For HVAC, plumbing and mechanical contractors paying supply houses and subs every month
HVAC and Plumbing Contractor Accounts Payable Automation
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A service contractor with ten or forty trucks buys from the same few supply houses all month, and every delivery ticket, statement and invoice ends up on one office manager's desk. AutoPayables reads each supplier invoice from email or upload, lets you code every line to a job or class, flags the same invoice arriving twice, holds bills above your threshold for approval, and exports approved bills to QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite or Sage. It handles accounts payable. It does not replace your field service software, dispatching or payroll, and this page says so up front.
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Duplicate checks run on every invoice before approval
Line
Level at which each charge is coded, so one invoice can split across units
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Ledger export layouts: QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, Sage
$49
Per month for 200 invoices, one price for the whole account
Accounting sync
What contractor accounts payable needs from software
The parts of the job that keep your office manager keying parts invoices instead of chasing collections.
Capture from email or upload
Supply houses email PDFs, techs photograph tickets and subs send bills. Vendor, invoice number, dates, tax, totals and line items are read into a draft bill with a confidence score, so the reviewer only checks what looks off.
Line-level coding by job
A statement that covers a rooftop unit install and three service calls can be split by line, each to its own job or class in your ledger. Stock purchases for the truck inventory are coded once to inventory.
Duplicate invoice checks
Every bill is compared by file content, by vendor plus invoice number, and by vendor plus amount plus date. The emailed invoice and the month-end statement copy do not both get paid.
Approval above a threshold
Bills over the amount you set wait for the owner or service manager, logged with approver and timestamp. It is one threshold for the account, not a routing tree per branch.
1099 vendor tracking
Subcontractors, haulers and equipment rental yards often need a 1099. Flag them, keep the TIN on the vendor record and export a 1099-NEC CSV at year end.
Coded bills to your ledger
Approved bills export in the import layout your accounting system reads, so your bookkeeper loads one batch instead of retyping each bill.
How a contractor AP week runs here
From a forwarded supply house invoice to a batch in your books.
Set up accounts, jobs and classes
Add the expense accounts and the job or class names you track, so coding is a pick, not a typing job.
Point suppliers at one address
Supply houses and subs email invoices to your AutoPayables address, or the office forwards what techs bring in. Nobody keys line items by hand.
Review flags and code lines
Duplicate checks run on their own. You correct low-confidence fields and assign each line to its job.
Approve and export
The owner approves bills above your threshold, then you export the batch to QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite or Sage.
Where AutoPayables fits a mechanical contractor, and where it does not
An honest read, so you buy the right shape of tool.
Look at field service or contractor suites for
- Dispatching, scheduling, technician apps and customer invoicing
- Price book, flat rate pricing and quoting
- Full construction job costing with committed cost, WIP and retainage
- Retyping every supply house, rental and sub invoice from a shared inbox
What AutoPayables does today
- Supplier invoices only. Dispatch and customer billing stay in your field service software
- Not covered. Costs arrive as coded vendor bills with line detail
- Lines coded to the job or class your ledger uses. Heavy WIP and retainage stay in your construction accounting system
- Invoices read into coded draft bills, reviewed by one person, exported as a batch
Who runs AP this way
Contractors who want clean coded bills for every job without a new operations platform.
Residential service companies on QuickBooks
An owner or part-time bookkeeper who loses days each month keying parts and equipment invoices.
Commercial mechanical and plumbing shops
Teams with a steady stream of supply house, subcontractor and equipment rental bills per project.
Owners preparing for a bonding or lender review
Companies that need an approval trail and consistent job coding before a surety or bank asks for clean books.
Outsourced bookkeepers serving trades
Staff who want an import-ready batch for each client instead of a pile of forwarded PDFs.
Why contractor payables pile up between jobs
A ten-truck service company often sees 150 to 300 vendor invoices a month. Most come from three or four supply houses, plus equipment rental, refrigerant and parts distributors, fuel cards, subcontractors on larger installs, and the occasional permit or disposal fee. The bills arrive as email PDFs, paper tickets in a tech's truck and month-end statements that repeat everything already sent. One person keys all of it, usually between customer calls.
The cost is not only time. A statement and its invoices get paid twice. A rooftop unit lands in overhead because nobody coded the line to the job. A supply house's price creeps up and no one notices. When the surety or the bank asks for job-level numbers, the books are only as good as the keying was.
What changes when invoices are read instead of keyed
AutoPayables reads vendor, invoice number, dates, tax, totals and each line item from a PDF, photo or email, and shows a confidence score on every field. The reviewer corrects what is flagged instead of retyping everything. Lines are coded to the account and job or class you pick, and bills over your approval threshold wait for the owner before anything is exported.
The duplicate checks matter most for trades. Supply houses send an invoice, then a statement, then a reminder. Each bill is compared by file content, by vendor plus invoice number, and by vendor plus amount plus date, so the second copy is flagged instead of paid.
Job coding without a construction suite
Many service and small mechanical contractors do not run a full construction accounting package. They track jobs as classes or customer jobs in QuickBooks Online. That is enough for coding. AutoPayables splits an invoice by line, assigns each line to the class or job, and exports a batch your bookkeeper imports. If you need committed cost, retainage and work-in-progress schedules, that stays in your construction accounting system, and the larger-contractor comparison is on the construction accounts payable automation page.
Approvals that match how a shop actually works
The owner does not want to approve a $42 box of fittings. Set one dollar threshold for the account. Anything below it moves to coding and export, anything above waits for the owner or service manager, and the approval is logged with who and when. This is a single threshold, not a per-branch routing tree, which keeps setup to a few minutes and fits companies with one office.
What it costs
Pricing is published and flat. The Starter plan is $49 a month for 200 invoices and the unlimited plan is $149 a month, one price for the whole account. There is no per-truck or per-seat charge and no sales call to get a number. See the AP automation pricing breakdown for what each plan includes, and compare it against the hours your office spends keying today.
What it does not do
AutoPayables does not dispatch technicians, run a price book, send customer invoices or handle payroll. If you are shopping for field service software, buy that separately. If your pain is the stack of vendor bills on the office manager's desk and the cost of a double payment, this is the part of the stack it replaces. Payments to vendors can be prepared as a file for your bank, and duplicate and approval controls apply before anything is released.
Getting started with a real month of bills
The fastest test is to take last month's supply house invoices and statements, forward a handful to your AutoPayables address and look at the coded drafts. Check how many fields needed correction, whether the statement copies were flagged, and whether the export lands cleanly in your books. If a month of real invoices does not save your office time, you will know before you commit. If it does, the same setup carries into the next month with no new training. For teams on QuickBooks, the QuickBooks accounts payable automation page covers the export in detail.
Frequently asked questions
It depends on scope. Field service suites cover dispatch and customer billing. If you mainly need supply house and subcontractor invoices read, coded to jobs, approved and exported to QuickBooks, Xero or NetSuite, a general AP tool such as AutoPayables does that at a flat published price.
Yes. Each line carries its own account and job or class, so one statement can be split across installs and service calls. Truck stock purchases can be coded once to inventory and handled the way your accountant already treats them.
Route every invoice through one address. Each bill is compared by file content, by vendor plus invoice number, and by vendor plus amount plus date, so the emailed invoice and the statement copy are flagged before approval.
No. AutoPayables handles supplier invoices and payables. Dispatch, scheduling and customer invoices stay in the systems built for them, and approved bills export to your accounting system in its import layout.
Yes. Flag a vendor for 1099, store the TIN on the vendor record, and export a 1099-NEC CSV at year end for your accountant or filing service.
Published pricing starts at $49 per month for 200 invoices, with one price for the whole account rather than per truck or per seat. The pricing page lists the larger plans, and you can try it on a real month of invoices first.
Stop keying supply house invoices by hand
Try AutoPayables on a real month of invoices from your supply houses and subs and see the coded batch before you commit.