Trades HVAC TechniciansPricing and profit

HVAC Business PricingYour hourly rate was set by what the last bloke charged, not by what it costs you.

Pricing for air conditioning and refrigeration owners who are busy and still not making money. Your charge-out rate, your callout fee, after-hours breakdown work, install margin and maintenance agreements, all built from what the work genuinely costs you to deliver.

Have a chat with Greg

A painted scene of an air conditioning technician kneeling at an outdoor condenser unit against a brick wall, gauges and vacuum pump beside him

The week this is about

Sound Like Your Air Conditioning Business?

Your charge-out rate came from a guess

You picked a number years ago because it sounded about right locally. It has never been rebuilt from award wages, on costs, vehicle, tickets, insurance, unbillable travel and the hours nobody pays you for. So every busy month ends with less in the account than it should.

The callout in the heatwave costs you money

You send a tech out at 8pm on a Saturday in February. The award penalties are real, the drive is an hour each way, and you charge a callout fee you set in a calmer year. The customer is grateful. You are effectively working for nothing.

You discount to win, then wear the warranty

The quote gets trimmed to beat a competitor. Then the ceiling space is tighter than measured, the electrical needs upgrading, and two callbacks follow. Nothing was variable in the quote, so every surprise comes out of a margin that was thin to begin with.

Underpricing does not feel like a crisis, it feels like being busy, and that is exactly why owners run at it for years.

A trade business owner working alone at the kitchen table late at night, laptop open and paperwork spread across the table, work boots and tool bag by the door

Pricing and profit

Here Is What We Do About It.

The Academy fixes pricing at the root. The Profitable Pricing Masterclass shows you how to build a charge-out rate from your real cost base, price installs with variations that hold, and set after-hours and callout fees that pay for themselves. The Profit & Freedom Masterclass links that rate to the profit and the time you actually want.

The Tradies App

Free with an active ABN in Australia and New Zealand. No card, no trial clock.

Learning Hub

The full lesson library inside the Tradies App, self paced, $199/month.

Business Foundations

Weekly live sessions hosted by Greg Allan, where you bring your own numbers.

Free tool, no sign-up

Charge-out rate calculator

Put in what labour costs you, how many hours you can actually invoice and what the business spends, and it builds the rate that covers all of it and leaves a margin. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Work out your rate

How it works

Three Steps, Starting Tonight.

Step 1

Work out what an hour really costs you

Not the wage. The wage plus the ute, the insurance, the phone, the unbilled hours and the time you spend quoting. Most owners have never put that number on paper.

Step 2

Price off the number, not off the last bloke

The Profitable Pricing Masterclass takes you through building a rate that carries your overheads and a margin, so you stop pricing against whoever is cheapest this month.

Step 3

Hold the price and watch what happens

The Profit and Freedom Masterclass covers the part nobody warns you about: what to do when someone pushes back, and why losing the wrong job is a win.

Why you get me

I built the coaching company everyone else runs. Then I took it apart.

Most coaching companies work the same way. You enquire, you get a salesperson. You sign up, you get a coach who has never run a trade business.

I know, because I built one. I grew the Academy to 35 staff, a CEO and 15 coaches. It ran without me.

And I hated it. The bigger it got, the further I was from the owners I started it for.

What gets me up in the morning is getting under the hood of a trade business and helping the owner hit their goals in the least time possible.

So I restructured the whole thing.

When you enquire, you speak to me. If you are accepted into the Academy, you work with me. Directly.

And with agentic AI, the results come sooner than most owners can imagine.

Places are limited. I only take on owners who are committed and ready to do the work.

Greg Allan mid-explanation with his hands open, talking to a trade business owner across a desk

Who you will be talking to

I built Response Electricians in Perth into a 30+ staff business with more than 1,950+ five-star reviews.

A general manager runs it day to day. I live in Byron Bay.

I have trained 9,000+ trade business owners across Australia and New Zealand.

What AI actually changes

The old way. The new way.

Illustration: a trade business owner standing over three office staff buried in paperwork at night. — The old way
More customers meant more people doing your computer work, and you paying for all of it.

Illustration: a tradesman shaking hands with a homeowner in her driveway, his phone showing jobs quoted and invoiced. — The new way
You stay with your customers and your team. Agents run the office your way.

The old way

Grow, then hire people to do the computer work.

Every new customer brought more quoting, invoicing, chasing, scheduling and reporting.

So you hired people to do it. Office staff, bookkeepers, admin.

None of it is billable, and every hire costs wages, sick leave and another person to manage.

Profit and time only grew as fast as you could add people.

The new way

Keep the human work. Give everything else to agents.

Your people do what only people can do: looking after customers and leading the team.

Everything else goes to agents that do it your way, instantly, any time it is needed.

No sick leave. No capacity problems. They scale as far as the business does.

So the only people you add are the ones facing your customers and your team.

A human-centred business that runs on systems you build in minutes. Nobody still running the old way can compete with it.

What changes

What Air Conditioning Business Pricing Actually Changes.

Three things air conditioning business owners walk away able to do.

Rebuild your charge-out rate from wages, on costs and overheads you can prove

Set a callout and after-hours fee that covers penalty rates instead of absorbing them

Price a maintenance agreement on an Australian cost base with margin built in

A trade business owner watching his child play sport on a Saturday morning, coffee in hand and phone face down — Nights and weekends back

A trade business owner and his partner in the kitchen looking at a tablet showing the numbers going up — Work that actually pays

A trade business owner shaking hands with a new apprentice in the work yard — A good hire who stays

A trade business owner standing calmly in the yard while his crew load two utes behind him — Out of the middle of everything

9,000+tradies trained4.9★Google rating4.9★App Store rating

Questions

HVAC Business Pricing, Answered.

How do I work out my hourly rate from what I pay a technician?

Start with the correct award rate for their classification, then add on costs: superannuation, leave, workers compensation, allowances, licences and training. Add vehicle, tools, insurance and office overhead. Divide by the hours you can genuinely bill, not the hours they are paid. Then add margin. The Academy's pricing training walks the whole calculation with your figures.

Should I charge a callout fee for air conditioning breakdowns?

Yes, and it should reflect what attending genuinely costs, including travel, vehicle and the wage rate that applies at that hour. A free callout is a discount you give before you know what the job is. Price the attendance, then price the repair. The Academy's training covers how to set it and how to explain it so customers accept it.

How do I price a maintenance agreement so it is still profitable in year three?

Cost the visits properly, cap what is included, exclude parts and refrigerant beyond a stated allowance, and build in an annual review. Most templates online are American and priced on an American cost base, which is why so many agreements go backwards here. The pricing training, and Greg, build yours from Australian labour costs.

HVAC Technicians

The Other Ways We Help HVAC Technicians.

Training

Have a Chat With Greg About Your Business.