Every HVAC contractor has a price book, even if it lives in the lead technician's head. Writing it down is what makes prices consistent across trucks and defensible to customers, and building it from your own rate is what makes it profitable. This page is for the owner of a US HVAC contracting business asking how the HVAC price book template is structured, what belongs in the price list, and what a downloaded HVAC pricing guide PDF or a HVAC pricing guide for contractors can and cannot give you. The labor rate calculator on this site produces the rate the book is built from, and the pricing calculator works install prices the same way.
The rate comes first, and it is yours
A price book is a list of tasks multiplied by a billing rate plus parts. If the rate is wrong, every page is wrong. Work the rate from your technician wage with its burden, your monthly overhead divided by the billable hours you actually sell, and the net profit you intend to make. Any HVAC pricing guide for contractors that hands you a rate is handing you an average of other businesses' costs.
The HVAC price book template's structure
Group tasks by system and component: cooling, heating, air handling, controls, refrigerant, electrical, ductwork, indoor air quality. Within each group, one line per task with the task time, the parts list, and the price at each option tier. Add a diagnostic section, a maintenance section priced as agreement visits, and an install section that points to the pricing calculator rather than trying to flat rate a replacement.
The HVAC price list of parts, with a sliding markup
Parts are listed at your supplier cost with a markup that slides: cheap parts marked up more, expensive parts marked up less, so a contactor and a compressor both carry a fair margin without the compressor price becoming absurd. Review the parts list when suppliers reprice, which is more often than most books are updated.
What a HVAC pricing guide PDF is good for
A downloaded guide is useful for task times you have not measured yourself and for the structure of the groups. It is not useful for prices, because its rate is not yours and its date is not today. Use it as a checklist of tasks to include and replace every number with one from your own rate.
Keeping the book current
Review the billing rate whenever wages, insurance or fuel move and at least twice a year. Review task times when callbacks or technician complaints say they are wrong. Version the book so a disputed price can be traced to the book in force that day. The free tools here produce the rate; the paid product keeps the book on every phone and updates it at once.
Questions people ask about hvac price book
Is an HVAC pricing guide for contractors worth buying, or should we build one?
Build the rate and the markup yourself with the calculators here; borrow task structure and times from a guide if you need a start. Never borrow the prices.
How many tasks should a HVAC price list template have?
Enough to cover the repairs your trucks actually do, which for most residential shops is a few hundred lines. A book with thousands of tasks is one technicians stop searching.
How do we present the price book to customers?
As options, never as a list. The customer sees the three tiers for their repair, not the book. The book is your instrument, not your brochure.