Commercial work changes the shape of everything the software holds. The customer is a property manager or a facilities director who is not the person on site; the site carries a list of rooftop units, split systems and exhaust fans rather than one furnace; the work is governed by a service contract with a scope and a schedule; the quote is a proposal with a scope of work; and the invoice needs a purchase order number or it does not get paid. Commercial HVAC software is the category that carries those shapes, and this page is for the owner or service manager of a US HVAC contracting business that does commercial work asking what commercial HVAC service software has to do differently.
The asset list is the site
A commercial site is defined by its equipment list: every unit tagged, with location on the roof or in the mechanical room, model, serial, tonnage, refrigerant, filter sizes and belt sizes. Commercial HVAC software has to let a technician find RTU-7 on a plan and record its readings against it, and has to produce the asset list as a document for the property manager. Judge any product on whether the asset list exists as a first-class object or as notes on a customer.
The contract governs the visits
A commercial maintenance contract specifies quarterly or monthly visits, the tasks per visit per unit type, the response time for breakdowns, and what is included and excluded. The software should hold that scope, generate the visits, produce the per-unit checklist for each, and report completion to the customer. A residential agreement engine that assumes two visits a year on one unit cannot do this.
Proposals, purchase orders and the bill
Commercial quotes are proposals with a scope of work, an exclusions list and terms, often against a bid. Commercial invoices need the customer's PO number, the site, and sometimes progress billing on larger jobs. Commercial HVAC service software should carry the PO from proposal to invoice without retyping it, because a missing PO is a thirty-day payment delay.
Who logs in, and what it costs
Commercial crews are often smaller than residential service crews, but the office needs more from the reporting: contract profitability by site is the figure that matters. Jobber lists Core at $49 per month for one user and $29 per month for each additional user; Housecall Pro lists Basic at $79 per month for one user. CoilDesk Pro is $29 per month for the whole crew; the scope of the commercial features is what to test, not the price.
The documents, free, before the platform
The service agreement template and the maintenance checklist on this site produce a per-unit checklist and a contract document from your own scope and price, free and without an account. Build one commercial site's paperwork with them first; then ask each vendor to reproduce it for the same site.
Questions people ask about commercial hvac software
Can residential HVAC software handle commercial work?
Sometimes, up to a point: one or two units per site and a simple agreement. It breaks when a site has twenty tagged assets and a contract with per-unit tasks and a PO requirement.
What report does a property manager want from commercial HVAC service software?
Completion by visit by unit, with readings and deficiencies noted, and a recommended repairs list with prices. If the software can produce that after each visit without the office assembling it, the contract renews itself.
How do we bill a commercial contract?
Usually monthly or quarterly in advance against the contract, with repairs billed separately against a PO. The software should keep the two streams apart on the same customer.