Templates Guides
HVAC Estimate Template: Close More Deals & Improve Efficiency
HVAC
To win more jobs and boost profitability, contractors need an efficient way to create estimates that present a modern, professional appearance.
Having a professionally designed HVAC estimate template is a good place to start improving your estimating process, and we’re offering our free template PDF for you to download and customize.
This template looks attractive, helps prompt techs to collect all the information needed to complete the job, and looks much nicer than a hand-written estimate.
It’s important for you to know, though, that a blank HVAC estimate template is only a small part of a much bigger picture.
Although this form provides a consistent format, it can’t solve all the other issues involved with estimating jobs that can ultimately eat into your profits.
Do any of these common estimating problems sound familiar?
Errors in pricing or simple arithmetic are cutting into your bottom line.
Techs are spending their valuable time calculating estimates and writing them up when they could be moving on to the next job instead.
Copies of quotes are misplaced, leading to confusion and wasted time.
No one regularly follows up on open estimates, resulting in lost revenue.
To overcome these challenges and provide clients with accurate, timely estimates, a growing number of HVAC contractors are using HVAC estimating software.
They’re finding that the best software solutions streamline the estimating process while integrating with their pricebook and the other relevant areas of their business, like scheduling, invoicing, and maintenance agreements.
Our easy-to-use software system can help you win more jobs, save time, and boost profitability.
» Want to grow your HVAC business? Click here to get a demo.
In this article, we’ll discuss:
Our HVAC software helps increase your profits by improving estimating processes and information sharing across your business. Want to see ServiceTitan in action? Schedule a call for a free product tour.
How to Download and Use Our HVAC Estimate Template
To use our free HVAC quote template, simply download it and save it to your computer.
Then you can open it, customize it, and save it as a new file for each client. Enter each client’s information directly into the PDF and print it for mail delivery or attach the PDF in an email.
Our customizable, printable template features a professional layout with the necessary fields for you, your techs, or your office staff to fill in:
Your contact information (including your company name, address, and phone number).
Job site information including the name, address, and phone number of your client.
A job description section to include any necessary line items (parts to be supplied, labor to be performed, warranty information, etc.).
In addition, there’s a second page for collecting payment information:
As we noted above, using an estimate template like this is a step in the right direction.
But from our experience, HVAC contractors who add a new template to their existing, manual system for estimating often end up dealing with the same issues they had before the template.
In the next section, we’ll take a closer look at why.
4 Key Challenges in the HVAC Estimating Process
An estimate or proposal template like this is a great first step to improving the project estimation process, and it’s better than writing out estimates by hand.
But as we mentioned, the appearance of your estimate is only part of the picture. Simply adding more Microsoft Word docs, Google Docs, or Google Sheets to a complicated patchwork of separate service contract templates, invoice templates, and other tools isn’t an efficient solution.
In fact, we’ve seen HVAC service providers who try to cobble together a workflow using multiple systems often end up struggling with the same challenges they had before.
That’s because problems that arise in the estimation phase aren’t just about the estimates themselves. They tend to reflect issues with time management, information sharing, and the organization of resources throughout your business.
Here’s a closer look at four key challenges:
1. Timing
Timing is tricky. You need to provide quick turnaround on estimates, but you also need those estimates to be accurate.
HVAC contractors who mail or hand-deliver an estimate several days after a home visit run the risk of finding that the job was already awarded to someone else.
Unfortunately, asking techs to write up estimates on the spot presents another set of time management challenges: they’re sitting in the truck looking up prices and parts, instead of moving on to the next job where they could be generating revenue for your business.
2. Presentation
Another disadvantage to asking techs to write up estimates in the truck is the risk of poor presentation. At a time when many consumers expect to conduct transactions online, a hand-written proposal looks less professional. And although asking techs to prepare estimates right away might seem like a time-saver, a hastily prepared estimate can result in errors that cut into your profits.
3. Price Calculation
The only thing worse than losing a job due to overpricing is losing money on a job due to underpricing. Yet it happens all the time. That’s because a tech who is under pressure to quickly calculate an estimate usually isn’t in the best position to look up prices, estimate labor hours and rates, and guess as to when parts will be available.
At the same time, office staff might not have the correct part numbers or other information they need to prepare and calculate an accurate estimate.
4. Organization
Ultimately, it’s all about organization. Estimating HVAC jobs requires many interrelated factors to be considered:
The availability and cost of specific parts.
The availability of technicians to perform the work.
The customer’s desired timeline.
All these factors need to be incorporated into the estimate and then clearly communicated to the customer and to the relevant members of your crew.
As you can see, these are all challenges that a simple template can’t fix. That’s why we developed ServiceTitan’s estimating features to solve them.
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How ServiceTitan HVAC Estimating Software Works
When a potential client requests an HVAC estimate, it’s usually because they’re in an uncomfortable situation: their furnace has malfunctioned in the middle of winter, for instance, or their air conditioning unit isn’t cooling their house. They want relief, and they want their HVAC system fixed quickly.
We believe that creating and presenting an estimate should be a positive experience: after all, your potential clients have a serious problem that you and your crew can solve. They want to pay an HVAC contractor to take care of their problem: they just need to know how much to pay and what they’ll get in return. Although it’s important to provide a rapid estimate, the process of estimating an HVAC job is complex and shouldn’t be rushed.
That’s where ServiceTitan comes in. Here’s how this comprehensive solution helps avoid potential pitfalls and keep your business productive and profitable.
Templates Improve Speed and Accuracy
Templates save time and improve accuracy when building bids because you can take the time to pre-fill detailed information and store it for your techs or office team to easily access later.
You can add equipment, materials, and item groups, and then you can set the system to automatically update when new information is entered later.
To help your clients better understand their options, you can enter product and service descriptions that will seamlessly transfer over to any client presentation that offers those particular items or services. This saves your team from having to manually enter that information on every bid or needing to explain it to each customer.
After a template is saved in the system, all you or your team needs to do is call it up, fill in the details, and finalize the estimate.
Eliminate Errors by Auto-Filling Product Prices Directly from Your Pricebook
Ensure that estimates are always priced accurately while also saving time. When you or someone else enters an update into your pricebook, the new price and part information automatically shows up in estimates and proposals.
Build Progressive or Additive Proposals with Your Estimate Templates
When building your proposals, you can decide whether to ask your clients to select one estimate from a variety of choices (“progressive”), or allow them to add multiple estimates to their job (“additive”).
Then, you can name your options however you’d like. You can type your option names, or choose from a common set of options including variations like:
Basic, Premium, Premium Plus
Essential, Premium, Ultimate
Repair, Replace, Upgrade
Note: You can present however many options you’d like. Many businesses offer three, while many others offer anywhere from four to six.
From there, you or your team can draw from your estimate template library to easily build proposals that reflect a range of options. Your office staff can easily build these from a desktop:
And with our mobile app, your techs can build them just as easily from the field:
Because the software is linked to your live pricebook, the most current prices are automatically calculated and pre-populated in the proposal form.
Present Modern, Professional Estimates and Proposals
Pricing, terms, financing: it’s all right there.
About five minutes after starting an estimate, your techs or office staff will be ready to present it to your client via email, printed document, or the in-person mobile app. The client can see whichever details you choose to show them in your settings, including information about parts, terms, and financing options.
No matter how you present your HVAC bid, customers will be able to e-sign and schedule their job.
Follow Up on Open Estimates
Opportunities to monitor open estimates in ServiceTitan What if a customer doesn’t book a job the same day? You can configure ServiceTitan to remind your team to follow up with clients who have received job estimates but who haven’t booked with your firm yet.
Making sure that your team follows-up with prospective clients helps you land deals that otherwise would have been forgotten.
A Complete Solution for All Aspects of Your HVAC Business
In addition to helping you improve your estimating, ServiceTitan offers a complete system that helps manage and coordinate all aspects of your business.
It helps streamline invoicing, expedite payroll, and manage work orders and dispatching, among many other functions. It even syncs with QuickBooks to ensure that all your business data is in one place. No template or Excel spreadsheet can do all that.
If you’re looking for the best tool to manage your HVAC business, contact us to learn more. Our customer support team is always here to help you learn how to put this powerful tool to work for your business.
Want to see how ServiceTitan works? Schedule a call with us to learn more about how our software can help you streamline processes and grow your business.
