Free HVAC Bid Template: Streamline Your Process from Bidding through to Invoicing

A well-designed HVAC bid template has a number of benefits. It allows HVAC businesses to provide customers with professional looking estimates, and it ensures their staff uses a consistent format when creating bids.

We’ve created a free template that you can customize and use in your HVAC business. Below we’ll show you what it looks like, and explain how to download and use it. 

But keep in mind that a PDF template isn’t a magic bullet. A simple computer file won’t solve the common challenges that you’re likely facing in the bidding process (and across your HVAC business):

• Manual data entry: Even with a standard proposal form, you or someone on your team will need to manually type information into a new version of the PDF file every time you create a new bid — even for repeat customers. That can be particularly challenging for techs in the field, because PDFs can be difficult to fill out on a phone or tablet. 

• Pricebook integration: A PDF won’t seamlessly connect to your pricebook to ensure accurate pricing. Your techs or office staff will still need to look up pricing info and manually calculate bid totals. This leaves room for costly errors.

• Job lifecycle: When a bid is accepted, your office staff will need to use the information in the PDF to populate a new work order. They’ll also need to copy that same information into your dispatch and scheduling tools. Then they’ll have to compile everything into an invoice when the job is complete. That’s a lot of work — and a lot of opportunities for even the most careful employees to make mistakes.

• Follow-up: A simple PDF file won’t organize and track all your open sales proposals, and it won’t remind your team to follow up on them. Your team will still need to develop and follow a process to ensure that every bid is pursued until the job is won or lost.

A PDF template isn’t enough to overcome the serious problems that many HVAC service providers face day after day, week after week. To truly address these issues, businesses are looking to HVAC software that fully integrates and shares data across all aspects of their business. 

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In this post, we’ll walk you through exactly how ServiceTitan does this. We’ll explain how our software helps:

• Ensure bid accuracy 

• Integrate pricebook data

• Share essential information across your business

• Create and present bids

• Follow up on open bids

ServiceTitan’s HVAC software helps improve efficiency and increase your profits by improving bid processes and information sharing across your business. Want to see how you can use it for your business? Schedule a call for a free product tour.

How to Download and Use Our HVAC Bid Template

Our HVAC bid template consists of 3 pages:

1. HVAC Bidding Proposal: A customer facing proposal with Good Better Best options to deliver to prospects.

2. Billing/Payment Information: A sheet to collect all necessary billing and payment information from your customers.

3. HVAC Job Costing: A sheet to list pricing and costs of material and labor. 

Then open the blank template and customize it with your company name, logo, contact information, address, and phone number. Save this file to your computer as your personalized HVAC bid template.

When you need to prepare a new bid, open the template file, rename it, and save it as a new bid. Enter the client’s information, along with line items of the HVAC services you will provide with each of the Good Better Best options.

Then you can enter and collect billing information from the customer on page 2:

Page 3 can be leveraged internally by your field and office staff as a price list to reference while creating the proposal. You can list the costs for labor, materials, and other miscellaneous costs associated with the job (eg. warranty information). 

It’s broken down by sell price, job actual, and final profitability for each option:

When you’ve added in all the information, save the file and attach it to an email or print it for delivery to your customer. You’ll also want to save the PDF where you can reference it later, because you’ll need the information in it to fill out work orders, invoices, and other paperwork associated with the job.

But there’s a better, faster way to prepare bids! In the next section, we’ll expand on the problems that can arise when you rely on a simple PDF template, and we’ll explain how our comprehensive software solution is built to solve them.

How ServiceTitan HVAC Software Streamlines and Integrates Bidding with the Rest of Your Business

If you’re having trouble managing bids, it’s likely because your process is cumbersome and outdated. Here are the top five stumbling blocks to successful HVAC bidding, an explanation of the root causes, and a detailed description of ServiceTitan’s solution.

1. Manually Entering Customer Data 

Data entry errors are common and costly, and even the most conscientious employees make mistakes. When your team is entering hundreds or even thousands of addresses, phone numbers, and other details into bids and other forms every year, accidents are bound to happen. 

Digits get flipped in an address — or worse, in the estimated amount due — and your bottom line takes a hit due to techs showing up at the wrong house or due to the estimated amount being lower than what it costs you to do the job. A simple PDF won’t fix that.

ServiceTitan’s software, on the other hand, allows customers to enter their own information with features like our Google Local Services Ads Integration. 

As you’ll see below, the software also pulls from your live pricebook and automatically sums up totals. These features greatly reduce the chance of errors. 

For instance, in the example above, a customer needing an air conditioner repair found an HVAC company on Google Local Services and was able to schedule her own appointment by entering her name, address, and other information. ServiceTitan automatically imported this information into the HVAC company’s system for follow-up.

If a prospect comes in via phone or email, your team only needs to enter the data once and the ServiceTitan software automatically populates all the documents related to the job. 

This saves time and helps ensure accuracy.  

Here you can see how ServiceTitan’s records are set up to facilitate fast and accurate data entry. Each of the fields is searchable, allowing your team to quickly access client records and generate reports. 

2. Integrating Pricebook Data with Bids

Looking up pricing is time-consuming, and manually calculating pricing introduces more opportunities for costly errors. You have to honor the bid amount, even if your team accidentally gets it wrong.

ServiceTitan eliminates frustration and ensures accuracy by providing pricebook functionality that’s accessible to all your authorized employees, always up-to-date, and automatically integrated with the project proposal and all other records associated with every HVAC job. 

The screenshot above shows how you can start building your pricebook by browsing manufacturers’ HVAC systems and associated products.

This real-time integration helps protect your business from errors in math or data entry. It also saves time and prevents the frustration that arises when techs and office staff have to repeatedly look up information. 

3. HVAC Job Lifecycle

Accurate and complete documentation is essential, but a PDF is just a computer file. To keep track of jobs from start to finish, your team will still need to manually enter and re-enter data like pricing information, labor hours, HVAC maintenance agreement terms, and customer data into Microsoft Word, Excel, Google Docs, or other systems. 

Not only is that time-consuming, but there’s always the risk of making mistakes.

ServiceTitan integrates with all aspects of your business and automatically populates fields that are common to all of a job’s processes and documentation: 

• Bids

• Work orders

• Dispatch instructions

• Calendars

• Timesheets

• Invoices 

• Customer receipts

Records are easy to find because any authorized member of your team can search for a record using the property owner’s name, a tenant’s name, the property address, or any other field.

In this sample customer record, you can see the client’s name, address, associated work orders, appointments, and timesheets. 

Storing and sharing data across business functions saves time and frustration and frees up your staff to work on revenue-generating tasks.

4. HVAC Bid Creation and Presentation

Even a professionally designed PDF bid form doesn’t offer the streamlined and instantaneous experience that modern customers appreciate. 

A bid that needs to be filled out and then printed or emailed doesn’t make a great impression, especially if the tech preparing the bid is standing at the customer’s front door. 

In contrast, ServiceTitan makes this process quick and easy by allowing you to create templates that your team can call up on their tablets and show to clients.

You can enter photos, product information, pricing, and service descriptions that will automatically be used for populating any bid or proposal that offers those particular items or services. 

This saves your team from having to manually look up and enter that information on every bid. After a template is saved in the system, all your team will need to do is call it up, fill in the details, and present it to the client. 

The result? ServiceTitan helps your office staff or your techs in the field effortlessly increase sales by allowing them to quickly select from pre-filled and professionally designed HVAC bid proposal templates. 

Techs can use their tablets or laptops to show clients “Good-Better-Best” options, photos of products (from new air conditioning units to individual parts), and pre-filled fields that help them understand exactly what they can expect. Clients can instantly select their desired option, authorize the work, and even schedule an appointment to have the work done.

Above is a sample proposal that shows the “Good Better Best” concept in presentation mode. 

The tech has diagnosed the problem and selected three options for repairing it. The client can view the products and services associated with each option, along with pricing and financing terms. 

After the client makes their selection and approves the scope of work, the data is instantly saved and entered into the software’s scheduling, dispatching, and invoicing functions. 

The process reflects a professional and modern approach that impresses clients. It also protects you and your business with thorough, accurate documentation.

5. Following up on Open HVAC Bids

This is one of the most common reasons that HVAC contractors switch to ServiceTitan: they’re tired of losing business due to lack of follow-up.  

ServiceTitan automatically adds open bids to your office staff’s daily to-do list, ensuring that potential clients know you’re still interested in helping them out. 

No more stacks of printed-out PDFs or file folders marked “follow up.” The ServiceTitan system seamlessly integrates follow-up into your team’s workflow to ensure that every bid is pursued until you close the sale or get an outright refusal.

Conclusion: Integrated Software to Manage HVAC Bids and Invoicing

A printable PDF of an HVAC proposal template is certainly better than nothing, but it isn’t going to fix problems with disorganization, presentation, and the other challenges we’ve outlined above. To truly streamline tasks, close more sales, and ultimately improve profitability, you need a comprehensive software solution like ServiceTitan. 

Want to take the first step toward streamlining your bidding and invoicing process? Contact us to schedule a free ServiceTitan demo!