Blue Collar Trade Manager lets HVAC techs turn a diagnostic call into an approved estimate and a paid invoice without leaving the job site. Flat-rate repair pricing lives in your price book, seasonal maintenance plans bill themselves on a recurring schedule, and customers pay by card or ACH straight from a text link. Assign technicians to jobs, keep scheduled windows visible, and compare actual job hours with the estimate.
Create an estimate for the service call from scratch or pull line items straight from your HVAC price book, then send it for approval by text or email.
The customer reviews and approves the estimate online or by replying to a text — no printing, no in-person signature required.
Turn the approved estimate into an invoice in one step, so line items, pricing, and job details carry over without retyping anything.
The invoice goes out with a public click-to-pay link so the customer can pay by card or ACH from their phone, without creating an account.
If the invoice sits unpaid, automated payment reminders go out on a schedule you set, instead of you having to remember to chase it.
Paid, unpaid, and overdue invoices roll up into reports so you can see outstanding balances across every customer at a glance.
When every tech quotes a capacitor swap or a blower motor replacement differently, margins slip. BCTM's price book stores your flat-rate repair items — parts, labor, and diagnostic fees — so every tech on the crew builds the same estimate from the same numbers, whether they're pricing a job they've done fifty times or one they've never quoted before.
A twice-a-year tune-up plan is only valuable if the billing actually happens on time. Recurring invoicing lets you set a maintenance contract to invoice automatically every spring and fall (or monthly, if you bill that way), so plan revenue doesn't depend on someone remembering to send it.
Plenty of HVAC work happens in mechanical rooms, attics, and basements with no cell signal. The offline PWA lets a tech draft the estimate or invoice on-site with no connection, then it syncs and sends as soon as the phone reconnects — payment collection still requires connectivity, since card and ACH processing has to reach Stripe.
A 100°F no-cool call or a mid-winter furnace outage is exactly when a customer wants to pay immediately and move on. A public click-to-pay link sent by text lets the homeowner pay by card or ACH the moment the invoice lands, without waiting for a mailed check.
The best fit is software that lets a tech quote flat-rate repairs from a price book, convert the estimate to an invoice on the spot, and collect card or ACH payment before leaving the driveway.
HVAC work is diagnostic-heavy and often urgent, so the software needs to move fast: price book line items for common repairs, one-tap estimate-to-invoice conversion, and a payment link the homeowner can use immediately. BCTM covers each of those steps in the same app a tech already has open on the truck.
Set the maintenance contract up as a recurring invoice so it bills automatically on the schedule you choose — twice a year, quarterly, or monthly.
Once a customer signs up for a tune-up plan, recurring invoicing generates and sends the invoice on schedule without you having to remember. Attach the plan's price book item so the amount stays consistent across the whole customer base.
A click-to-pay link lets the homeowner pay by card or ACH the moment they get the invoice, instead of writing a check or waiting for you to run a card reader.
Every BCTM invoice includes a public payment link the customer can open on their phone with no account required. Combined with the fact that construction-adjacent trades average a 57-day Days Sales Outstanding, compared to 83 days industry-wide, getting paid at the point of service — rather than net-30 — meaningfully shortens that wait (Level — Construction Cash Flow Crisis in Numbers).
Yes, for big-ticket jobs — ACH through Stripe is 0.8% capped at $5, while cards run 2.9% + $0.30, so ACH becomes cheaper on any transaction above roughly $625.
A full system replacement can run well into the thousands of dollars, so the card percentage fee adds up fast. Stripe's ACH rate is capped at $5 regardless of transaction size, so for an install invoice north of about $625, ACH is the lower-fee option (Stripe Pricing; calculation confirmed via FeeProbe).
You can add your license number and permit details as custom fields on the invoice, but BCTM doesn't handle permit filing itself.
For install jobs that require a pulled permit, you can put your license number and job/permit reference on the invoice so the paperwork trail is clear to the customer and to any inspector who asks. Permit applications and inspections themselves happen outside the software, with your local building department.
Yes for drafting — the offline PWA lets you build an estimate or invoice with no connection, then it sends once your phone reconnects. Payment collection needs connectivity.
Because card and ACH payments have to reach Stripe to process, actual payment capture happens online. Drafting the paperwork, though, works fully offline in tight mechanical spaces and basements with dead signal.
Yes — add the diagnostic or trip fee as its own price book line item, then add repair line items to the same estimate once you've diagnosed the problem.
Many HVAC companies bill a flat diagnostic fee up front and apply it toward the repair if the customer proceeds. Store both as separate price book items so the estimate clearly itemizes the visit fee and the repair cost.
$0/mo — no subscription and no per-user seats. Card payments: 3.9% + $0.30 (1% BCTM platform fee + 2.9% + $0.30 Stripe). ACH bank payments: 1.8% (1% BCTM platform fee + 0.8% Stripe, Stripe portion capped at $5.00). Cash and check: no fees. Full fee breakdown.
No subscription. You pay a per-transaction fee only when a customer pays you.
Start free