The first cold week of the year, and the phone starts at seven. Four no-heat calls before nine, two of them from customers on your maintenance contract who reasonably expect to be first. Your engineer is halfway across town on a job that was booked as a service and has turned into a part replacement. Somebody has to decide, right now, who waits and who does not — and that decision is being made from memory, in a van, on a phone that keeps ringing.
ProTakip is field service and job management software for heating, ventilation, air conditioning and boiler service businesses. It runs on Android and iOS, works offline, and the first three months are free.
Work orders that survive the day
Every call becomes a job with an address, a customer, an appointment and a description, and it moves through four stages: to attend, in progress, ready and completed. The board is shared, so whoever is answering the phone can see which engineer is on what and roughly when he will be free.
An engineer works from his own list on his phone. He opens the job on arrival, writes what he found and what he did, and closes it when he leaves. Those notes are the job sheet, and they are the thing you will need in eight months when the same unit fails again and the customer says it was never fixed properly.
Because start and finish times come from the engineer's phone rather than the schedule, you also get honest data on how long different work actually takes. Most HVAC firms discover their standard service slot is optimistic by twenty to thirty minutes, and priced accordingly.
Equipment history is the whole value
A heating engineer's real asset is knowing what is installed where. The customer card in ProTakip carries the address, the full job history and free-text notes, which is where the equipment record lives: make and model, install date, what was replaced last time, where the isolator is, that the loft ladder is broken and you need to bring your own.
Turning up already knowing the unit changes both the call and the van stock you load. On the phone it changes the conversation too — a customer who hears you recall the model of their boiler without being told stops shopping around.
On Android, ProTakip puts that context on screen while the phone is still ringing: name, last job, outstanding balance. It works with no internet connection, which matters in a plant room or a basement. The caller ID guide covers how it is set up and what it changes in practice.
Maintenance contracts and the annual service
Contract work is what makes an HVAC business worth something: predictable revenue, planned visits, and a reason for the customer to call you rather than whoever is cheapest. What kills it is the diary. Services fall due, nobody notices, and a year later the customer has forgotten they had a contract at all.
ProTakip's calendar and appointment management holds recurring visits with reminders, so the annual service on a system you commissioned last March turns up as a job you can schedule rather than a date you have to remember. Automatic WhatsApp messages using your own templates handle the confirmations and the on-my-way notes without a phone call each time.
Estimating, quoting and the number the customer remembers
HVAC quoting spans two very different jobs: the call-out with a fixed rate plus parts, and the install quoted as a project. ProTakip handles both, with pricing by the hour, per unit, or as a fixed package, and a shared list of extras — call-out fee, out-of-hours, filter sets, additional units, commissioning.
The point of a shared list is that the number your engineer says on site is a number you would recognise. Verbal estimates that never get written down are where service businesses lose money quietly, one job at a time. The method for building a list that holds up is in our pricing guide, and the discipline transfers directly to service work.
On completion, print a job sheet or receipt to a Bluetooth thermal printer so the customer has a record before your engineer leaves the property. Paper handed over on site prevents most billing disputes on its own.
Dispatching and the geography of a working day
Every job carries a map location, jobs can be grouped by area, and each one is assigned to an engineer or a vehicle. When an emergency comes in you can see who is closest rather than who answers first, which on a cold morning is worth an extra call a day per engineer.
Push-to-talk and in-app messaging keep the office and the vans connected without a phone call for every question. Our guide to scheduling and route planning is written for firms running one to five vehicles and deals with the practical trade-offs: how tight to make appointment windows, and when adding one more job to a day costs you two.
Getting paid on service work
Service businesses carry more unpaid balances than they think, because the engineer leaves before the money is sorted and the paperwork follows a week later. ProTakip records what was charged on each job, what has been paid, and what remains, with the balance on the customer card and a till record covering income and expenses by period and by engineer.
It is not an accounting package and does not file anything on your behalf. It is the trading record — the part that tells you which customers owe you money and which types of job are actually profitable. Our collections and balance tracking guide covers a chase routine for commercial and domestic customers alike.
Teams, permissions and getting started
Engineers join with an invitation code and are given only the permissions they need — their own jobs and customer details, without company-wide figures. Performance and completed work are visible per person, which makes subcontractor and apprentice work easier to review honestly.
Your existing customer list and history can be imported from Excel or another program; the data migration guide explains what carries over. If you are still comparing tools, the nine criteria hold for any field service app. Firms that also cover general trades work often run electrical and plumbing jobs in the same account, and those doing installs as part of larger projects add renovation and repair alongside.
Frequently asked questions
Can I keep a record of the equipment installed at each address?
Yes, on the customer card. Make, model, install date, previous parts fitted and access details go into the notes and job history, so an engineer arriving at an address already knows what is there and what was done last time.
Does it handle recurring maintenance visits?
Yes. Recurring appointments with reminders are handled in the calendar, so annual services and contract visits come up as scheduled jobs rather than dates someone has to remember. Confirmations can go out automatically over WhatsApp.
Can engineers use it with no signal in a plant room or basement?
Yes. The app works offline — jobs can be opened, notes written, payments recorded and jobs closed — and everything syncs when the connection returns. Caller ID on Android is offline by design for the same reason.
Can I print a job sheet on site?
Yes, to a Bluetooth thermal printer, including battery-powered models that live in the van. Handing the customer a printed record of the work and the price before you leave prevents most later billing arguments.
Is ProTakip an accounting or invoicing package?
No. It records the trading side — what was agreed, what was charged, what has been paid and what is outstanding — along with a till record by period and by engineer. It does not replace your accountant or file anything on your behalf.