HVAC company operations audit Busy all season. Nobody can say what’s left over. We find where the money leaks.

Between the first ring and the margin the shop keeps, every dollar crosses six hand-offs. Each one slows down the same way: when no one owns the next step, the step waits. And for each one, the shop already keeps a record:

• Inquiry → Quote: the call log set against booked jobs for the same hours, and tech-generated leads with no sales appointment behind them.

• Quote → Contract: Open estimates on opportunities not yet Won, with Number of Follow Ups at zero and a blank Follow Up Date, in ServiceTitan’s Opportunity and Estimate Follow Up report (one line per estimate, so good-better-best options share one Opportunity Number). In other field-service software, it is the list of estimates or quotes still waiting on an answer.

• Contract → Delivery: proposal line items set against the job’s materials and distributor purchase orders. On ServiceChannel work orders, an invoice has to be within the agreed not-to-exceed amount to be approved, and customers may refuse invoices for unapproved work.

• Delivery → Invoice: jobs marked Completed whose invoice has not yet gone out to the customer, and the days from completion to the invoice being sent, job by job.

• Invoice → Payment: A/R aging split by residential, financed and commercial, and the expiring-memberships follow-up list.

• Payment → Margin: recall jobs linked to their original job, second trips per install, and per-job margin against QuickBooks.

The Revenue Review reads all six and prices each one in monthly dollars. The free check at the top of this page starts with the estimates, because that list can be sorted by dollar value today.

It is one report, from records the shop already has. In ServiceTitan, open Reports → Opportunity and Estimate Follow Up. Set Date Type to Creation Date, from June 1, and Business Unit to the install or replacement units. Each line in that report is one estimate, so a good-better-best presentation shows up as three lines under one Opportunity Number. Keep the lines whose Estimate Status is Open and whose Opportunity Status is not Won or Dismissed, then sort by Estimates Subtotal. In other field-service software, filter the estimate or quote list to the ones still waiting on an answer.

Count three numbers, once per opportunity rather than once per option: how many presentations are still Open, how many show zero follow-ups, and how many have a blank follow-up date. An Open estimate with zero follow-ups and no date has no owner, because its follow-up lives in someone’s memory. A hand-off nobody can see cannot be counted, so making it visible is the first fix.

Then name one person already on staff to own the list: a CSR, a sales coordinator, or an advisor with call time blocked off. Every Monday, that person sorts it by subtotal and gives every line a follow-up date that week. The follow-up cadence itself is in the long answer linked further down. Weigh the $4,500 fee against that count, the shop’s own number, not against any number of ours.

Tools come after the numbers, and only where a leak justifies them. A person still decides every price and every message.

• A follow-up date and owner set automatically on every change-out estimate the day it is presented, for the comfort advisor to work

• A closeout checklist that holds the job until the permit final, startup sheet and photos are attached, then releases the invoice

• A recall tag that ties the second trip to the original job cost

• AI-assisted call summaries from the phone system into the booking record, checked by the CSR before the call is closed

We do not promise a result. These are the measures the findings are written in, so the shop can track them after the Review.

• Change-out estimates with a follow-up date, and the close rate on them

• Days from job completion to invoice

• Recalls as a share of completed repair calls, with their truck hours

• Unanswered or abandoned calls at peak, and the share called back the same day

• Declined membership renewals reached before lapse

• In 2022 the Census Bureau counted 107,004 plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors with paid employees in the US, and 39,283 of them had annual receipts of $1 million or more. The category combines HVAC with plumbing, so it gives context only.

  Source: US Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses 2022, receipts-size table, NAICS 238220

• Since January 1, 2025, a new field-assembled residential or light-commercial air-conditioning or heat-pump system (mini-splits, unitary systems) may not be installed if it uses a refrigerant with a global-warming potential of 700 or more. Systems whose specified components were all made or imported before that date have no installation compliance date, variable-refrigerant-flow systems follow later dates, and components used to repair existing systems are not covered.

  Source: US Environmental Protection Agency, “Technology Transitions HFC Restrictions by Sector” (last updated August 28, 2026); 40 CFR 84.54(c)(1)

• In a study of 1.25 million sales leads, firms that tried to reach a prospect within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as firms that tried even an hour later. The study covers online leads across industries, not HVAC calls alone.

  Source: Oldroyd, McElheran & Elkington, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads,” Harvard Business Review, March 2011

None of these figures describes any one shop. The Census count sizes the field. The EPA rule is a reason to re-check the equipment on an Open estimate against the refrigerant rules before the follow-up call. The HBR study is about web leads, not HVAC calls. The Review counts the shop’s own records.

• Trade Partner Guide · ServiceChannel, 2026

• Opportunity and Estimate Follow Up report · ServiceTitan Help Center, 2026