AI Guides / HVAC & Refrigeration
HVAC swings between two failure modes: January and July bury you, April and October starve you. The fix for both is the same asset — the maintenance plan — and the most expensive problem in most 2–20 person shops is that the software to sell, schedule and renew those plans is already paid for and sitting switched off.
Start at step one. Stop whenever you like — nothing below is needed for anything above it to work.
Prices checked by hand 27 July 2026 · nobody pays to be listed here
The whole page, in order
If you use ServiceTitan or Jobber, configure the membership machinery inside it: the sale task on every invoice, the renewal statuses, and the recurring visit list. One afternoon of settings, and the recurring-revenue engine exists.
Software: ServiceTitan or Jobber memberships
Switch on booking reminders and quote follow-ups for replacement quotes. Considered purchases go quiet without a nudge; reminders cut tune-up no-shows for free.
Software: ServiceTitan or Jobber reminders and quote follow-ups
Set up overflow answering for surge weeks only — with priority rules, so a no-cooling call for an elderly customer books differently from a comfort call that can wait.
Software: Rosie with OpenPhone
Count memberships pitched against invoices issued, renewals due against renewed, and shoulder-season slots filled. Only then decide whether anything needs building.
Software: ServiceTitan or Jobber reports
Step one · start here
On ServiceTitan, Jobber, these are settings, not another subscription — check your plan includes them. On something else, search its help centre for the same feature name.
Extra software cost
$0*
if included in your plan
Features ready
3
Why it matters
Memberships are sold by adding a membership sale task to the invoice or estimate — and if no sale task is configured, the membership cannot be sold at all. The Memberships Wizard in Settings walks through it; most accounts have never finished it.
What to do
Open the official guide below. In ServiceTitan, find “Memberships — sold as an invoice task”. Follow the guide once, switch it on for one real job or customer first, and check that it did exactly what you expected before using it everywhere.
Open the official setup guide ↗Half a day · $0 extra if included in your current plan
Why it matters
Under Follow Up > Recurring Service Events sits the list of every membership visit coming due, filterable by date, zone and technician. It is the shoulder-season fill list, and most offices rebuild it by hand in a spreadsheet instead.
What to do
Open the official guide below. In ServiceTitan, find “Recurring Service Events list”. Follow the guide once, switch it on for one real job or customer first, and check that it did exactly what you expected before using it everywhere.
Open the official setup guide ↗2 hours · $0 extra if included in your current plan
Why it matters
Replacement quotes are shopped over weeks and tune-up bookings are forgotten over months. Both automations are in the plan (Connect and up) and off until you toggle them in Settings.
What to do
Open the official guide below. In Jobber, find “Automations — booking reminders and quote follow-ups”. Follow the guide once, switch it on for one real job or customer first, and check that it did exactly what you expected before using it everywhere.
Open the official setup guide ↗1 hour · $0 extra if included in your current plan
Different software? The same switch usually exists under another name.
Step two · first workflow to implement
The moment the system is running again is the moment the maintenance plan sells itself. A sale task on the invoice and a one-line script for techs turns a repair into an annuity.
Do this in order
Typical size
≈15% of service calls
Setup
Half a day
What to use
ServiceTitan or Jobber memberships
Buy or build: Already paid for
How you know it worked
Count it in week one, then count the same thing again in week four. If the number did not move, stop spending.
Keep this implementation simple
Use the steps above with the software you already have. Test the workflow on your own phone before adding another product or paying someone to build around it.
Step three · keep going without adding complexity
One at a time. Finish it, test it on real work, then start the next.
Memberships die silently: the status flips to Expired, the visits deactivate, and nobody notices until winter. A renewal sequence at 60, 30 and 7 days out keeps the book intact.
Setup effort: 1 day
March and October gaps are already listed in your recurring-visit screen. Booking those visits into the quiet weeks — not the peak — is scheduling, not selling.
Setup effort: 2 hours
A heat wave multiplies call volume several times over while your techs are already full. Overflow answering with priority rules — no-cooling with a medical or elderly angle books today, a comfort call books the schedule — captures what the busy signal was throwing away.
Setup effort: Half a day
Step four · only once the first three are running
The first point where paying for a build makes sense — once the earlier steps are running.
A replacement is a considered, financed purchase compared across two or three companies. Options on the quote — with the mid tier built to win — lift the ticket without a harder sell, and optional line items are already in the quoting tool.
Setup effort: Half a day
Does this look familiar?
Pitch the plan on every service invoice
Chase renewals before they lapse
Fill the shoulder season from the visit list
Survive the surge week without losing the calls
Quote replacements as good-better-best
Let membership visits schedule themselves
After thirty days
Number one
Write down the current monthly number before you switch anything on. Compare it with the same number after thirty days.
Number two
Count it the same way in week one and week four. Do not change the definition halfway through.
Number three
Use the history inside your existing software to count how often the automation actually ran.
Number four
Ask the person doing the work now. They will know before a dashboard does.
Every other figure here is a typical size. These four are yours.
Reference
All 12 jobs for HVAC & refrigeration, in order of what they return.Open ↓Close ↑Wins work
01
02
03
04
05
Saves hours
06
The recurring-visit list generates from the membership records; the office job is booking, not compiling. Retire the spreadsheet.
07
A tune-up booked in April for May is forgotten by May. Automatic confirmation and day-before reminder texts are included in the plan and off by default.
08
Equipment ordered, crane booked, electrical subbed, permit lodged, inspection scheduled, deposit and progress invoices — one job template with every step, instead of the install living in the owner's head.
09
Reminders at 7, 14 and 30 days, with commercial and builder accounts excluded because those need a phone call.
10
Serial and model captured by photo at the install, filed to the job, lodged with the manufacturer — instead of a warranty claim two years later discovering nobody registered the unit.
11
Gas bought, gas used, gas recovered, per job, from the tech's phone — the licence recordkeeping that otherwise happens in a shoebox before the audit.
12
The first frozen morning reorders every schedule in town. A draft reshuffle with membership visits pushed and emergencies slotted, that a person still approves.
The stack
| Tool | What it is for | Price | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job managementServiceTitan | Memberships, dispatch, pricebook and reporting for serious service-and-install businesses. | On quote ↗ | The memberships module is the best in the industry — but the platform only makes sense past roughly fifteen staff. If you are already on it, configure Memberships before spending a dollar elsewhere on this page. |
| Job managementJobber | Quotes, scheduling, invoicing and automations for a small field team. | $29/mo ↗ | The automations that matter here are plan-gated — quote follow-ups need Connect and up — so check which plan you are actually on before assuming you have them. |
| Job managementServiceM8 | The flat-priced alternative, with recurring jobs on every plan. | $29–79/mo flat ↗ | Strong value for small crews, but it is iOS-first — Android techs get a cut-down Lite app — and its membership tooling is thinner than ServiceTitan's. Fine for maintenance schedules, weak for plan selling. |
| AI answeringRosie | Overflow answering during surge weeks, with details captured and straightforward jobs booked. | $49/mo ↗ | Buy it for the season, not the year — the whole point in HVAC is surge overflow. Check whether your phone system already includes an answering layer before adding a second bill. |
| Phone & messagingOpenPhone | A business number with a shared inbox so the surge doesn't live on one person's mobile. | $19/user ↗ | Useful plumbing, literally and figuratively — but in HVAC the membership settings above return more per dollar than any phone tool. Do those first. |
| AccountingXero | Invoicing, reconciliation, and the overdue-payment reminders nobody enables. | $35/mo ↗ | You almost certainly have this already. The reminders are free and off by default — twenty minutes in settings, no new spend. |
| AutomationMake.com | Connecting the membership records to renewal messages and warranty lodgement without code. | $9/mo ↗ | The engine behind the renewal and warranty rows. Powerful, and very easy to build something fragile that breaks quietly — keep the scenarios few and boring. |
| AssistantChatGPT Team | Answering the questions your team asks all day — plan inclusions, service areas, brand-by-brand quirks — from your own documents. | $25/user ↗ | Only earns its keep after you feed it your real plan terms and prices. Out of the box it will not move a single number in your business. |
Do not bother
The seats you rent for the peak sit idle for eight months. Route overflow-only during surge weeks and let the office answer the rest of the year.
The plan terms — what is included, what is excluded, what priority response means — are your margin and your legal exposure. Pay a lawyer once for a template; do not generate fresh wording per customer.
A 2–20 person shop already knows when summer is. The constraint is technicians, not insight — the dashboard money belongs in the renewal list and the recruiting ad.
Sources
Nearby trades
Common problems this covers
How every other industry fixes the same thing, and what they pay.
Price rechecks only. Leave any time.
Do it yourself
Use the official links, do one card at a time, and count the result after thirty days.
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