HVAC Fractional CFO Services
Most HVAC companies run at 8–15% net margins. Yours should be at 20%+.
We’ve sat on the buy side of home services M&A. We know seasonal cash flow swings, tech comp structures, department-level job costing, and ServiceTitan reporting. We don’t just read your P&L — we know which numbers are wrong and exactly where your margin is leaking.
Measurable margin improvement in 90 days | 200+ acquisitions reviewed | ServiceTitan + QBO specialists
Where HVAC companies lose margin
You don’t know which departments actually make money
Install, service, and maintenance all have different margin profiles. Without department-level P&Ls with proper cost allocation, you’re subsidizing unprofitable work with profitable work — and you don’t even know it. We’ve seen companies discover entire service lines running at 5% when they assumed 15%.
Overhead is eating your growth
Revenue goes up 20%, but profit stays flat. Every new truck, new tech, and new CSR adds overhead that nobody tracks against the breakeven. Without a financial model showing the real cost of growth, you can add $2M in revenue and take home the same amount.
Pricing by feel, not by data
Your pricebook hasn’t been rebuilt in two years. Your flat-rate pricing doesn’t account for actual labor costs, drive time, or material price increases. You’re leaving $50–$200 on every ticket because nobody has connected your job costing data to your pricing.
ServiceTitan data never hits your P&L
Revenue per tech, average ticket, close rate, cost per lead — the operational data exists in ServiceTitan but it never connects to financial outcomes. You can’t tie a tech’s performance to gross margin or see which marketing channels actually produce profitable jobs.
A CFO focused on your HVAC profitability — not just your books
Profitability Diagnostic
Most HVAC companies find 5–10 points of margin improvement in the first 90 days. We map your margins by department, service type, and technician — then show you exactly where the gaps are and what closing them is worth in dollars.
Monthly Financial Review
Know exactly what changed in your margins last month — and what to do about it this month. A structured monthly meeting walking through your P&L by department, tracking variance against benchmarks, and identifying the specific actions that move your bottom line.
KPI Dashboard
The numbers that actually drive your HVAC bottom line — connected to your financials for the first time. Revenue per tech, cost per lead, gross margin by department, close rates, all pulled from ServiceTitan and tied to financial outcomes. Updated monthly.
Cash Flow Forecasting
Know exactly when cash gets tight before it happens — not after. Rolling 13-week projections accounting for HVAC seasonality, equipment purchases, payroll cycles, and planned investments, so you make growth decisions with confidence instead of checking the bank balance.
Compensation & Incentive Design
Comp that drives revenue AND margin — not top-line growth that destroys profitability. We model tech pay plans, installer commissions, and management bonuses against your actual margins so you attract top talent without giving away your profit.
Exit & PE Readiness
Every dollar of margin improvement is worth 4–7x at exit. A $10M HVAC company at 10% margins might sell for $3–4M. At 20% margins, that same company is worth $8–14M. We build your books to PE standards — adjusted EBITDA, quality of earnings prep, add-back documentation — whether you sell next year or in ten.
If you’re leaving $500K/year on the table, that’s $42K slipping away every month you wait. Let’s find the 5–10 points of improvement hiding in your numbers.
The expertise to know what’s wrong. The tools to fix it.
We know your trade — financially and operationally
We work exclusively with HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing companies. We don’t just understand your chart of accounts — we understand your operations. Tech comp structures, seasonal demand patterns, job costing gaps, crew economics, pricebook optimization. That operational depth is why we can find margin that generic CFOs miss.
200+ home services financials reviewed — we know what good looks like
Our team has reviewed financials on 200+ home services acquisitions on the buy side — including experience at firms like Apex Service Partners. We’ve seen what 20%+ margins look like across every trade and revenue level. We know exactly which levers produce results — and which ones are noise.
Diagnostic tools that connect operations to dollars
We bridge the gap between your field service platform and your financials. ServiceTitan data, QuickBooks reporting, department-level P&Ls, crew-level profitability — we build the infrastructure to see where money is being made and where it’s leaking. Then we help you fix it.
The numbers we hold your HVAC company to
Gross margin by department
Install should run 45–50% and service 55–65%, blending to 50%+ across the company. If you only see one gross margin number, you can’t see which side of the business is carrying the other.
Net margin: 20% is the target
Most HVAC companies run 5–12%. Revenue usually isn’t the problem — operating overhead drifting above the 18–25% band where it belongs is. Back-office and admin labor alone should sit around 8–12% of revenue.
Marketing: 5–15% of revenue
Including organic. Roughly 7–9% in maintenance mode, 9–12% for growth, 12–15% when you’re scaling hard or turning around. Spending to hold price beats discounting to close — every time.
Technician productivity
Revenue per tech is the output — the levers underneath it are what we manage: estimate close rate, service technician conversion rate on replacement opportunities, effective hourly rate actually charged on service work, and average ticket. Every truck roll is a cost you’ve already paid; the job is maximizing what happens once you’re in the house.
Want the math behind each number? Read our HVAC profit margin benchmarks.
Every point of margin is worth 5–10× at exit
The overhead math
Cutting $200K of overhead the business doesn’t need is worth $1–2M at a 5–10× multiple. Most companies find at least a few points hiding in leases, insurance, software, and roles that outlived their purpose.
Gross profit is the lever
Most HVAC companies run 5–12% net, and almost every time it traces back to a combination of gross profit and overhead. We work the GP side hard: pricing built from fully loaded labor, compensation models that pay for performance, and enough marketing to hold price instead of discounting to close — so gross profit lands as high as the trade allows before overhead is even on the table.
A revenue mix a buyer can underwrite
Install versus service, residential versus commercial — each line carries its own margin profile and its own predictability. We report them separately so your trailing-twelve-month earnings hold up under normalization instead of getting adjusted away.
Add-backs a buyer will actually accept
Owner compensation, one-time legal costs, the personal truck on the company card — legitimate adjustments only count if they’re documented as they happen. We tag them month by month, so your adjusted EBITDA is a schedule a diligence team can verify, not a story reconstructed from memory two weeks before close.
If a sale is anywhere on your horizon, the time to build the margin is now — before a buyer prices it for you.
Book a Free Financial Diagnostic →
Real ResultsWe’ve taken HVAC clients from mid-single-digit net margins to the high teens — and carried one through to an exit to a PE-backed platform at a top-decile multiple for its size. Read the Hosack case study →
Frequently asked questions
Find out where your HVAC margins are hiding
Most HVAC companies have 5–10+ points of margin improvement waiting to be found. That’s real money — on your bottom line today and worth multiples when you sell.