Years ago, Monday mornings were rough for the front office staff at Interstate AC, a commercial HVAC and plumbing shop in Nashville, Tennessee.
That’s when techs dropped off their timesheets from the previous week. Those sheets then had to be entered into software that was so old, CFO Kirsta Holliman joked her “grandmother must have used it.”
This tedious process made it impossible to bill customers in a timely manner. “We were used to working two to three weeks behind,” Holliman said, a lapse that impeded the company’s cash flow.
Looking to modernize its operations, Interstate AC joined ServiceTitan in 2022. Now, the company uses the software to capture and store live data around job costs, profit margins and revenue.
And there’s no longer a need for those paper timesheets. Since ServiceTitan automatically tracks techs’ time, Holliman’s team can calculate job costs and bill customers soon after a job is completed.
“ServiceTitan really helped us to get where we were doing things on a daily basis, versus two and three weeks behind,” Holliman said. “In turn, that increased our revenue significantly.”
The high cost of inefficiency
Before using ServiceTitan, Interstate AC’s front office was so bogged down with manual processes that it wasn't able to support many techs.
That’s no longer the case, said Kitty Dunn, Interstate AC’s integration specialist. By automating tasks with ServiceTitan—like timesheet tracking—the front office is now “able to support a larger base of technicians with either the same amount or fewer employees.”
Now, Interstate AC can focus on hiring for the field, not the front office.
“We've gotten to that point of growth now that we're adding people just because it's necessary,” Dunn said. “Not because our processes are so mundane that we need extra hands.”
Counting on success
“Yes, accountants love Excel spreadsheets,” Holliman said. But she’s pretty happy with ServiceTitan, too. Here’s why:
Keep current: Unsurprisingly, Interstate AC’s old software never released any updates. So Holliman appreciates that ServiceTitan continuously solicits customer feedback and rolls out new features, which “helps with our growth in our business as well,” Holliman said.
Works well with others: Holliman uses several accounting programs in her day-to-day, all of which are integrated with ServiceTitan. Even so, she said, “I’ll catch myself clicking the link and going back to ServiceTitan” when she needs to research some numbers.
Data on the move: Previously, Interstate AC wasn’t able to track gross profit margins for its commercial division. Now, Holliman said it’s as easy as “pulling out your phone (... to see) everything from your budget, down to your actual expenses with real live labor.”
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Accurate data—and peace of mind
Interstate AC recently partnered with a private equity firm, an undertaking that required Holliman to pull a lot of financial data.
“I couldn't have imagined any way of doing it without ServiceTitan,” she said. “ServiceTitan made (it) a less painful process for us by providing accurate and easily accessible data.”
With the partnership finalized, Holliman is now responsible for sending the equity firm specific financial reports every week. To save time, she’s built custom dashboards in ServiceTitan that automatically generate these reports.
And saving time is a good thing for Holliman—professionally and personally.
“I was spending many weekends catching up on the week (because of) all the manual labor that we were doing,” Holliman said. “Now, I'm able to spit that stuff out every day, thanks to the reporting mechanisms inside of ServiceTitan.”
