regulatory requirements and to inform investors/shareholders.
Your platform should also let you monitor KPIs that will provide key insights in the financial health of your business.
Real-time job progress tracking
Your HVAC software should let you easily view the status and project details of each ongoing customer engagement.
You should be able to track the amount of labor hours, equipment, and supplies being expended on each project.
All that information will help you identify which jobs are taking the most time to complete, which jobs are bringing in the most money, which jobs are trending upward in customer sales, and much more.
You will be able to better decide on the types of jobs that promise the most profits and the trending jobs to stock up on supplies for.
Mobile Access and Cloud Storage
Given the fieldwork nature of HVAC services, an invoicing platform with a mobile app can be crucial to the success of your business.
The mobile or on-the-go nature of the app means your tech staff can access key invoicing functionality and business information wherever they may be; in transit, on-site, or at their desks.
Only cloud-based invoicing solutions can offer mobile app functionality, and that’s something to watch out for when evaluating your options.
Below are some of the tasks that may require a mobile invoicing solution:
- Creating project estimates while on a site visit
- Technicians generating invoices on-site after project completion
- Technicians using their phones to access customer profile information while in transit, these include the customer’s address, project details, work order notes, billing history, property photos, and more
- Routing navigation data to help technicians find their way via GPS to a customer’s location
- Time tracking to calculate billable hours for the project
Customer Communication
HVAC software can help enhance communication with your customers.
The very best platforms come with robust customer management features like built-in chat tools that can be used to send text messages, pictures, and voice notes
So, sending invoice-related queries, customer feedback, and project updates can be done in a breeze. This will have a positive impact on customer experience and client retention.
Also, each customer usually has access to a client portal where they can access their project information as well as billing and invoicing details.
The client portal will help reduce the need for daily communication since they can view the information themselves, and if they have any questions, they can follow up via chat or email.
Compliance and Security
A stunning 2.7 Terabytes of data, including 31.5 million invoices were recently discovered to have been exposed for years to cyber criminals and other members of the public by a SaaS provider using an insecure database.
The consequences of such a major failure of data security can be devastating. The average cost of data breach incidents worldwide is six million dollars.
This is why you must ensure your billing and invoicing software provider takes data security and data privacy regulations very seriously.
As a bare minimum, the provider must comply with key regulations like PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
The provider must also use 256-bit AES advanced encryption standards to encrypt all sensitive customer information and access control mechanisms like two-factor authentication to prevent unauthorized users like hackers leveraging stolen passwords.
Customer Care
Effective customer care is crucial from the very beginning of your relationship with your invoicing software provider since the level of customer support and training provided will determine how easily you can master the new HVAC invoicing tool.
You want a software vendor that offers the following customer onboarding services and resources:
- Training resources: there should be onboarding videos and webinars that provide step-by-step instructions on how you can use your new invoicing software tool effectively. You may also want the vendor to provide dedicated support staff if you are a large organization switching from one provider to another.
- Online tutorials: there will be spontaneous issues you will want to solve yourself or questions you want answers for as quickly as possible. Online documentation and FAQs will help facilitate such a DIY approach to troubleshooting issues with your invoicing software.
- Vibrant user communities: having access to a community of other users of the same software platform can be very helpful in familiarizing yourself with the new platform. You can ask questions about the community and others who have gone through similar situations will be able to put you through.
Once you are fully onboarded and you have started using the HVAC billing and invoicing software, there will inevitably be instances where you may need to contact the provider’s support team for assistance in fixing pressing issues with the software.
A non-responsive software provider in such a situation can derail your business workflow and cost you customers.
So, consider only adding providers that offer 24/7 phone, email, and chat support to your shortlist.
Scalability and Pricing
It’s very important that you opt for an HVAC invoicing software platform that can grow with your business from the get-go.
In the future, you may want to diversify your HVAC business, expand your customer base, or even add more technicians to your team, and you could lose valuable business if your software solution can’t be adapted to meet your evolving needs.
You would have to switch to a different platform with all the attendant costs and data transfer risks that come with such a step.
Cloud-based solutions like Stax Bill generally offer excellent scalability since the provider can always update and enhance the platform online to ensure it’s always robust enough to meet the changing needs of its users.
Cost-effective pricing is another important thing for HVAC companies to consider.
Invoicing software vendors use a wide range of pricing models and you should only opt for one that offers the most flexibility to your business.
We recommend going for a provider offering a tiered pricing model since that way you are only paying for the features you need today. When you need more advanced features as your business grows, you can upgrade to a more expensive subscription pricing plan.
It’s Time To Start Evaluating Your HVAC Invoicing Software Options
This article has shown you what to look for when comparing invoicing software options and we have gone into detail on the essential elements of each feature.
Now, the HVAC industry is wide, and every HVAC business is different. So, you may not need the full scope of functionalities we have outlined under each feature or you may want an all-in-one HVAC solution.
So, you should engage your team and identify the features you would love to see in your software platform, and then use that list to identify the HVAC business software that best meets your requirements.
