Fractional CFO Services for HVAC Companies
Financial leadership for residential and commercial HVAC contractors doing $1M to $15M in revenue. We help you see where the cash goes between the busy season and the slow one, price your work from real costs, and turn a busy schedule into money you actually keep.
Talk to a CFO Who Knows the HVAC Business
We'll look at your numbers with you and show you where the money is leaking. Free, no obligation, no pitch.
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Does Any of This Sound Familiar?
None of that means you're bad at business. HVAC is a cash-hungry trade. Equipment is a big share of every ticket, labor is expensive and hard to find, the weather sets your calendar, and commercial customers pay on their own schedule. A bookkeeper tells you what happened last month. What most HVAC owners are missing is someone who looks forward and tells them what to do next.
What Fractional CFO Services Look Like for an HVAC Company
We work alongside you twice a month as your financial partner. We get your numbers right, build the tools you need to plan, and help you make the big calls on pricing, hiring, trucks, and cash with real numbers in front of you.
Cash Flow Forecast Built Around Your Season
A rolling forecast that maps your busy and slow months, big jobs, payroll, and debt payments, so you can see a cash gap months ahead and set aside money in peak season to carry you through the slow one.
Margins by Line of Work
Real gross margin for service and repair, replacements, new construction, and maintenance agreements. Most owners find one line carrying the company and another quietly losing money.
Pricing From Your Real Costs
We work out what a tech hour actually costs you once payroll taxes, benefits, trucks, and overhead are in, then check your flat-rate book and bid rates against it.
Billing and Collections Rhythm
Jobs invoiced when they finish, deposits and progress payments set up right, and a monthly look at what's overdue. Unbilled work is the most common cash leak we find.
Clean Books You Can Trust
We review your bookkeeper's work, make sure your field software and QuickBooks agree, and set up a monthly close. Every decision starts with numbers that are right.
Break-Even and Growth Targets
The revenue you need to cover overhead, your own pay, debt, and savings, plus what it takes to hit your profit goal. It turns "should I hire?" into a math question.
Case Study: From $2,700 to Over $200,000 in the Bank in About 90 Days
This owner runs a commercial HVAC ductwork company in the Southeast, with a fabrication shop that makes duct for his own crews and for other contractors. On paper the business was profitable. In the bank it was a different story. The company had been cash-negative for 13 straight months, and at the end of August he had about $2,700 of usable cash.
When we dug in, the problem wasn't sales. Finished jobs were sitting in draft invoices instead of going out the door. Invoices more than 90 days past due added up to nearly a full month of revenue. The owner was doing the books himself, chasing customers for payment, and making decisions on gut feel.
"The numbers are the craziest thing because they really don't lie. Even if I try to make them lie."
Owner, commercial HVAC ductwork contractorWhat we did
- Made billing the first priority: every job invoiced as soon as it finished, drafts cleared, and an admin hire put in charge of invoicing and collections.
- Set up a monthly review of what was overdue and who was slow to pay.
- Worked out what each field hour really cost, including payroll taxes, trucks, and overhead, and compared it to the bid rate.
- Moved truck and fuel costs into job costs so gross margin showed the real cost of the work.
- Built a weekly cash forecast and a break-even model covering overhead, the owner's salary, debt payments, and savings.
"Right now I have like $150,000 in the bank and I've never... went like more than two days with that kind of money in the bank."
Owner, commercial HVAC ductwork contractor, about two months inOverhead also came in under budget for the year, averaging about $51,500 a month against a $55,600 plan. Cash in a contracting business still swings with big jobs and slow payers, and his did too. The difference now is that he sees it coming on the forecast instead of finding out at payroll.
"I really see how bad not billing can make things. Like, I knew it, but not knew it like this."
Owner, commercial HVAC ductwork contractorWant to Know Where Your HVAC Company Actually Stands?
We'll walk through your cash flow, margins, and blind spots on a free call. Just an honest look at your numbers.
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What We Usually Find in the First 30 Days
Every HVAC company is different, but the same money leaks show up again and again. These are real examples from HVAC and home service contractors we've worked with.
Finished work that never got billed
One contractor had $50,000 to $60,000 of completed work sitting in draft invoices. His books showed about $143,000 for the month when the real number was over $200,000. Small jobs and service calls slip first, because the big invoices always get sent.
Labor priced below what it really costs
A tech paid $30 an hour can cost close to $50 an hour once payroll taxes, paid time off, and benefits are added, before trucks and overhead. One owner had been bidding labor at $75 an hour for years and kept winning work because he was the cheapest bid in town.
A margin that's lower than the owner thinks
One owner's back-of-the-napkin math put his gross margin around 37.5%. Once equipment, field labor, parts, and permits were counted properly, it was about 32%. Moving truck costs into job costs dropped another contractor's margin from 37% to about 31%. You can't fix a margin you can't see.
Field software and QuickBooks telling different stories
A bad sync between a field service app and QuickBooks made one company's revenue look nearly twice as high as it really was, and turned customer deposits into a negative balance that looked like a quarter million dollars in overpayments. Decisions made on those numbers would have been wrong.
Money left on the table
We've seen $20,000 to $30,000 a year of manufacturer co-op marketing money expire unused, sales tax on equipment paid but never passed on to customers, and thousands a year in phone, software, and vendor costs that nobody had looked at in years.
HVAC Profit Margin Benchmarks
Here is where HVAC companies typically land. Net margin is after overhead and a real salary for the owner.
| Metric | Average | Strong | Best in class |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross profit margin | 35% to 42% | 45% to 52% | 53%+ |
| Net profit margin | 5% to 8% | 10% to 15% | 17% to 25% |
| Overhead as % of revenue | 32% to 40% | 24% to 30% | Under 24% |
| Revenue per technician | $180K to $250K | $280K to $400K | $400K+ |
| Maintenance agreement revenue | 5% to 15% | 15% to 25% | 25%+ |
On $2M in revenue, the gap between a 5% and a 17% net margin is $240,000 a year. Same trucks, same market, same weather. For the full breakdown by revenue size and job type, see our guide to HVAC profit margins, or run your own numbers through the free Profit Margin Checkup.
What an HVAC CFO Handles That Your Bookkeeper Can't
Seasonal Cash Planning
How much to set aside in July and August to cover a slow February, and the monthly sales target you need to stay above your minimum cash line all year.
Revenue per Tech
The simplest measure of field productivity, and the number that tells you whether you can afford your next hire or need to raise your average ticket first.
Maintenance Agreements
What your plans really earn after visit costs, and how many members you need to smooth out the seasons and keep techs busy in the shoulder months.
Overtime and Tech Pay
Overtime that was bid into the job versus overtime from falling behind, and pay plans that reward the work that makes money.
Trucks, Equipment, and Debt
Lease, finance, or buy, floor-plan interest on equipment that sits too long, and a payoff plan for every loan and card balance.
Commercial Billing
Deposits, progress payments, change orders, and retainage for commercial and new construction work, so slow-paying GCs don't become your bank.
HVAC Companies We Work With
We've worked with more than 100 construction and home service companies, and over 315 businesses in all. Our HVAC clients typically do $1M to $15M in revenue and include:
What Trade Owners Say
"I thought I needed better marketing or a bigger team. What I needed was financial control. CEO Finance Academy taught me to think like a CFO. We cleaned up cash flow, set aside tax and reserves, and I finally sleep at night knowing payroll and growth are funded."
"Our fastest win was cleaning up AR and getting a 13-week forecast. Once we could see the weekly cash picture, collections became the priority and we stopped living paycheck to paycheck."
"Before CEO Finance Academy we were guessing; now we run the business from a forecast. We raised our bid margins, tightened cash, and turned a messy pipeline into predictable working capital. The program literally paid for itself in months."
Our team is based in Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh and works with HVAC companies across the United States. Everything runs remotely through video calls, shared dashboards, and access to your accounting system, so you get the same CFO partnership wherever you are.
Free Guides for HVAC Owners
- HVAC profit margins: average vs. good (2026 benchmarks)
- Job costing for contractors
- Why you can be profitable on paper and never have cash
- How to pay yourself as a business owner
- How to prepare your finances for the slow season
- How much does a fractional CFO cost?
- More client case studies
Frequently Asked Questions
A fractional CFO gives you senior financial leadership part time. For an HVAC company that means a cash flow forecast built around your busy and slow seasons, gross margin by line of work (service, replacements, new construction, maintenance agreements), pricing checked against what a tech hour really costs, a billing and collections routine, and help with decisions on hiring, trucks, and debt. Most of our HVAC clients do $1M to $15M in revenue.
Your bookkeeper records what already happened and your CPA files your taxes. A fractional CFO looks forward. We forecast your cash, find which work is profitable, set pricing and sales targets, and sit with you twice a month to make decisions. We also review your bookkeeper's work so the numbers you're deciding on are right.
Our fractional CFO services run $3,500 to $6,000 a month depending on complexity, such as the number of companies, crews, and lines of work and how much cleanup the books need. There is a one-time $6,000 onboarding fee for the first 30 to 60 days, when we audit your books, build your forecast and dashboard, and do a full margin review. A full-time CFO costs $200,000 to $350,000 or more a year.
A good HVAC company runs a 45% to 52% gross margin and a 10% to 15% net margin after overhead and a real owner salary. Best-in-class companies reach 17% to 25% net. The average company nets about 5% to 8%.
Most clients find their first big issue in the first 30 to 60 days, such as unbilled work, labor priced below cost, or books that don't match reality. Some fixes pay off fast: one HVAC contractor went from about $2,700 in usable cash to over $200,000 in roughly 90 days, mostly by billing jobs as soon as they finished. Margin and reserve improvements usually build over 3 to 6 months.
Both. We work with residential service and replacement companies, commercial HVAC and mechanical contractors, ductwork and sheet metal shops, and new construction subcontractors. Commercial work brings its own challenges, like deposits, progress billing, change orders, and slow-paying general contractors, and we build those into your forecast.
Yes. We work with whatever field service software you use alongside QuickBooks. One of the first things we check is whether the two agree, because a bad sync can inflate revenue, create fake receivables, or hide unbilled jobs.
We work with HVAC companies throughout the United States. CFO calls, dashboards, and reporting all run remotely, so location doesn't limit what we can do for you.
Ready to Keep More of What Your HVAC Company Earns?
Book a free cash flow call. We'll look at your numbers together and show you what a fractional CFO would fix first.
Book My Free Cash Flow Call Or start with the free Profit Margin CheckupFree 30-minute call · No sales pressure · Just an honest look at your numbers
Building better Business Owners through personalized Financial Coaching.