Rooftops, chillers, packaged systems · multi-site accounts
Commercial HVAC breaks the tools built for one house and one furnace. Thermal is built the other way around — the record is the unit on the roof, and the account is whatever set of units happens to sit under it.
What it is
Commercial HVAC in Thermal is not a separate product or a module you switch on. It is the base equipment spine: every rooftop unit, chiller, air handler and packaged system gets its own serialized record carrying nameplate data, refrigerant type and charge, and every visit ever made to it — tied to the site it sits on and the agreement that covers it.
The difference shows up on multi-site accounts. A retail chain or a hospital campus with a dozen units across a few addresses doesn't need a dozen unrelated job histories. It needs one record per unit, and a dispatch board that already knows a technician is standing on that roof.
What a commercial HVAC asset carries in Thermal, by class. This is the part that makes multi-site PM routing and callback history work — everything downstream reads from here.
| Asset class | On the record | What it drives |
|---|---|---|
| Rooftop unitRTU | Nameplate, refrigerant type and charge, service history, coverage status | PM route, callback pattern, covered vs. billable at the panel |
| ChillerCH | Nameplate, refrigerant charge, readings from each visit, warranty status | Agreement coverage, compliance record, warranty claim |
| Air handlerAHU | Nameplate, parts fitted, full visit history | PM frequency on the agreement, repeat-failure history |
| Packaged / split systemPKG | Nameplate, refrigerant, coverage status, site and branch | Which branch owns the call, what the customer is billed |
If your equipment list is currently a spreadsheet, a dozen binders, or the contents of one estimator's memory — that's the normal starting point. Migration covers how it gets in and who does the work.
Not generic field-service pain. These are the ones that show up once you're running rooftops across more than one address.
Four sites in the same industrial park, all on the same PM schedule, and the system books them as four separate dispatches on three different days.
One service agreement can cover every unit across a customer's locations. The work orders it raises route by proximity, so a technician clears three sites on one trip. The scheduling rules live on the preventive maintenance page; the number it moves is PM compliance rate.
The tech opens the panel and has no idea what's in the system, because the refrigerant log is a binder in the shop and the last guy who touched this chiller left in March.
Type and charge are captured on the equipment record itself, not in a parallel log somebody has to remember to update. The next technician sees it before the panel comes off — and the compliance queue reads from the same field, the same one behind mean time to repair.
Third callback on the same rooftop in eight months. Three different techs, three separate work orders, and nobody has looked at them side by side.
Every visit, part and reading hangs off the same serialized unit, so a repeat failure reads as a pattern on the equipment record instead of starting the diagnosis from nothing. It's the same history the dispatch board shows when the call comes in, and the same data behind callback rate and first-time fix rate.
Both of them are hard to produce when the maintenance book and the project work live in different systems.
"What did the Northgate contract actually make us last year?" — and the honest answer is a week of pulling invoices apart.
Tiered pricing, escalations and per-unit coverage feed a live contract P&L, so the renewal conversation starts from a real margin number instead of last year's invoice total. Full detail on the service agreements page.
"Did we make money on the Harbour Point retrofit?" — asked four months after the last tech left the site.
Labour, parts and sub cost capture against the job as it happens — that part is live today. Full project-level margin rollup across a multi-visit retrofit is early access and still landing. See job costing for what's finished and what isn't.
Cost capture live · project rollup early accessThree boundaries worth knowing before a demo. Two of them are deliberate.
Thermal runs service, maintenance and retrofit work. It is not a construction platform — no submittal logs, no schedule of values, no retainage. If the majority of your revenue is bid work, we're the wrong shape. Mechanical contractors running both sides usually keep the construction side where it is.
Thermal builds the invoice and hands it over. QuickBooks Online sync is in early access; the Sage Intacct and Business Central adapters are on the roadmap. The integrations page lists what moves today — read it before you plan around it.
There's no logo wall on this page because we don't have one worth showing yet. What we can do is run your own multi-site account through the product on a call. The security page is written to be forwarded to whoever signs off.
Refrigerant-heavy work — supermarket racks, process cooling, low-temp — is a different set of problems. That page is refrigeration.
Every claim above is a page you can go read. Nothing on this page is a capability that only exists for commercial HVAC.
Answered at the level of detail they're actually asked at.
Yes. One service agreement can cover equipment across several sites for the same customer, and PM scheduling routes by proximity so a technician can clear a few stops on one trip rather than being dispatched separately to each.
Yes. Refrigerant type and charge sit on the equipment record itself, alongside nameplate data and the full service history — not in a separate spreadsheet or binder that has to be kept in step.
The equipment record is the centre of the schema rather than an attachment on a work order. Every job, reading and agreement reads from the same serialized unit, which is what makes multi-site PM routing and callback history work the way they do.
No. Thermal runs beside it and never inside it. QuickBooks Online sync is in early access; the Sage Intacct and Business Central adapters are on the roadmap. Your accounting system keeps the general ledger, payroll and retainage.
Cost capture against a job is live today. Full project-level margin rollup across a multi-visit retrofit is early access and still landing, so don't plan around it yet.
Yes, but Thermal only runs the service side. There are no submittal logs, no schedule of values and no retainage — construction accounting stays where it is. Contractors running both usually put the service and maintenance book in Thermal and leave the bid work alone.
The chain with units nobody has a serial number for, the PM schedule three people maintain by hand, and the contract you can't price because you don't know what it cost to service. We'll build it on the call.