Maybe you’ve run your company with pen and paper for years and see no problems with your revenue. Or perhaps you already use a field service management software.
But you’ve clicked this headline. That means there’s a small part of you that wonders if there is a better solution for you.
Integrating a robust field service management software into your workflow can shift how business gets done. And with cloud-based HVAC software, you can prevent and correct costly errors in data entry, customer records and bookkeeping.
You’ll find that software can help automate routine and mundane tasks. It can even allow field techs to increase productivity in the field.
The best HVAC software can create a hub for your employees and improve customer experience. Let’s discuss the most important software features and how they might help your HVAC business!
HVAC Dispatching and Scheduling Software Features You Need
There’s no doubt that dispatching and scheduling are two areas that can be improved with a cloud-based software solution.
Your office dispatcher can easily add or change assignments using software. That information is then shared to the cloud so anyone can access it from anywhere with a signal.
Dispatching Tools
Dispatchers and office staff deserve a responsive, easy-to-use dispatch board. One that helps provide a full picture of daily and weekly activity.
A dispatch board should allow you to easily reference every tech’s schedule and whereabouts at once. This helps dispatchers quickly locate and assign the nearest and best available technician for each job.
With an easy-to-reference dispatch board, your dispatcher is able to schedule and route field technicians more efficiently. This may even result in additional availability (and jobs) for technicians!
Scheduling Made Easy
The good old days of manually tracking vacation and sick time are long gone. Now a digital cloud-based solution can receive and reveal at-a-glance who is in office and who is out each day. It also allows your office manager or dispatcher to easily rearrange schedules when a tech is out or tied up.
Trying to keep things straight on paper can require the full-time attention of multiple people. And you’ll still likely run into problems! Errors happen, we’re all human, and things sometimes fall through the cracks.
The best HVAC software can vastly improve tech scheduling and management. It can help simplify the routine notification process for both field techs and members of your staff. So your office manager knows where everyone is and where they need to be. Plus, techs will receive scheduling notifications right to their smart phone or tablet.
This keeps lines from getting crossed. Every day, you can make sure your staff is aware of the whole team’s availability and their whereabouts.
How the best HVAC Software Improves Accounting and Office Operations
Accounting and Finance
The best HVAC software can help your finance department immensely.
When you leverage the benefits of cloud-based software, everyone can work on the same set of files and see updates in real time. This helps keep your team on the same page with the company’s vital financial information. Anyone who has accidentally updated an old version of an important file knows this is a huge win!
Online banking software integration also saves mountains of time. Remember when you had to go to the bank to deposit each check? Good HVAC operations software helps seamlessly integrate online banking transactions into your daily finance workflow.
Plus, automating your accounting will help you catch the occasional error that might’ve been missed when balancing books on paper.
QuickBooks Instant Sync
Keep your staff current on all transactions across your entire business. With QuickBooks instant sync, you won’t have to wait until the end of the day to see up-to-date information!
“FieldEdge is a Platinum partner that provides real-time data sync with QuickBooks so you never lose data because of a time delay,” writes TechnologyAdvice.com.
Click here to read more on Why Your Field Software Needs QuickBooks Integration.
- Every transaction from the office and out in the field flows directly into QuickBooks.
- Save yourself the burden of double-entry, and catch costly errors faster.
- Save your staff up to 20 hours each week on data entry duties!
Did you know FieldEdge wrote the manual on integrating QuickBooks with field service management software? Book a demo to see our real-time QuickBooks sync in action!
Go Paperless with Digital Paperwork Storage
The University of Southern Indiana reports that “approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.”
Free up your office space, ditch those heavy filing cabinets and give your building’s foundation a break! Storing your digital paperwork in the cloud keeps things light and airy in your workplace.
Digitizing your data-entry workflow from start to finish can help smooth out the creation, storage, searchability and recovery of all your important documents. A good HVAC software can help with this!
Upload and organize work orders, invoices and more into your HVAC software. This allows everybody in your company to easily search for files via their desktop or mobile HVAC app. No more countless hours digging through row after row of filing cabinets.
The best HVAC Software can make your operation nearly paperless. By integrating these digital solutions, you can help make both your staff and customers happy! And you might even help the environment, too.
Cloud-Based Inventory Management
Your company is not just offering a service. Quite often, you’re in the HVAC parts business as well.
Say you have a field tech out on the job and they need a specific part. You want them to know right away if they have access to that part that day, or if they will need to order it.
Customers also want that answer immediately. So, you will want to choose a software solution that can help you with an inventory management system. This will allow you to provide that information in a split second.
Labor Estimating
Say goodbye to the manual guessing game of estimating the cost of labor.
Use the best HVAC software to help deliver far more accurate estimates for labor. You can set up your software so that invoices reflect set labor rates and other costs.
This means that you won’t under-quote a job or miss hidden costs!
Decreased Administrative Labor Overhead
When your team leverages digital paperwork, cloud-based storage, and mobile payment systems, your administrative staff can focus on more important things throughout the day. With less time spend on day-to-day operations and paperwork, office managers can spend more time helping to grow your business!
Best HVAC Software Benefits for Technicians
Mobile App
There’s no denying that we’re all moving away from hulking desktop monitors. Instead we’re using our individual smartphones for more of our daily tasks. This is why a mobile app is so important to help grow your business!
Businesses are opting for software that can leverage the benefits of everywhere-accessibility. This is especially valuable for techs in the field. Techs can access all customer information and job history the moment they need it. This allows them to focus on the work at hand, not playing phone tag trying to get the information they need.
With everything available securely in the cloud, you can access data from anywhere with a signal.
Work Orders
Changes to work orders will be pushed directly from the office to the field technician’s device (and vice versa!). This allows for office staff to easily schedule emergency jobs to techs already out in the field.
Techs can also update work orders and notes live while on the job, and office staff can see those updates at any time!
Work order updates via a mobile app also means no more frantic calls to update the tech on the latest information. It all updates in real time in the palm of their hand.
Service Contracts
Software can help you easily sell, store and access your maintenance service contracts.
With this capability, customers can review their service agreements while on site. This means less confusion, fewer calls for clarification, happier customers and less stressed staff!
Your field technicians will also be able to reference those contracts on the go to understand what services they should provide.
Plus, it’ll be easier to sell contracts to customers and get those signatures out in the field, as long as your business is using the best HVAC software!
Need help preparing your HVAC business to sell maintenance plans? Download our FREE Service Agreement Sales Kit to get everything you need to start selling today!
Estimates with Online Price Book
Create estimates with certainty. If your HVAC business follows a flat rate pricing model, a digital pricebook can help.
A price book feature can help your techs know exactly how much every available part will cost the customer. This eliminates any guess work and allows techs to easily add line items to an invoice.
Learn more about price book tools here.
The Best HVAC Software can Collect Payments & Help Complete the Sale
You no longer need to wait for your field tech to return to the office to process payments. Or worse, waiting for a paper invoice to be received in order to process that payment.
Your tech can accept credit card payment right onsite! And the best HVAC software solutions also have a customer portal, allowing customers to review and make payment after the job.
This means you get paid faster. And you also can track if a card is declined, allowing your customer the chance to change payment methods right then and there.
You can avoid playing games of sluggish phone tag just to chase down payment from a declined or late transaction!
Enhance Your Customer Experience with HVAC Business Software
Customer Management & Support
In order to improve the customer experience, make sure your HVAC software has the capability to create customer profiles. This will allow your team to add notes regarding each interaction. They can also store photos of past issues and fixes.
Since the customer information lives in only one place, you can be sure that the information in your software is up to date.
As an added benefit, you can also allow your customers to receive automated text or call alerts when their technician is close by or on the way to their location.
This all leads to a streamlined customer experience and an increase in overall customer satisfaction!
Also consider developing a winning HVAC marketing blog strategy. Download our FREE HVAC Marketing Blog Strategy Guide to help grab your customers’ attention online!
Best Field Service Software for HVAC
We recommend FieldEdge for businesses at all stages of growth.
This includes companies that have already integrated software into their workflows, as well as businesses seeking to adopt their first field service software package.
Let’s take a look at some of the features that make FieldEdge one of the best HVAC software options on the market!
Superior Customer Support
We understand how many questions can spring up when learning new software. That’s why we provide you with a dedicated point person to help you transition to FieldEdge.
You will work directly with individuals on our implementation and support teams that will be available to you at any time. You can reach out to these team members with questions during or after your FieldEdge transition.
Extensive Software App Integrations
FieldEdge is a robust field management platform, and with additional app integrations, you can take it even further! You can manage incoming customer reviews, and boost your accounting productivity QuickBooks. Also look for integrations to help with marketing, GPS tracking, point of sale payments, interaction management, and more!
See how software and app integrations can work for you!
“There’s also a lot of customization potential in this software, which is ideal for larger firms who want a software option that will fit them like a glove,” writes The Motley Fool about FieldEdge.
Multi-Option Quoting
Customers love to feel empowered to choose. Offering customers good, better, best options on a quote can help them make the choice that fits them best.
Plus, multi-option quoting can help you maximize your revenues by including additional service options, bringing more revenue to your company.
Online Training Academy
Learning a new software interface can feel daunting. That’s why we’ve created step-by-step tutorials with videos and visuals of how to navigate and properly use every part of FieldEdge. We also provide you with industry-specific resources to help grow your company!
We call this resource FieldEdge Academy, and you can earn badges and track your progress through bite-sized lessons!
The Best HVAC Software Pricing
When using Software as a Service packages, or SaaS, you’ll have cloud-based access to your entire work ecosystem both at the office and out in the field. Generally, SaaS solutions have a monthly fee per user/device.
The price you’ll end up paying often depends on the amount of users that will be accessing the HVAC software.
If you’ve only got a few field technicians and a sole dispatcher, you may find yourself paying less per month. If you have a full fleet of service vans out in the field seven days a week, and a busy office staff operation, expect the cost to be higher.
It’s important to book a consultation with a software specialist to discuss your company’s unique needs!
Conclusion: The Best HVAC Software
In the end, the best HVAC software will help you complete more jobs faster. And you’ll be able to streamline all aspects of your operation.
Your staff will be able to dispatch the right tech to the right job faster than ever before. And you’ll complete payment transactions in the blink of an eye with a customer portal and QuickBooks integration.
Your technicians and office staff will become more efficient, and your customers will notice a more streamlined experience!
A cloud-based HVAC software solution is the super power your business needs. Still not convinced?
Book a demo with FieldEdge to see a powerful HVAC tool in action!
