How much you can pay yourself as an HVAC business owner depends on your costs, profit, and cash flow. To put your earning potential in context, we compare average business revenue by team size across the UK, Australia and New Zealand, then explain what affects take-home pay and how to improve profitability.
Starting your own HVAC business? Use our Charge-Out Rate Calculator to work out what you need to charge.
To understand what an HVAC business owner could earn, it helps to start with what the business brings in. These figures give you a benchmark for businesses of different sizes, before costs and owner pay are accounted for.
Here’s the average annual invoiced revenue (total income, not profit) for HVAC businesses on Tradify, rounded to the nearest thousand in each country’s local currency. Next, we’ll look at what affects how much reaches the owner’s pocket.
|
Country |
Sole trader (1 person) |
Small team (2 to 4 people) |
Medium team (5 to 12 people) |
|
£185,000 |
£378,000 |
£1,225,000 |
|
|
A$417,000 |
A$836,000 |
A$1,973,000 |
|
|
New Zealand |
NZ$488,000 |
NZ$626,000 |
NZ$1,593,000 |
The larger teams bill more on average in all three countries. Small teams in the UK and Australia bill roughly twice as much as sole traders, but that doesn’t mean their owners take home twice as much.
Staff increase your costs in terms of wages, equipment, and maybe even vehicles. If you’re thinking about hiring, the useful question is whether the extra work will cover those costs and leave enough profit to make growing worthwhile. The trick to all of this is maintaining a healthy profit margin.
Billing £185,000 is one thing. How much ends up in your pocket is another. Parts, wages, fuel, and insurance all take a share, so two HVAC businesses with similar revenue could leave their owners with very different incomes.
To get a clearer picture, check:
What’s left after expenses
Your annual profit and loss statement shows what the business earned and what it cost to run.
Whether your pay is already included
If your salary is counted as an expense, the remaining profit is on top of that salary.
What’s actually available
Check your bank balance, what customers still owe and what’s due to go out. Money earmarked for tax or a supplier bill isn’t spare cash.
There’s no set percentage you can expect to take home. Your accountant can help you find an amount that works for you and covers the business’s commitments.
How you pay yourself depends on your business structure and the rules in your country.
Company owners: Options can include a salary or dividends paid to shareholders. Each has its own tax, reporting, and payment requirements, so check which applies before taking money out.
Ask your accountant how to record payments to yourself and meet your local tax obligations. Check guidance from HMRC (UK), the ATO (Australia) or Inland Revenue (New Zealand).
Before deciding how much to take, check:
Upcoming bills
What needs paying before the next customer payments arrive?
Tax
How much needs setting aside, and when is it due?
Cash reserves
What can you leave in the business for quieter periods or unexpected costs?
To get an idea of an HVAC business owner salary, start with what your jobs earn and what it costs to deliver them. Improving profit may give you room to pay yourself more, depending on tax, cash flow, and what the business needs.
Check profit on each job
Compare the invoiced amount with actual labour, materials and other job costs. Look for underpriced work, missed charges and jobs that regularly take longer than expected.
Build overheads into your pricing
Your rates need to cover vehicles, insurance, software and admin time alongside labour and parts, with room for profit. Paperwork still takes time, even when you do it after hours.
Make quoting and follow-ups easier
Send clear quotes promptly and follow up on outstanding decisions. Tradify’s Australian and UK Top-Earning Trades reports recommend professional quotes and easy follow-ups. Track your acceptance rate to see whether changes help.
Review your job mix
Compare the margins, time involved and payment terms for installs, call-outs and servicing. Maintenance agreements may bring recurring revenue, but check the costs and workload before committing.
If you’re considering hiring or buying equipment, budget for the upfront and ongoing costs. Work out how much extra profitable work you’ll need, and when customers are likely to pay, before assuming growth will mean higher take-home pay.
For a practical example, read how one HVAC business got its admin and accounting sorted.
The cost of starting an HVAC business depends on which country you’re in, the van and gear you buy, and whether you start from scratch or buy an existing business. Here are some things you'll want to budget for:
The main risks are:
Finding good people. HVAC&R News reports that smaller Australian HVAC and refrigeration businesses face hiring difficulties, citing industry accounts and workforce statistics.
Our advice? Get written quotes for vehicles, tools, insurance and software before you work out your budget.
Starting an HVAC business can be worthwhile if your pricing and workload cover running costs, provide the income you need and leave room for unexpected expenses. Compare that return with your startup investment, working hours and what you could earn as an employee. Running your own business means you call the shots on pricing, hiring and which jobs you take on. It also means you wear the slow months, the late payers and the breakdowns on your own gear.
Here’s a simple test. Work out how much you need to take home after tax, then compare that with what the business can realistically keep. The Charge-Out Rate Calculator gets you through the first step. Your accountant can check the rest.
To see how HVAC businesses handle quoting, scheduling, and invoicing, explore Tradify's HVAC Business Software. You can also start a free 14-day trial.