All-in-One HVAC Fleet Tracking and Management App

If you’re in the market for an HVAC fleet-tracking solution, there are two main types of software available:

1. GPS fleet tracking and management apps: Software made for the sole purpose of fleet tracking and management. These solutions generally include the application of GPS trackers that provide real-time location data, and telematics devices that provide diagnostic data and maintenance alerts for fleet vehicles.

2. HVAC contractor software with fleet tracking: Holistic business software that provides fleet-management software alongside the other digital tools HVAC businesses use to run their operations. For example, CRM, scheduling and dispatching, estimates and proposals, technician mobile app, timesheets and payroll, and more.

While fleet tracking-only apps can provide significant value to HVAC companies, they have some distinct disadvantages compared to HVAC contractor software with fleet tracking. 

Specifically:

• They require HVAC businesses to adopt another software, with a different user interface to learn, another software provider to pay, etc. 

• Fleet management solutions often won’t integrate seamlessly with the other apps you use to run your business, such as your CRM, dispatching software, or payroll software, so you don’t benefit from the efficiency gains of an all-in-one solution. 

• Using more disconnected apps leads to workflow inefficiencies for staff who are forced to jump back and forth between different platforms, wasting time and increasing overhead. 

As a result, many HVAC contractors would benefit from a holistic HVAC software solution — like ServiceTitan — which offers built-in fleet tracking and management through Fleet Pro.

In this article, we’ll explain how ServiceTitan Fleet Pro streamlines fleet tracking and management, and seamlessly connects these processes to the rest of an HVAC business workflow. 

The Key Challenges That Fleet Pro Solves for HVAC Businesses

Vehicles are some of the highest-value assets in any HVAC business, and yet, before adopting a fleet-tracking solution, HVAC companies are often completely in the dark as to: 

• Where their vehicles are throughout any given day

• What vehicle maintenance needs to be scheduled

• What vehicle components might have failed (or be on the verge of failing) 

Furthermore, HVAC business owners and managers also have no insight into the driving behavior of their technicians. They don’t know: 

• Whether they’re driving safely or not

• Whether they’re following company driving policies (e.g. no cellphones, smoking, eating while driving, etc.)

• Whether there have been any driving accidents, incidents, or close calls

These are just some of the problems that a fleet-tracking solution like ServiceTitan Fleet Pro can solve for HVAC businesses, allowing you to extend the life of your vehicles (and protect your bottom line) through timely preventative maintenance, as well as monitor driver behavior to ensure your technicians have safe driving habits.

Now, let’s look at how Fleet Pro works, and how it ties into the rest of ServiceTitan. 

How HVAC Fleet Tracking and Management Works in ServiceTitan

GPS Vehicle Tracking: Know Where Your Vehicles Are At All Times

With our HVAC vehicle tracking system, business owners and dispatchers can see a live map of where every HVAC technician's vehicle is throughout the day, including where they’ve been, where they are now, and where they’re going.

In the left-hand column, you can see at-a-glance vehicle data such as the last GPS timestamp, current address, and last known traveling speed of the vehicle. By clicking on an individual vehicle card, you can access a complete “breadcrumb” trail of where that vehicle has been.

This data allows business owners, managers, and dispatchers to have full visibility into the usage and location of their vehicles. So, when they want to investigate a particular issue — such as a potential accident, or a delay that led a technician to show up an hour late for a service call — they have the data they need to figure out what was going on, when, and where.

In addition, companies have the option to set up geofencing, which allows you to: 

• Create unique and custom geographic boundaries within North America. 

• Use geofences to create alerts to get notifications for whatever vehicle activity happens in that area.

By setting up a geofence for each technician’s home, companies can see when they arrive or leave their home with the company truck. Or, by setting up geofences at your local supplier locations, companies can see how often (and for how long) technicians are visiting your suppliers. Whatever specific locations you wish to track, you can do so with geofencing. 

Technician Driving Data: Monitor Speeding Events, Hard Braking, and More

In addition to gaining visibility into where your vehicles are, Fleet Pro also provides data into how your vehicles are being driven. This allows businesses to hold their technicians accountable for driving safely, treating their vehicles properly, and representing their brand appropriately while on the road. 

Fleet Pro measures driving data such as:

• Distance traveled

• Drive time

• Idling time

• Speeding

• Hard braking

• Acceleration

• Harsh cornering

• Accidents

• Fuel consumption

Businesses can even set up scorecards to track these driving statistics for individual technicians: 

With this information, service business owners and managers can see which technicians are driving safely and which aren’t. And they can use this data to coach technicians who need to drive more carefully, ultimately improving driver safety across the field staff. 

Vehicle Camera Data: Monitor Driver Behavior and Document Incidents

For more insight into how your vehicles are being driven and treated, Fleet Pro offers a dashcam option that will record events taking place inside and outside of your vehicles. 

With this feature, in addition to the driving statistics discussed above (speeding, hard braking, etc.), businesses can also monitor whether or not technicians are following company policies when driving. 

For example, if you have rules around not eating, using cellphones, or smoking while driving, our dashcams can pick up and alert you when this behavior is taking place. It can also trigger a beeping sound that lets technicians know they’re doing something they shouldn’t be, which can decrease the prevalence of the issue and help prevent accidents. 

The dashcam also includes a forward-facing camera. This way, if an incident or accident occurs, it’s documented. Managers have the information they need to determine who is at fault. And companies can also receive insurance discounts for installing these dashcams.

All of these clips can be accessed through the camera data section of Fleet Pro, where you can view details such as when and where each event happened. 

Vehicle Diagnostic Data: Prevent Breakdowns and Improve Fleet Maintenance

Lastly, Fleet Pro provides HVAC companies with detailed insights into the health of every vehicle in their fleet. Telematics tracking devices monitor vehicle diagnostic data such as battery charge, exhaust issues, electronic component malfunctions, sensor problems, and more.

Instead of finding out about vehicle issues before it’s too late, businesses can receive real-time alerts when a vehicle needs maintenance or has a failing part or system. With this information, HVAC services can prevent downtime of vehicles, tailor vehicle maintenance schedules, and keep operating costs down by preventing vehicle system failures within their fleet.

How Fleet Pro Seamlessly Integrates Fleet Management with Surrounding HVAC Business Workflows 

As we discussed above, the biggest advantage of using Fleet Pro instead of standalone fleet-tracking software is that it can be accessed from the same platform where your office and field staff are already operating, and it integrates seamlessly with surrounding workflows such as dispatching and payroll.

For example, as Fleet Pro tracks your technicians throughout the day, the ServiceTitan dispatch board is automatically updated according to technician statuses, and dispatchers can leverage their real-time location data to better communicate with customers about technician ETAs (creating better customer experiences!), as well as make informed decisions and schedule adjustments on the fly to avoid delays getting to job sites. 

Furthermore, Fleet Pro’s proprietary Automated GPS Timesheets Integration intelligently updates technician timesheets according to GPS data, saving you time and protecting you from excess wages or wage theft claims.

Then that data automatically flows into your payroll and accounting systems without the need for manual or duplicate data entry into multiple platforms. 

Automations such as these can save office staff significant time, prevent errors that can affect profitability, and help HVAC businesses scale operations more efficiently and effectively. 

Want to See These Features in Action?

For a free, live, one-on-one walk-through of the features we describe throughout this article, schedule a call today. We can walk you through our Fleet Pro product in addition to the other foundational features of ServiceTitan that have been tailored specifically for the HVAC industry.