Home & trade services
Funding for HVAC service companies
In July you’re turning down changeouts because the equipment isn’t in the warehouse and the install crew is two people. In October the phone goes quiet. I’m Addy, and I help HVAC shops think through the money side before you sign anything.
See my options
Start here
How a funding partner reads your business
Much of what a partner reads is in your bank statements, and it comes down to three questions. Everything below is me walking you through your own answers, so nothing in your statements surprises you later.
When does the money come in?
Job days, invoice terms, or a slow drip all month. The pattern matters more than the total.
How steady is it?
One great month doesn’t tell anyone what a normal month looks like.
What was each deposit for?
If a reader can’t tell, they assume the worst. A sentence of explanation fixes it.
The trade
Who pays an HVAC shop, and when
A lot of your deposits don’t come from homeowners. When a changeout gets financed at the kitchen table, the lender pays you, not the customer, shortly after completion. It lands under the lender’s name, not your customer’s, and on a promotional plan it’s net of the dealer fee, so it’s smaller than the ticket you quoted. The homeowner’s instalments are the lender’s receivable, not yours.
That is completely normal revenue. It just needs one sentence of explanation before anyone asks. Unexplained, a statement full of large deposits from companies nobody has heard of reads as an anomaly. Explained, with which deposit is which changeout and the dealer paperwork to hand, it reads as high-ticket work paid promptly. Say which is which before anyone has to ask.
Your maintenance book is the other half of the story. Agreement billing lands as small, rhythmic deposits in exactly the months the file is weakest: March, April, October, November. It is the easiest kind of revenue for anyone to read.
The risk
Let’s do the math together
Say you’re weighing a $40,000 advance. In this trade, the month you start decides what the payments feel like. Here’s March, and here’s September.
The arithmetic, as an illustration
$25,000
a peak week in; the $1,550 weekly debit is about 6 cents of every dollar
$9,000
a shoulder week in; the same $1,550 debit is about 17 cents of every dollar
$52,000
remitted on a $40,000 advance at a 1.30 factor rate, about $310 every working day over eight months
Start it in March and those eight months run through the end of the spring trough, the whole summer peak, and are nearly gone by the fall trough. Start it in September and the same eight months run through the fall trough, the winter, and into the spring trough: two troughs inside one term. Same rate, same amount, opposite outcome.
So check the month before you check the rate. And if you can’t name roughly how many changeouts you turned down last June, the case for the money isn’t made yet. Equipment bought in spring and sold in summer is the shortest turn this trade offers. Remitting through the shoulder months on stock that didn’t move is the failure case.
An illustration, not a quote: nobody has offered anyone these terms. Real terms come from a funding partner.
Before you borrow
The cheaper money you may already have
Most funding pages list loans and advances as if you’re starting from zero. You’re not. Check these first.
Trade credit
The distributor’s open account
Most of the trade’s stock is already financed by the distributor on dated terms measured in weeks, not a season. Stock for June gets paid for in spring whichever way you buy it, so ask for terms before you ask anyone for money.
Programs
Pre-season stocking programs
The manufacturers’ stocking programs pay in free product, rebates, and prompt-pay discounts, not in credit for the season. The dealer programs finance the homeowner, not the contractor. The programs reward having cash in March, which is the month the account is emptiest. Plan for that.
Inside your software
The offer inside your dispatch software
If you run dispatch software, there may be a capital offer waiting inside it, underwritten on the payment history running through it and repaid out of your payouts. Same products this site explains, priced the same way. Read any offer with the four questions from the advance guide in hand, and check the month before you check the rate.
Paperwork
Who can touch the refrigerant?
Here’s a paperwork question worth settling before anyone asks. Federal rules require EPA Section 608 certification for anyone who services equipment that holds refrigerant, and whoever funds you wants to see that the business is credentialed for the work it’s billing. When the certified tech is an employee rather than the owner, or the certificate lives in somebody’s truck instead of the office, a request can stall while someone tracks down a document nobody asked for up front.
It’s a normal arrangement. It just needs to be visible rather than discovered. Keep the certification, who holds it, and how they sit in the business in one place, ready before anyone asks, along with whatever state or local licences your work requires. Bring it up yourself and it never becomes a problem.
Scope
Changeouts at the door, not draws
One boundary for this page: it’s written for the residential changeout-and-service shop, because that’s the shop a funding partner can read from bank statements. The homeowner, or the homeowner’s lender, pays promptly. A light-commercial contractor on net-60 property-management terms is carrying receivables, and a new-construction installer on builder draws is carrying somebody else’s schedule. Neither reads as deposits, and financing against receivables is factoring, which you can ask for on the form.
For the changeout shop: a merchant cash advance can fit for stock bought in spring for a summer that is booked rather than hoped for, and a business line of credit, if it is open to you, can fit for the gap between a financed job closing and the lender’s deposit landing. Which one fits is my read, not an offer.
How it works
You talk. I work. You choose.
- 1You say
Tell me about the business.
What you do, what you bring in, what you need and when. One short form, about two minutes.
“I need $40,000 for equipment before the summer.”
- 2I do
I take it to funding partners.
I get it in front of partners who work with businesses like yours. I do not underwrite, price or decide.
Your request, told once, to people who can fund it.
- 3You decide
You pick, or you walk away.
Interested partners contact you with their terms, if an offer comes. Compare, pick one, or walk away.
“This one gives me the runway without crushing cash flow.”
The arithmetic
How much are you considering?
Play with the numbers
Pick a shape of money, drag the sliders, and watch the math change.
An advance is priced by a factor rate, not interest. Put in the amount, and the rate if somebody has quoted you one.
The arithmetic
- Advance
- $50,000
- Factor rate
- 1.30
- You remit in total
- $65,000
- Cost of the money
- $15,000
An illustration, not a quote: nobody has offered you these terms. Real terms come from a funding partner and depend on your cash flow, and fees can sit on top of the factor rate.
See my optionsEach one has its own page, with a worked example: all six calculators.
What the money buys
What owners in this trade actually spend it on.
Equipment before the season
Condensers, air handlers, and furnaces in your own warehouse in April, so a June changeout is quoted and installed the same week instead of waiting on a distributor’s allocation.
A second install crew
An installer and a helper hired in the spring are trained and quick by the first heat wave. That is what turns “booked out” into “booked and billed.”
Filling the maintenance book
Door hangers, mailers, and the time it takes to turn a repair call into a maintenance agreement. What it buys is deposits in October and March.
Truck stock that closes the call
Capacitors, contactors, blower motors, and the control boards you see most. Stock on the truck turns a diagnostic into a same-visit repair instead of a callback next week.
Which one fits
Which financing fits your situation?
I don’t recommend a product without seeing your numbers. Below is how owners in this trade usually think the options through: possibilities to explore, not an offer or a recommendation. Where none of them is the right move, the table says so.
| Your situation | What might be worth exploring, and why |
|---|---|
| You need equipment on the floor for the summer, but the money goes out months before the first changeout pays. | An advance taken in spring might fit. It leans on what your deposits show more than on how long you’ve been trading, and the season the stock sells is the season that remits it. More expensive than a line of credit, so the test is whether that stock genuinely sells this summer. |
| You want money in place before you need it, and your July and your October look nothing alike. | Owners in this spot often look at a business line of credit first: draw in the thin month and repay when the season lands. If only an advance is available, ask about remittance that flexes with your sales. |
| A changeout you installed was financed by the customer’s lender and the money hasn’t landed yet. | A line of credit is the better shape for a gap you can put a date on. An advance prices a short, known wait as though it were permanent money. |
| The box truck, the crane truck, or the recovery machine needs replacing. | Equipment financing secures against the asset and matches the term to how long it earns, usually far cheaper than a line or an advance. Ask for equipment financing on the form. |
Which shape fits is my read, not an offer. Partners decide what they will do with a request, and on what terms.
Questions
Asked by HVAC owners
Read this before you talk to anyone:
- HVAC advances: before or after the season?
- What is a merchant cash advance, in plain terms
- Merchant cash advance vs. revenue-based financing
- What a funding partner reads in your bank statements
- Seasonal businesses: the month the remittance starts
- The offer inside your shop or dispatch software
- Supply-house terms vs. a line of credit
Should I take a merchant cash advance in the spring, or wait until I’m busy?
Spring, if at all. An advance taken in March remits through your busiest months; taken in September it remits into your quietest ones. The factor rate doesn’t change; the month does all the work. Check the term against your own calendar before anyone talks about price.
My changeouts are financed through the customer’s lender. How do those deposits read on my statements?
Like large deposits from a company that isn’t your customer, and that’s fine as soon as it’s explained. Be ready to say which deposit is which changeout, keep the dealer paperwork handy, and remember that on promotional plans the deposit is net of the dealer fee, so it won’t match the ticket.
My peak weeks and my shoulder weeks look nothing alike. Does the swing count against me?
The swing is ordinary in this trade; what gets read is the bottom of it. Negative days and returned items in the shoulder months are what change the read. Know which shop you are, install-heavy or service-heavy, because they have different worst months.
I have a maintenance-agreement book. Does that change whether a line of credit or an advance fits?
It makes the file easier to read either way. Agreement billing puts deposits into the months that would otherwise be thin, as a rhythm rather than a spike, which is exactly what a reader wants to see in March and October.
Will you pull my credit?
No. There is no credit pull from me; the form on this page is information, not an application. A funding partner does its own underwriting and may pull credit at that point, and it will tell you when it does.
Get funding options
Tell me about your HVAC business.
About two minutes, and no credit pull from me. Tell me what you do, what you bring in and what the money is for, and I take your request to funding partners. You can strengthen it with a bank connection afterward.
Free to you. Funding partners pay Addy for the introduction.
Addy is not a lender, and does not underwrite, price or decide who gets funded.
Page updated
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