Can I schedule recurring maintenance visits automatically?

In Ratchly, yes — a maintenance agreement generates its own visits on the schedule and reminds you before renewal.

Do customers get told when I move a job?

Ratchly sends the update automatically when the job moves, so the office does not have to remember.

Buyer's guide

Best HVAC scheduling software for small contractors

A schedule board is only worth switching for if it survives the third emergency call of the day. That is the test used here.

Ratchly weekly schedule board with jobs assigned across technicians.

Scheduling software for HVAC lives or dies on rescheduling, not on booking. Booking is easy; the hard part is what happens when a no-heat call lands at 2pm and three jobs have to move without stranding a technician across town.

Judge every option on that scenario. Drag a job to a new slot, watch what the customer receives, and see whether the technician's phone updates without anyone making a call.

The short answer

Choose Ratchly if

Drag-and-drop rescheduling that recalculates the job window server-side
Automatic customer notification when a job moves
Day, week and month views for both office and technician
Maintenance agreement visits generated onto the same board

Choose another platform if

You dispatch across multiple branches
You need capacity planning across dozens of trucks

How we judged these

Rescheduling speed on a real board with real conflicts
Whether the customer is told automatically when a job moves
Technician view: does the phone reflect the change instantly
Recurring and agreement visits generated, not typed
Drive time considered when assigning work

The options, by who they fit

Ratchly

Shops with 1–10 technicians dispatching from a phone or laptop.

Strengths

Drag-and-drop board with live technician locations
Automatic customer messaging on reschedule
Agreement visits appear on the board automatically

Watch out for

HVAC-first — other trades work, but the defaults are HVAC
No enterprise procurement, franchise rollup or call-center modules

Enterprise platforms

Multi-branch dispatch with dedicated dispatchers.

Strengths

Capacity planning
Call-center integration

Watch out for

Overhead a small shop rarely recovers

General field-service tools

Mixed-trade teams.

Strengths

Solid calendars
Familiar to many crews

Watch out for

HVAC agreement scheduling often manual

Questions contractors ask

Can I schedule recurring maintenance visits automatically?: In Ratchly, yes — a maintenance agreement generates its own visits on the schedule and reminds you before renewal.
Do customers get told when I move a job?: Ratchly sends the update automatically when the job moves, so the office does not have to remember.

Keep comparing

Go deeper on the product

Test it on one real week

Load your customers, put this week's jobs on the board, and see how long it takes to go from arrival to a paid invoice. That comparison beats any table.