Week 2·9 min read

How to Create an HVAC Service Price Book (Guide + Template)

How small HVAC shops build a standardized service price book — categories, formulas, sample line items, and a rollout plan to speed up dispatch and lift profitability.

Why every small HVAC shop needs a price book

If two techs quote the same repair for two different prices, you don't have a shop — you have two shops. A service price book (sometimes called an HVAC service price list) is the single source of truth every tech, dispatcher, and CSR quotes from. It's the fastest way for a one-to-five-tech shop to lift margin without raising rates and to speed up dispatch because everyone already knows the number.

This guide walks through the exact categories, the math behind each line, and how to roll out a price book without spooking existing customers. If you want the shorter, copy-and-paste version, see the HVAC flat-rate pricing template.

What a price book actually is

A price book is a categorized list of every task your shop performs, each with a fixed customer price built from labor, parts, and margin. It lives in your field software so techs quote from a tablet — not from memory.

A healthy price book has four properties:

  1. Comprehensive — covers the 80–120 tasks that make up 95% of your revenue.
  2. Consistent — same task, same price, every tech, every day.
  3. Current — reviewed quarterly against real parts and labor costs.
  4. Customer-visible — shown and approved before the wrench turns.

The pricing formula

Every line uses the same math:

Flat price = (Labor hours × Loaded labor rate) + (Parts cost × Parts multiplier) + Target margin
  • Loaded labor rate is NOT the tech's wage. It's wage + payroll tax + benefits + vehicle + fuel + insurance + unbilled time. Most healthy residential shops land between $120 and $180/hr.
  • Parts multiplier covers the cost of stocking, warranty, and returns. 2.0× to 3.0× is standard.
  • Target margin is the gross profit dollars you need per hour on the truck.

If you don't know your loaded labor rate yet, start there before you price a single line. Guessing at the top of the funnel wrecks every downstream number.

Categories to include in your HVAC price book

Group tasks so techs can find them in three taps or less on a tablet.

Diagnostic & service calls

  • Standard diagnostic
  • After-hours / weekend diagnostic
  • Second-opinion / no-repair fee

Cooling — electrical & controls

  • Run capacitor
  • Dual capacitor
  • Contactor
  • Hard-start kit
  • Low-voltage wiring repair (per hour, capped)
  • Thermostat — programmable / smart

Cooling — mechanical

  • Condenser fan motor
  • Blower motor (PSC and ECM)
  • Evaporator coil clean (in place)
  • Condenser coil clean
  • TXV replacement
  • Compressor replacement (by tonnage)
  • Refrigerant leak search (dye + UV)
  • Refrigerant recharge (per lb, by refrigerant type)

Heating — gas

  • Hot surface igniter
  • Flame sensor clean & test
  • Inducer motor
  • Gas valve
  • Pressure switch
  • Heat exchanger inspection

Heating — heat pump & electric

  • Reversing valve solenoid
  • Defrost board
  • Sequencer / heat strip
  • Aux heat element

Drainage & condensate

  • Drain line clear & flush
  • Condensate pump replacement
  • Float switch install

Maintenance & plans

  • AC tune-up
  • Furnace tune-up
  • Dual-system maintenance plan
  • Priority-service upgrade

Installations & accessories

  • Media filter cabinet
  • UV light install
  • Whole-home humidifier
  • Ductless mini-split head (per zone)

Aim for 80–120 lines total. Anything rarer than that goes on a "custom quote" workflow — don't bloat the book chasing edge cases.

Tiered pricing: good, better, best

For any repair over roughly $500, present three options:

  • Good — fix the failure, OEM-equivalent part, standard warranty.
  • Better — fix it plus address the next likely failure, premium part, extended warranty.
  • Best — full refresh or upgrade path, top-tier equipment, longest warranty.

Customers pick the middle option the majority of the time. Without tiers they negotiate the single number down. See the flat-rate pricing template for how to lay tiers out on the estimate.

How a price book speeds up dispatch

Dispatchers spend most of their bad days doing three things: hunting for a price, arguing about a price, and re-quoting a price a tech already promised. A published price book removes all three:

  • Every incoming call gets a same-day quote range in under 60 seconds.
  • Techs stop calling the office mid-job to "check with the boss."
  • CSRs can offer maintenance plans and diagnostic-credit rules without escalating.

Shops that publish a price book routinely cut their average time-to-first-quote from 20+ minutes to under 5.

Rollout plan: 30 days from spreadsheet to shipping

Week 1 — Build. Pull your last 90 days of invoices. List the top 80 tasks. Fill in labor hours, parts cost, and calculated price using the formula above.

Week 2 — Sanity-check. Take 10 recently completed jobs and re-price them from the new book. If the new price is more than 15% off the old invoice in either direction, revisit the labor hours or parts cost — not the margin.

Week 3 — Load and train. Import into your field software. Walk every tech through the categories. Do two ride-alongs so a senior tech quotes from the tablet in front of a customer.

Week 4 — Go live and monitor. Track close rate, average ticket, and margin per truck-hour weekly. Adjust obvious losers, but resist the urge to rewrite the book in month one.

Common mistakes

  • Building it in a spreadsheet forever. A price book that lives on a laptop in the office is decorative. It must live on the tablet in the truck.
  • Discounting on the truck. If techs can quietly cut 20% to "close the deal," you don't have a price book. Discount approval belongs with the owner or dispatcher.
  • Never updating it. Parts costs move. Refrigerant costs move. Wages move. Review quarterly at a minimum, and re-price the whole book once a year before the busy season.
  • Pricing from your wage instead of your loaded cost. The single most common reason small shops feel like they're working hard for no money.

Where Ratchly fits

Ratchly is built for one-to-five-tech HVAC shops. Your price book lives inside the same screen as your schedule, estimates, and invoices — every tech quotes the same number, every estimate pulls from the same book, and every invoice closes out clean. Import a spreadsheet on day one and you're quoting from the tablet the same afternoon.

Start a free trial and load your price book in an afternoon.

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Frequently asked questions

What is an HVAC service price book?
An HVAC service price book is a categorized list of every task a shop performs, each with a fixed customer price built from labor hours, parts cost with markup, and target margin. Techs quote from it on a tablet so every customer gets the same price for the same job.
What's the difference between a price list and a price book?
In practice they're used interchangeably. A price list is usually a flat list of services and prices; a price book adds categories, tiers (good/better/best), warranty language, and often the diagnostic-credit rules. Any modern field-service software treats them as the same object.
How many line items should an HVAC price book have?
For a one-to-five-tech residential shop, 80–120 line items covers about 95% of revenue. Fewer than 60 leaves too many jobs quoted from memory; more than 150 slows techs down on the tablet. Anything rarer goes through a custom-quote workflow.
How do I price line items I've never sold before?
Use the standard formula — labor hours × loaded labor rate + parts × multiplier + margin — and price on the higher end while you gather real data. Track the first 5–10 real jobs against the estimate, then adjust. Don't guess low to 'win' the first ones.
How often should I update my HVAC price book?
Review it quarterly and re-price the entire book at least once a year, typically heading into the busy season. Parts costs (especially refrigerant, ECM motors, and control boards) move faster than most owners expect.
Should I publish my price book to customers?
Publish ranges, not every line. A public 'diagnostic $XX, capacitor $XXX–$XXX, coil clean $XXX–$XXX' page builds trust and captures search traffic. Keep the full line-by-line book internal so competitors can't copy your margins wholesale.

Run your shop the simple way.

Ratchly is built for one-to-five-tech HVAC shops. Flat pricing, no contracts.

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