HVAC runs on three very different revenue streams: equipment installs, service and repair calls, and recurring maintenance agreements. Generic bookkeepers treat all three the same and produce financials that are genuinely misleading. Here is how trade-native bookkeeping handles an HVAC business.
An HVAC business has three revenue modes that price, cost, and margin very differently. An equipment replacement is a large-ticket project with condenser, air handler, line set, and installation labor. A service call is time and maybe a capacitor or refrigerant charge. A maintenance agreement is prepaid recurring revenue that has to be deferred and recognized monthly. A generalist drops all of it into "income" and "parts," and your financials stop telling you anything useful.
When a customer pays for a two-visit annual plan up front, that cash is a liability until the visits are performed. Most bookkeepers post it directly to income. That overstates revenue in month one, understates it in the back half of the year, and creates a balance-sheet error your CPA has to unwind. We set up a deferred revenue account and recognize the income as each visit is completed.
We also use Class or Location tracking in QuickBooks to separate install jobs, service calls, and maintenance work so you can see which revenue stream actually carries the business. On the Crew plan and up, that job-level profit view is part of every monthly close.
Prepaid maintenance plans are deferred revenue until the service is performed. Booking the full amount in month one overstates income, hides the liability, and produces financials that your CPA and your bank both have to re-interpret. Proper recognition matches revenue to the month the visit happens.
Each revenue mode has a different gross margin. Install jobs carry heavy equipment cost and subcontractor labor. Service calls are high-margin but volume-dependent. Maintenance agreements are predictable but thin. When they all hit one income account, you cannot see which part of the business is carrying the others.
Equipment rebates from Carrier, Lennox, or Trane are income when received, not a cost reduction. And a warranty callback has real labor cost with no offsetting revenue. Both need their own treatment or your margins read wrong and your CPA starts asking questions you cannot answer quickly.
We set up a deferred revenue liability account in QuickBooks and recognize the income as each visit is performed, not when the cash is collected. That keeps your income statement accurate month to month and your balance sheet clean at year end.
Yes. We use Class or Location tracking so each revenue type carries its own labor, materials, and subcontractor cost. You see profit by job type, not just a company-wide total. That visibility is part of the monthly close on the Crew plan and up.
Condensers, furnaces, air handlers, mini-splits, and coils installed on a job are job materials and flow into cost of goods sold. Gauges, recovery machines, and vacuum pumps are durable tools tracked as tool expense or fixed assets with depreciation. Refrigerant is a tracked consumable logged at the job level.
We collect W-9s, track payments to each sub through the year, and prepare 1099 totals so January is a confirmation rather than a scramble. Full 1099 filing support is included on the Shop plan.
Always. We work inside your own QuickBooks Online subscription. If you ever leave, you keep the file and a clean set of workpapers. No proprietary ledger, no hostage data.
Yes. On the Crew plan and up we sync your field-service tool to QuickBooks so maintenance agreement schedules, deposits, merchant fees, and invoices reconcile instead of drifting apart.
Trade-native categories, job costing, and a CPA-reviewed close by the 15th. You keep your QuickBooks file.