What HVAC shops need from invoicing software
A residential repair invoice is the easy part. The tech closes the job on the tablet, the customer signs and taps a card, and the payment is on its way to your bank. Any tool on this page does that. The harder invoices are the ones that pay the bills in an HVAC shop, and they're where software choices start to matter:
- Install deposits and balances. A changeout usually has a deposit at signing and a balance at startup. The software should request the deposit from the signed proposal, then credit it on the final invoice automatically.
- Membership billing. Agreement revenue is either annual payments up front or monthly autopay. Either way, it should bill without anyone in the office remembering to run it, and the member discount should apply to repair invoices on its own.
- Commercial accounts. A restaurant group or property manager wants a PO number on every invoice, net-30 terms and sometimes one statement across several locations.
- Warranty work. The manufacturer covers the part, the customer owes labor and a refrigerant charge, and you're filing a claim with the distributor. The invoice needs to show $0 for the part without losing track of what it cost you.
- Diagnostic fees that convert. Plenty of shops charge a diagnostic fee and waive it if the customer approves the repair. Your invoice should handle that credit cleanly instead of making the tech remember.
Then there's timing. The cheapest invoice to collect is the one paid before the tech backs out of the driveway. Every invoice that goes out by email later becomes an office task: a reminder at 7 days, another at 14, a phone call at 30. Say you run 300 service calls a month and collect 80% on site. That's 60 invoices to chase. Get on-site collection to 95% and it's 15. Look for software that makes payment the default last step on the tech's screen, with tap-to-pay, saved cards and a financing option for big repairs, and that sends reminders on a schedule so nobody has to.
Sales tax is the other wrinkle. Some states tax equipment and labor differently, and the rules on installed systems vary a lot from state to state. Set tax rates per item, not per invoice, and have your accountant confirm the setup once.
How the picks compare
The split here is between tools that are good at getting paid and tools that are good at HVAC.
Jobber is the best at getting paid. Its follow-ups, autopay and client hub reduce the number of invoices sitting past 30 days, and that matters more to a three-truck shop's cash flow than any HVAC-specific feature. Housecall Pro is close behind and better on the HVAC side: invoice lines come from a flat-rate price book, and agreement billing is built in on MAX. If most of your revenue is maintenance agreements and repairs, Housecall Pro probably edges ahead. If it's a mix of repairs and installs billed to homeowners, Jobber's collection tools win.
ServiceTitan earns its place for shops with a dedicated billing person, lots of members and commercial accounts. QuickBooks Online on its own is a stopgap for one truck: fine for invoices, but the tech can't close a job and take payment from a work order, because there isn't one. Workiz suits repair-heavy shops that want call tracking tied to revenue, and since it includes inventory, parts on the invoice can come off stock. Its quote-only pricing makes it harder to compare.
If you run more than one trade, our roundup of invoicing software for contractors covers the options across every trade we review.
What to look for before you sign
- Run a full install through the trial. Proposal, deposit, change order, final invoice with the deposit credited. If any step needs a workaround, you'll do that workaround 200 times a year.
- Check the card rate and payout timing. Ask what standard payouts take and what instant payouts cost. Jobber charges an extra 1% for instant.
- Test autopay for agreements. Store a card on a test customer, set a monthly agreement and confirm it charges without office work.
- Confirm what syncs to QuickBooks. Invoices, payments, deposits, refunds and fees. Deposits and processing fees are where reconciliations go wrong.
- Look at the customer's side. Open an invoice link on your own phone. If it's confusing for you, it's confusing for a 75-year-old homeowner.
- Ask about commercial features. PO fields, net terms and statements by location, if you do any commercial work.
What it costs
Prices are as of October 2026, billed annually. The plan that matters for invoicing on Jobber is Connect, because Core doesn't include automatic follow-ups or saved-card payments.
| Shop size |
Jobber Connect |
Housecall Pro |
QuickBooks Online |
| 1 user |
$99/mo |
Basic $59/mo |
Simple Start $38/mo |
| 5 users |
$149/mo |
Essentials $149/mo |
Plus $140/mo |
| 15 users |
$299/mo |
MAX with 7 extra users, about $544/mo |
Advanced $340/mo |
QuickBooks Online prices are monthly list prices; Intuit runs introductory discounts for the first three months. ServiceTitan and Workiz are quote only.
Card fees will cost more than the software. On $50,000 a month in card payments, Jobber's 2.9% comes to $1,450 before per-transaction fees, and Housecall Pro's starting rate of 2.59% comes to $1,295. Moving half of that volume to ACH at 1% saves several hundred dollars a month on either platform.
