HVAC software for install, service and maintenance work

The HVAC business's real workload

An air-con or refrigeration business is a scheduling and parts problem wrapped in a customer-service problem. Installs are quoted jobs with equipment and labour. Service calls are urgent and unpredictable — a cool room down is money bleeding by the hour. And maintenance agreements mean recurring visits to the same sites and units, with a history that has to be there when the next tech turns up. The admin that ties it together — quotes, schedules, parts, service history, invoices — is exactly what My Apprentice is built to hold in one place.

Configure the app to your mix of work

An HVAC business that's mostly split-system installs works very differently from one running commercial refrigeration maintenance contracts. My Apprentice lets you switch whole features on and off from settings — inventory, supplier invoices, scheduling, timesheets, the client portal, messaging, evidence photos — so the app fits your mix. Every feature is available to every business, so you're never blocked from a capability because it lives on a pricier plan. Turn on recurring scheduling and inventory if maintenance and parts dominate your week; keep it lean if you mostly do installs.

Quoting installs: equipment, labour, margin

HVAC install quotes hinge on getting the equipment and labour right and protecting your margin on both. My Apprentice builds quotes from your line items and materials — the unit, brackets, pipe, gas, labour — and shows the catalogue cost behind each line as you go, so you quote profitably. The customer gets a professional quote and a portal link to accept it, and acceptance turns it into a job in one click. The sent quote is stored immutably, so there's a clear record of exactly what was agreed, equipment models and all.

Recurring maintenance and scheduling

This is where HVAC software earns its money. My Apprentice supports recurring shifts on a weekly pattern — pick the days and a date range and it generates the whole run of visits in one go, rather than rostering them one by one. For longer service cycles you set up each round's shifts as they come due. You assign the right tech, keep unassigned and upcoming work visible, and field staff see only their own jobs — so a tech turns up with the right site and job in front of them. Reactive service calls slot into the same diary, so the urgent cool-room callout and the planned filter-change live together.

Two honest limitations worth naming for HVAC specifically: My Apprentice does not have a dedicated asset register that tracks each individual unit's full service history as a first-class object, and it has no GPS tracking of vehicles. It keeps job history against the client and job records, and photos and notes against each visit, which covers a lot of maintenance needs — but if per-asset servicing schedules with barcode-scanned asset histories are core to your operation, a platform built around asset management will do more there.

Parts and stock: from the supplier to the invoice

HVAC is parts-heavy — compressors, gas, filters, controllers — and parts are where install and service margins slip. My Apprentice keeps a materials library, tracks stock as a ledger, and writes parts used back to stock automatically when a job completes, so what went into the job comes off your stock and onto the invoice. When the refrigeration or air-con wholesaler's account arrives, built-in AI supplier-invoice scanning reads it, matches lines to your suppliers and materials, flags uncertainties, and updates stock or costs the job — learning your suppliers' codes over time. Included at every seat, it's a recurring chunk of admin off your plate.

The edges again: no purchase-order generation and no live wholesaler-catalogue feeds, so procurement-heavy commercial operations will want more. For most HVAC service-and-install businesses, the library plus AI scanning is plenty.

Compliance and documentation

Refrigeration and air-con work carries obligations — refrigerant handling under the ARC licensing scheme, and safety paperwork on commercial sites. My Apprentice is honest here: it's not a licensing, logbook or SWMS module and doesn't replace those obligations. What it gives you is the evidence trail — photos of the installed or serviced equipment attached to each job and visit, notes, and a full audit trail, plus immutable quote and invoice records — which you can share with the client through the portal. If formal SWMS and compliance-document management are central, a compliance-focused platform will do more; My Apprentice keeps clean, shareable documentation on every job.

Customer communication: the portal

HVAC customers — building managers, business owners, homeowners — want to know a tech is coming and what was done. The no-login client portal gives each customer a secure link to track the job, approve the quote, view the invoice, message you and — once you've connected Stripe — pay by card. For commercial maintenance clients especially, being able to see the visit and its photos without ringing you is a real service upgrade.

Timesheets and getting paid

Techs' hours across installs, callouts and maintenance flow into weekly timesheets via clock in/out, ready for approval and payroll export. And because invoices are built from the job — equipment, parts, labour and any variations already attached — billing is send-and-track, not rebuild-from-memory. Card payment through the portal and Xero push (with paid/outstanding sync) close the loop.

Where My Apprentice fits an HVAC business — and where it doesn't

It fits HVAC and refrigeration businesses like these:

• The sole-trader air-con installer who wants professional quoting and less admin
• The small-to-mid HVAC or refrigeration business (up to around 25 staff) running installs, service and maintenance, who wants scheduling, recurring visits, parts and a client portal in one configurable app
• Any HVAC business that wants the whole workflow on a tech's phone

It's less of a fit if your business is built around any of the following — those point to heavier or more specialised platforms:

• A formal per-unit asset register with barcode-scanned servicing histories
• Large commercial projects with progress billing
• MYOB

My Apprentice's sweet spot is the HVAC service-and-install business that wants one adaptable, mobile-first system.

A real-world example

A refrigeration business runs maintenance contracts for a handful of cafes and a small cold-storage client, plus install and callout work. Each round of maintenance visits is set up as a block of shifts, each assigned to a tech who arrives with the site, the job and its photo history in front of them. A cafe's display fridge fails mid-week; the callout slots into the same diary, the tech quotes the compressor replacement on site with margin visible, the owner approves it through the portal, and the parts used are tracked against the job. When the wholesaler's account lands, AI scanning reconciles the parts to stock and jobs. Jobs are completed, invoices go out from them, and the commercial clients pay by card through the portal while watching the service photos. The techs' hours flow to payroll. The whole operation ran from phones in the field.

Pricing for HVAC businesses

My Apprentice is per seat in Australian dollars, dropping as you grow: $39 per seat per month for a sole trader, dropping to $27 per seat for larger teams, with 20% off annual billing. Your first 2 months are free, there's no setup fee and no lock-in contract. Every feature is included — switch on what you use — so an installer working solo and a maintenance business with a crew get the same toolbox, priced lower per head as the team grows. See the full pricing page for the current per-seat rates.

FAQ

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