Track job costs, equipment, refrigerant, mileage, and 1099 helpers from the truck — not from a desktop back at the shop. Schedule C ready every April. Built for solo HVAC techs and small heating and cooling crews.
An HVAC tech's day happens in attics, on rooftops, in crawlspaces, and behind the wheel between service calls. You're checking subcooling on a condenser at 2 p.m., not sitting in front of a desktop running accounting software. By the time you get home, the receipt from the supply house is crumpled on the dash and you can't remember whether that coil went to the Hendersons' install or the restaurant rooftop unit.
Fast Pay Books is a mobile-first bookkeeping app made for exactly this. You log income, expenses, equipment, and mileage from your phone in the moment — snap the receipt, categorize it, done. Your expenses stay tax-ready all year while you stay focused on the work that actually pays: charging systems, swapping compressors, and closing installs. No QuickBooks file to babysit, no shoebox of receipts in February.
It also fits how HVAC money actually moves: big equipment purchases on install jobs, small parts on service calls, refrigerant by the pound, and helpers paid by the day. Each of those needs to land in the right place — and on the right job — for your numbers to mean anything.
Categorize equipment, materials, and helper pay, and tag them to a client so your costs are captured as you spend.
Trips between service calls, the supply house, and the shop logged at the 2026 rates of 72.5¢/mi through June 30 and 76¢/mi after for your Schedule C.
Snap receipts for condensers, coils, refrigerant, and fittings, and keep them out of your taxable profit.
Track payments to helpers and subs, with running totals so you can see who crossed the $600 1099-NEC threshold.
Everything works from the truck on iOS. No desktop required, ever.
Export a clean categorized income and expense summary as PDF or CSV for your return or your CPA.
No trade rides the calendar harder than HVAC. Summer brings the AC rush — no-cool calls stacked back to back, overtime, and change-outs booked weeks out. Winter brings furnaces and heat pumps. And in between sit the shoulder seasons, when the phone goes quiet and the truck payment doesn't.
Bookkeeping that only tells you what you made last year doesn't help you survive October. You need to see, month by month, what came in during the July peak so you know what has to carry you through the spring and fall dips. Fast Pay Books shows income and expenses by month all year, so you can plan for the slow stretch instead of getting surprised by it.
Maintenance agreements are the other half of the answer. Spring and fall tune-up plans smooth out the seasonal swings — but only if you track that recurring income separately from one-off service calls. When agreement revenue is tagged on its own, you know exactly how much predictable money arrives each month and how much of your nut it covers before a single no-cool call comes in.
A $6,800 change-out and a week of $189 diagnostic calls can feel equally busy — but they don't earn the same, and without a real cost record you're guessing which one built your profit. Installs carry heavy equipment costs and helper labor; service calls carry drive time and small parts. The margins look nothing alike.
When every dollar is categorized and tagged to a client as you spend — the condenser and coil, the capacitor and contactor, the helper's day rate — you build an accurate cost record instead of guessing at year-end. Paired with the profit & loss and sales-by-customer reports, you can price change-outs from data and decide whether that fourth diagnostic call across town is worth the drive.
Six service calls a day, two supply house runs, and a trip back to the shop puts serious miles on the van. At the 2026 rates (72.5¢ per mile through June 30, 76¢ after), an HVAC tech driving 15,000 business miles has an $11,138 deduction — money a lot of contractors leave on the table because they never logged the trips. The iOS app can detect and log trips automatically. Run your own numbers on our mileage deduction calculator.
Most one-truck HVAC operations lean on day-rate helpers for change-outs and sub out work they can't take. If you pay an unincorporated helper or sub $600 or more during the year by cash, check, or bank transfer, you're required to issue a 1099-NEC in January. That includes the EPA 608–certified tech you bring in for refrigerant work when you're double-booked in July.
Fast Pay Books tracks those payments all year and tells you who needs a form, so you're not reconstructing a season of Venmo and checks at the deadline. Our 1099-NEC guide walks through exactly who gets one and when.
Most solo HVAC techs file a Schedule C with their personal return. Every expense you tag in Fast Pay Books maps to a Schedule C line, so the form is essentially done before you start it. Equipment and parts, vehicle costs, tools, gauges, recovery machines, insurance, phone, EPA 608 certification and license renewals — everything lands where the IRS expects it, and the export goes straight to your CPA or into your tax software.
A solo HVAC tech is fully covered on the Basic plan at $24.99/mo — income and expense tracking, receipt photo capture, mileage, expense categorization, and tax-ready reports. Running a crew or a second entity? Compare plans to find the right fit. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial — a card is required to start, but you're not billed until the trial ends.
Start your free trial, see all features, or view pricing.
HVAC contractors need software that works from the truck, captures equipment and materials as they're bought, logs mileage automatically, and produces tax-ready reports. Fast Pay Books is built mobile-first for solo HVAC techs and small crews who don't want desktop accounting software.
Categorize every condenser, coil, refrigerant purchase, and helper payment as it happens and tag it to the client. Fast Pay Books lets you record the expense from your phone with a receipt photo, so equipment and labor costs are captured accurately instead of reconstructed at year-end.
Yes. The iOS app logs trips between service calls, the supply house, and the shop, and applies the 2026 standard mileage rates of 72.5 cents per mile through June 30 and 76 cents per mile after. That deduction flows straight onto your Schedule C.
If you pay an unincorporated helper or subcontractor $600 or more by cash, check, or bank transfer during the year for services, you must issue a 1099-NEC. Record every sub or helper payment in Fast Pay Books as you make it, categorized and tied to the vendor, so you have a clean payment history to work from at 1099-NEC time instead of reconstructing it from your checkbook.
Yes — it's designed for owner-operators and small crews. The Basic plan at $24.99/mo covers a solo HVAC tech: income and expense tracking, mileage, expense categorization, and tax-ready reports, all from your phone.