HVAC Contractor Software: Maintenance Agreements, Dispatch and Invoicing for Shops of 1 to 25 People
Pocket Boss is HVAC contractor software for companies of one to 25 people. It runs maintenance agreements with spring and fall tune-up visits, a Day/Week/Month calendar and a live dispatch board, booking requests you approve, reminders and On My Way messages, per-tech job timers, parts by truck, equipment records, estimates and invoices customers pay online, QuickBooks Online sync and mileage, on the web and in the iOS and Android apps.
Plans run from $19.99/month for one user (Solo) to $99.99/month for up to 25 users (Boss). The dispatch board, booking page and QuickBooks start on Essentials; Good/Better/Best estimates on Pro; the AI Receptionist number on Boss. It is not built for commercial multi-site PM contracts, flat-rate catalog licensing or EPA 608 logging; the who this is not for list is below.
The dashboard, invoices and calendar, as they look today
Ridgeline Heating & Air is a seeded demo business. Every name, address and amount in these screenshots is fictional.
Example: one maintenance-agreement customer across a year
An illustrative customer, not a real account. The point is which steps the app does on its own, which ones wait for you, and where the plan boundaries fall.
January
A homeowner with a six-year-old heat pump signs up for your Comfort Plan. The plan is a template you built once on the Service Plans page: a price per billing interval, two included visits a year (a spring A/C tune-up in April and a fall heating tune-up in October), a parts discount and priority scheduling written into the benefits. Enrolling her creates a maintenance agreement for her address with a 12-month term and a renewal date. If she accepts the emailed link and saves a card, the plan bills itself through Stripe; otherwise the agreement is marked manual and you invoice it.
March
The Service Plans page shows one spring visit still needing a slot. You pick the day and time. The app does not put plan visits on the calendar on its own unless you switch on auto-schedule, which drops each member on the first of the visit month at your default time. She gets the email reminder 24 hours and one hour before; a text reminder as well once you switch on the text channel.
April, tune-up day
Your tech taps On My Way on the visit (your template, by email, by text or both, sent once) and starts his job timer. On site he opens the equipment record: make, model, serial, install date, warranty date, refrigerant type, filter size, where the unit sits, and a nameplate photo. He marks the visit complete; the plan already covers it, so there is no invoice.
July, no-cool call
She books from your booking page (Essentials and up). It arrives as a pending request, you approve it, and only then does it land on the calendar and the dispatch board. The tech finds a failed capacitor, pulls the part from your price book onto an estimate, she approves it on the customer portal, and pays the invoice by card from the payment link. With deduct-on-invoice switched on, the capacitor comes off the truck's stock count.
October
Fall heating tune-up, same flow as April. The equipment record now carries two service log entries, two plan visits and the July repair.
December
Thirty days before the renewal date, the nightly sweep moves her agreement to Due on the Renewals tab. Nothing is sent to her automatically; you call or text. If auto-renew is on when the term ends, the agreement rolls into the next year. Separately, if a recorded warranty comes within 30 days of expiring, you get one email about it.
What her record shows in December
- Agreement
- Active, renewal due in 30 days
- Plan visits
- 2 of 2 completed (April, October)
- Equipment
- 1 heat pump with warranty date, refrigerant type and nameplate photo
- Repair invoices
- 1, paid by card in July
- Timed labor
- Hours on both tune-ups and the repair, per tech
- Next contact
- Your renewal call, from the Renewals tab
The slow months between those visits are where the agreement earns its keep. The HVAC seasonal planning article covers filling shoulder-season weeks with plan visits; the HVAC labor rate calculator shows why a month with fewer billable hours costs more per hour.
What an HVAC company runs through the app
Seven groups, each with the plan it starts on. The defaults matter: several of these are switches that are off until you turn them on.
Maintenance agreements and seasonal tune-ups
Every plan, Solo included.
A service plan is a template: a price per interval from monthly to annual, included services with visits per year, benefits text, priority scheduling and auto-renew. Each enrolled customer gets one agreement per property with a 12-month term by default, a renewal date, and either automatic card billing (after the customer saves a card from the emailed acceptance link) or manual invoicing. Visits are anchored to a month; the defaults are a spring A/C tune-up in April and a fall heating tune-up in October, kept as two annual series. Standalone recurring series run weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly or yearly and generate about five weeks ahead. The Renewals tab fills itself 30 days out; the customer message is yours to send.
The calendar and the dispatch board
Calendar on every plan. Dispatch board and employee logins from Essentials.
Day, Week and Month views, with color by visit category (Maintenance, Repair, Installation, Service and so on), an All day row for Anytime visits, and a Reschedule dialog rather than drag-and-drop. The dispatch board is one row per tech on an hour timeline plus a Waiting for a tech lane: drag a visit onto a person to assign it, onto someone else to move it, or back to the lane. It refreshes every 30 seconds, counts On the clock, On the way, Not started and Done, and flags a tech booked twice (it warns; it does not refuse). Pending booking requests stay off the board until you approve them.
Booking requests, reminders and On My Way
Email and text reminders on every plan (50 text segments a month on Solo, 300 on Essentials). Booking page from Essentials.
Your public booking page offers 15-minute slots inside business hours and hides slots that collide with existing visits. Every request waits for your approval; nothing is confirmed without you. Deposits need Stripe connected. Reminders default to 24 hours and one hour before by email, with text as a second channel, a per-visit switch, and an optional confirmation when the visit is booked. On My Way is one button on the visit: it opens your template, sends by email, text or both, once per visit, and stamps the time on the visit and the board. It carries no ETA and no tracking link.
Job timers and crew time
Job timers on every plan. Crew clock-in from Essentials.
Each person on a job has their own clock, so two techs on a change-out can both be timing it. Start, pause and stop from the visit, the Job Timer page or the Jobs Today view; a Quick Timer runs with no job attached. Timed hours land on the invoice under From Time Tracked and feed job labor cost once you set an hourly labor rate. Crew clock-in and clock-out, breaks and overtime rules live on the Workforce page; a location stamp at the punch is opt-in and off by default, and there is no tracking between punches.
Parts, price book and equipment records
Every plan.
Inventory keeps a count per location (each truck, the shop) with transfers between them and low-stock alerts per location. Deduct-on-invoice is a switch: when it is on, invoiced parts come off the stock count, clamped at zero, and a stock problem never blocks an invoice. The price book holds each item's cost, price, unit, labor hours per unit, vendor and SKU, imported from a CSV with column mapping or priced automatically from a cost-band schedule. Equipment records hold make, model, serial, install date, warranty date, refrigerant type, filter size, location on the property, nameplate photos and a service log, and the owner gets one email 30 days before a recorded warranty expires.
Estimates and invoices
Standard estimates and invoices on every plan. Good/better/best and sectioned estimates on Pro.
Estimates pull lines from the price book and go to the customer portal for approval, with an optional drawn signature. On Pro, a replacement estimate can carry Good, Better and Best tiers (the customer picks one in the portal) or sections for phased work. An approved estimate converts to an invoice. Customers pay by card, or by ACH when your Stripe account has it enabled, can add a tip, save a card, pay in part or on a payment plan; Tap to Pay runs through Stripe Terminal. Online payment needs Stripe Connect.
QuickBooks Online, mileage and the AI Receptionist
QuickBooks from Essentials. Mileage on every plan. AI Receptionist number and minutes on Boss.
QuickBooks Online sync is one-way: customers, invoices, payments and project expenses go from Pocket Boss to QuickBooks, create-only, with taxes left to QuickBooks; there is also a one-time pull of your QuickBooks customers. Mileage is logged by hand or imported from a Bouncie vehicle device, valued at the IRS rate for the date driven. The AI Receptionist answers a dedicated local number and files each actionable call as a request with the caller's name, phone, address, service, urgency and scheduling preference; it stores that intake summary, not a transcript. Boss includes the number and 100 minutes a month; other plans can run it on prepaid AI credits with the number billed separately.
One truck, three trucks, ten trucks: what you need and which plan
Seats, not features, usually decide the plan. Count every person who needs a login, including the office.
| Your shop | What you actually need | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| One truck. You answer the phone and do the work. | The calendar, service plans with spring and fall visits, equipment records, estimates and invoices with online payment, the job timer and mileage. No dispatch board: there is nobody to dispatch. | Solo, one user, $19.99/month, with 50 text segments a month. The booking page starts on Essentials. |
| Three trucks. You, two techs, maybe someone in the office. | Logins for the techs, the dispatch board, the booking page with its approval queue, text reminders and On My Way texts, QuickBooks sync, and projects for change-outs that bill in stages. | Essentials, up to 5 users, $29.99/month. |
| Ten trucks. Ten to 25 people, including the office. | Good/better/best replacement estimates, SMS campaigns before tune-up season, Smart Routing for up to 25 stops a day, banking reconciliation, and usually more than ten logins. | Pro for up to 10 users at $49.99/month; Boss for up to 25 users and the AI Receptionist number at $99.99/month. More than 25 users is past the catalog. |
Whatever the size, price the hour before you pick a plan: the HVAC labor rate calculator turns a tech's wage, burden, billable hours and overhead into a selling rate, and the HVAC profit margin calculator checks a whole job against sourced HVACR margin benchmarks.
What each plan adds for an HVAC shop
Prices are the current monthly catalog. The 14-day trial applies to every plan.
| Plan | Monthly / users | What it includes for HVAC work |
|---|---|---|
| Solo | $19.99 One user | Service plans and maintenance agreements, recurring visits, the Day/Week/Month calendar, jobs with several visits and per-person job timers, equipment records, standard estimates with portal approval, invoices with card and ACH, the customer portal, inventory by location, the price book, mileage, reminders and On My Way by email or text, and two-way texting (50 text segments a month). |
| Essentials | $29.99 Up to 5 users | Adds employee logins and the dispatch board, crew clock-in with optional punch-time location stamps, projects and job costing, QuickBooks Online sync, the online booking page and its approval queue, receipts, reports, and a larger text allowance (300 segments a month). |
| Pro | $49.99 Up to 10 users | Adds Good/Better/Best and sectioned estimate templates, Smart Routing up to 25 stops, SMS campaigns (600 segments a month), advanced dashboard analytics, and banking with reconciliation. |
| Boss | $99.99 Up to 25 users | Adds the AI Receptionist on a dedicated local number with 100 minutes a month, 1,500 text segments, and seats for up to 25 users. |
Card and ACH processing, text overages and AI credits are priced separately; the pricing page has the allowances and current terms.
Who this is not for
- Commercial HVAC with multi-site PM contracts. An agreement covers one property. A customer with six locations gets six agreements, with no site roster, no equipment roll-up under one contract and no consolidated invoice across sites.
- Flat-rate price book licensing (Profit Rhino and similar). There is no integration. The price book is yours, built by hand or imported from a CSV, with an optional cost-band markup schedule.
- EPA Section 608 refrigerant tracking. Equipment records hold a refrigerant type; there is no charge, recovery or cylinder log and no compliance report.
- Manual J, S or D load calculations. None.
- Supplier ordering or live stock from Ferguson, Johnstone or similar. Purchase orders are internal records; nothing is sent to a supplier.
- Live technician GPS. A clock-in can stamp a location at the punch, if you turn that on; there are no breadcrumb trails or geofences, and On My Way sends a message, not a tracking link.
- Offline estimating. The iOS and Android apps queue clock punches, breaks, checklist ticks and manual time entries while offline; estimates, invoices and scheduling need a connection.
- Call transcripts. The AI Receptionist keeps a structured intake summary of each call, not the recording or transcript.
Comparing against ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, FieldEdge or Workiz? The best HVAC software guide puts them side by side.
Questions HVAC owners ask
Does Pocket Boss handle HVAC maintenance agreements?
Yes, on every plan including Solo. You build a service plan once (price per billing interval, included visits per year, benefits, priority scheduling, auto-renew), then enroll customers. Each enrollment is an agreement for one property with a 12-month term and a renewal date. Billing is automatic through Stripe when the customer saves a card from the acceptance link, or manual when you invoice it yourself. A nightly sweep moves agreements to Due on the Renewals tab 30 days before renewal; the renewal call or text is yours to make, nothing goes to the customer automatically.
Can it schedule spring and fall tune-ups automatically?
Partly. Each included visit is anchored to a month (April and October by default) and kept as its own annual series, so the spring and fall visits recur every year. By default the Service Plans page counts the plan visits that still need a slot and you choose each date and time, because auto-placing every member on the same day created clashes. If you switch on auto-schedule, visits land on the first of their month at your default time, about five weeks ahead. Standalone recurring series (weekly through yearly) always generate on their own.
Is there a dispatch board for HVAC technicians?
Yes, from Essentials ($29.99/month, up to 5 users). It shows one row per tech on an hour timeline with a Waiting for a tech lane, drag-and-drop to assign, move or unassign, a 30-second refresh, counts for On the clock, On the way, Not started and Done, and a Double-booked warning. It does not show live truck locations; the On the way state comes from the On My Way button.
Do customers get appointment reminders and On My Way texts?
Reminders go out automatically by email 24 hours and one hour before a visit on every plan, with extra timings up to 14 days out and a per-visit switch. Text reminders are on every plan and use plan text segments: 50 a month on Solo, 300 on Essentials. On My Way is a button the tech taps: it sends your template by email, text or both, once per visit, with the customer name and appointment time filled in. It does not include an ETA or a live map link.
Does it track customer equipment, warranties and refrigerant?
Each customer property can hold any number of units with make, model, serial number, install date, warranty date, refrigerant type, filter size, location on the property, nameplate photos and a service log. The owner gets one email when a recorded warranty is within 30 days of expiring. Refrigerant type is a field on the unit, not a Section 608 log: there is no charge or recovery tracking and no compliance report.
Does it sync with QuickBooks Online?
Yes, from Essentials, one way. Customers, invoices, payments and project expenses are created in QuickBooks Online from Pocket Boss; records already in QuickBooks are never overwritten, and tax settings stay in QuickBooks. There is also a one-time import of your QuickBooks customer list into Pocket Boss. Edits made in QuickBooks do not flow back.
Can I offer Good, Better and Best options on a replacement estimate?
On Pro and above ($49.99/month, up to 10 users). A tiered template carries three options with their own lines and photos and a featured tier badge; the customer picks a tier in the portal when approving. Sectioned templates split a job into phases or rooms. Standard single-option estimates, portal approval and the optional drawn signature are on every plan.
How much does HVAC contractor software cost?
Pocket Boss runs from $19.99/month (Solo, one user) to $99.99/month (Boss, up to 25 users), with a 14-day trial on every plan. Service plans, the calendar, estimates, invoices, equipment records, job timers and texting are on every plan; the dispatch board, booking page and QuickBooks start on Essentials ($29.99/month); tiered estimates, Smart Routing and SMS campaigns on Pro ($49.99/month); the AI Receptionist number on Boss. Card and ACH processing are priced separately on the pricing page.
Build one service plan and enroll one customer
That is the test that matters for an HVAC shop. Start the trial, create your tune-up plan with its April and October visits, enroll a real property, and see the renewal and the visits appear where you expect them.
Related: HVAC dispatch software, HVAC maintenance software, HVAC service agreement software, HVAC profit margin calculator, how to set your hourly rate.
Plan names, allowances and prices on this page come from the current catalog (Solo, Essentials, Pro, Boss); the pricing page has the current terms. QuickBooks, Stripe, Bouncie, Profit Rhino, Ferguson, Johnstone, ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, FieldEdge and Workiz are trademarks of their respective owners.