Price furnace, AC and full system changeouts from your own costs
You tell it once what your shop costs to run. From then on, every system swap is priced from your crew's real hours and your distributor's prices.
- Know what an hour of your install crew really costs Shop rent, insurance, the person on the phones, software, vans and every wage, yours too, become one break-even rate per billable hour.
- Price the whole changeout, not just the boxes Tear-out and recovery, setting the furnace and coil, the condenser, gas, flue and drain, brazing and vacuum, and start-up each get their own line.
- Quote one system price, with the per-ton check beside it You get the job total and the price per ton of cooling from the same numbers.
- Stop giving away the hours nobody sees The estimate visit, the supply house run and haul-away of the old unit sit on a checklist that has to be answered first.
- Hand the homeowner a clean quote One page with scope, options, deposit and HVAC terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- See which installs made money The Job Log keeps every changeout you quoted, won or lost, and the hours it really took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns equipment, kit and crew hours into a changeout quote
Six tabs: set up the shop once, keep your distributor prices current, then build one quote per house.
- Start HereThe fill-in order and what each colour means. Plan on one evening.
- Shop SetupRent, insurance, the office, EPA certs, software, your crew and you, turned into a break-even rate per billable hour.
- Price ListFurnaces, coils, condensers, thermostats, line set, flue, drain and repair parts at your distributor's price, each with the date you checked it.
- QuotePick the equipment, type the crew hours for each stage, answer the hidden-cost list, and it builds the price and the price per ton.
- Customer QuoteThe page the homeowner signs: scope, price, deposit and terms.
- Job LogAfter start-up, the real hours go in, so you know which installs ran long.
What is a break-even rate? It is what one billable crew hour has to bring in to pay the wages and the whole shop, before any profit. A tech who bills half the day spreads the same shop costs over fewer hours, so the rate is higher than most owners guess. The true hourly rate guide shows the math.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up HVAC company and its $10,164 changeout quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The example shop is an owner who still installs, an installer and a helper, with a break-even of $79.81 per billable hour. The quote swaps an old furnace, coil and AC for an 80% 60k BTU gas furnace, a 3-ton cased coil and a 3-ton condenser on a new pad, in one long day.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Furnace, coil, condenser and install kit | $4,346 |
| 3 | Crew labour, van and instruments | $1,640 |
| 4 | Mechanical permit | $100 |
| 5 | Easy-to-miss hours and supplies | $654 |
| 6 | Markup, cushion and profit | $3,425 |
| 7 | Price before tax | $10,164 |
The $3,425 is left after every cost, the owner's wage included, which works out to about $208 per labour hour on this install. Sales tax, the deposit and a financed version are covered in how to price HVAC jobs.
$654
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 13 times what the calculator costs. Miss them once and the file has paid for itself.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
Why "equipment times a multiplier" loses money on changeouts
A lot of shops price a replacement by taking the equipment cost and multiplying it, or dividing it by a set margin. That puts your overhead on the box, not on the hours your crew and office really spend on the house.
Here is how it goes wrong. Say your shop needs about $80 an hour to break even and a changeout takes 20 crew hours, so the crew day costs about $1,600. If a multiplier on a $3,775 set of boxes happens to cover that, the same multiplier on a basement swap that takes 12 hours overcharges, and on an attic job that takes 30 hours it leaves about $800 of crew time unpaid. You win the hard jobs and lose money on them, and it takes months to see the pattern.
This calculator prices the hours first, at your own rate, then adds the equipment with its own markup. The per-ton number shows up at the end as a check, not as the thing that sets the price.
Estimate visits, supply runs and the other install costs it catches
The Quote tab won't mark a changeout ready until each of these has a Yes, No or N/A:
- The free estimate visit: measuring airflow, sizing the system and writing the options, on houses you lose too.
- Loading the van and the drive, two people on the clock both ways.
- The supply house run for the fitting or breaker that was not on the van.
- Haul-away of the old furnace, coil and condenser, which the tear-out hours don't cover.
- The financing dealer fee, taken by the lender when the customer finances.
- A warranty reserve. Left as No in the example on purpose, so the warning stays until you pick a number from your own callback history.
Exactly what you get
A single spreadsheet file, emailed as a download link as soon as checkout is done. Open it in Microsoft Excel or upload it to Google Sheets. It is a one-time purchase with nothing to renew.
- The six-tab changeout calculator, with yellow cells for your own numbers.
- A finished example HVAC shop, including a one-day furnace, coil and condenser quote to study first.
- HVAC customer terms you can edit, covering when equipment gets ordered and how a duct or electrical surprise becomes a signed change order.
- A Job Log that shows your close rate and which installs ran over their hours, the habit explained in job costing.
How it compares
Most owners price a job one of these ways. Here is what each one gives you.
| Copying another company's price | A free estimate template | Estimating software | This calculator | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts from your own costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Makes you answer the easy-to-miss costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Shows which jobs made money | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Works in Excel and Google Sheets | – | Yes | No | Yes |
| Cost | Free | Free | Usually a monthly fee | $49.95 once |
Who it's for: residential replacement shops and techs on their own
It fits owner-operators and small HVAC companies (about 1 to 15 people) doing residential furnace, AC and full system replacements, and techs who went out on their own and still price changeouts from memory. One van or five, a quick basement swap or a two-day attic job, the math is the same, because the hours and costs are the ones you type in.
It is not for shops already running a flat-rate price book and job costing inside field service software, or for commercial mechanical work bid from drawings with cranes and supervision. To check your shop's hourly rate first, try the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop pricing changeouts as equipment times a number. Price every system swap from your own crew hours and costs, catch the hours nobody sees, and see which installs made money.
HVAC Install Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets