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For heating and air: the proposal, the system and the check-up that comes back

A house with no cooling in July, a furnace that will not light in January, a system to replace, and the check-up before each season: heating and air conditioning is service calls, replacements and visits that repeat. TailGateBid puts the systems side by side on one proposal for your customer to choose from on their phone, keeps the repeat visits on the schedule, and can send the invoice for each one.

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The work

The federal handbook of occupations describes the trade as work on heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration systems that control the temperature and air quality in buildings, and among its duties it lists discussing system malfunctions with customers, recommending maintenance and keeping records of work performed (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers). Technicians, it says, travel to each site making service calls, and may be on call for emergencies and work irregular schedules during peak heating and cooling seasons.

Whether a job needs a permit or an inspection, and who may do it, are questions for your state's licensing board and the building department where the job is. This page is about the paper and the schedule, never the work itself.

How a system is sized, and what the proposal names

  1. The size comes from a calculation. ENERGY STAR's checklist for comparing bids tells a homeowner what to expect: to size the new system, the contractor should calculate the home's heating and cooling loads using the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) Manual J or equivalent (ENERGY STAR, Heating & Air Conditioning Installation Bid Comparison Checklist).
  2. A load is a figure in Btu an hour. The ton is the same thing in a bigger unit: NIST lists a ton of refrigeration as 12,000 Btu an hour (National Institute of Standards and Technology, Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: Factors for Units Listed Alphabetically), so a load divided by 12,000 is that load in tons. Which equipment meets it is for your own design and the maker's data.
  3. Then write it the way your customer has been told to expect it. ENERGY STAR's guide says a proposal should list in detail all the work that is being contracted, specify all products by quantity, name, model number and energy ratings, give the payment schedule, and state the scheduled start and completion date (ENERGY STAR, A Guide to Energy-Efficient Heating and Cooling (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, August 2009)).
  4. The hours of the installation are the people times the hours they are on site.

An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate

Say your load calculation for the house comes to 30,000 Btu an hour of cooling. Divided by 12,000, that is 2.5 tons. Say the change-out takes 2 people 8 hours: 16 hours of labor on the quote. And say the customer wants the check-up before each season afterwards. 2 visits a year are one every 182 days.

A replacement, worked through

Sample

Sample Heating & Air Co.

Heat pump system replaced, 2.5 tons

  • Heat pump, outdoor unit, 2.5 tonsQty 1$3,400.00
  • Air handler, matched to the outdoor unitQty 1$2,100.00
  • Installation and start-up, 2 peopleQty 16 hours$1,568.00
  • New refrigerant linesQty 30 feet$420.00
  • Programmable thermostatQty 1$180.00
  • Old equipment removed and hauled awayQty 1 load$250.00
Subtotal
$7,918.00
Sales tax (7.25%)
$411.80
Total
$8,329.80

Deposit due on approval: $832.98

Before you ask for a deposit on work at a home, check what your state or province allows.

Only you see this part. Your customer never does.

What it costs you
$5,220.00
What is left for you
$2,698.00

You keep about $34 of every $100

A sample; every price on it is made up, and it is not a going rate. The equipment is named by what it is and by its size, 2.5 tons; on a real proposal each of those lines also carries its model number and its energy ratings. Installation is by the hour for 2 people, 16 hours, and the refrigerant lines by the foot, so both grow with the job. The three lines ticked as taxed come to $5,680.00, and 7.25% of that is $411.80. A 10% deposit of $832.98 is due on approval, which leaves $7,496.82 for the final invoice. Set against costs that are just as made up, the job keeps $2,698.00 of the $7,918.00: about $34 of every $100.

EPA, Section 608

“EPA regulations (40 CFR Part 82, Subpart F) under Section 608 of the Clean Air Act require that technicians who maintain, service, repair, or dispose of equipment that could release refrigerants into the atmosphere must be certified.”

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Section 608 Technician Certification Requirements,

This is not legal or tax advice. Limits differ by state and province. Check yours.

What TailGateBid does for a heating and air business

  • Three systems, side by side

    When the question is which system, give each candidate its own option on the quote: model and energy ratings in its lines, price at the foot. There is room for 4. They arrive named Good, Better and Best, and one can be flagged as your recommendation. A better thermostat can be an add-on your customer ticks. They choose, and sign on their own phone. How a quote is built and signed.

  • The payment schedule, in two parts

    The guide's payment schedule has a plain form here: a deposit due on approval, set as a percent of the total or as a fixed sum, and the balance on the final invoice. The deposit's invoice is made for you, and what was paid on it comes off the final invoice. No money moves through TailGateBid. You are paid as you are now, and you record each payment on its invoice. Work out a deposit and the tax before you quote.

  • The check-up that comes back

    ENERGY STAR's advice to homeowners is a check-up before each season: the cooling system in the spring, the heating system in the fall (ENERGY STAR, Maintenance Checklist). Make it a job that repeats every so many days, from 1 to 365; 182 days apart is twice a year. Each visit is put on the schedule ahead of its day with the person you chose, your customer gets a reminder by email the day before, and if you tick the box the invoice goes out when the visit is marked complete. It is a job that repeats, not a membership or a service agreement: there is nothing to sign up for and nothing that renews.

  • Who goes, and what was done last time

    A job says who is going, and each person sees their own jobs on their own phone. The EPA's sentence above is one reason that choice matters. Photos taken on a job stay with it, and the history of quotes, jobs and invoices stays with the customer, so the next visit starts from what was done at the last.

  • A draft from the equipment in front of you

    Take a few photos, say in two lines what the customer asked for, and Bid Partner, the AI in TailGateBid, drafts a quote priced from your rates and your price book. With no price set it does not stop: it puts in one of its own, labelled "Typical", for you to replace, and yours is used from then on. Nothing goes to the customer until you press Send.

  • A heating and air website

    The website that comes with your account is hosted at no extra cost. On it: what you install and what you service, said your way; the towns you cover; reviews, once you have approved them; and a request form that takes a photo of the unit. What is on the website.

What it is not

  • Bid Partner is not a safety inspection, and a draft quote is not a load calculation. Gas, combustion, refrigerant and electrical work are yours to judge on site.
  • It makes mistakes. Check every number and every model before you send.
  • TailGateBid sells no memberships and writes no service agreements. There is no financing in it, no dispatch board, no GPS, no inventory, no flat-rate book, no equipment catalog and no price data, and it files for no permit.

The trip, the hour and the paper

A service call starts with a drive. The trip and minimum charge calculator works out what the trip costs you and the smallest job worth taking, and the hour calculator what an hour really costs you once the hours nobody pays for are counted. The job price calculator then shows what a price leaves once the equipment is paid for.

Sent the proposal and heard nothing? The free message writer has a polite note to copy and send from your own phone.

The order of a written estimate, with a finished one beside it, is in the guide to writing one.

This page is about one trade. TailGateBid works the same way for any other, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.

Sources

Related

Write your next replacement as a proposal with three systems on it.

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