Invoicing for refrigeration technicians in Canada: taxes by province, flat rate, warranty and recurring invoices
How to invoice an HVAC-R service call in Canada: time-based, flat rate, under warranty or plan, with taxes by province (GST/QST in Quebec, HST in Ontario, GST + PST in British Columbia) and recurring billing for maintenance contracts.
In the field, a refrigeration tech does not always invoice the same way. An emergency call is billed by time, a small agreed job is billed at a flat rate, a warranty return is billed at $0, and a grocery store under contract is billed as a monthly plan. A good HVAC-R app should follow that reality, not fight it.
In Canada there is one more constraint: taxes change from one province to another. Charging a Quebec QST to an Ontario customer would be a mistake. FrigoTechPro automatically applies the right taxes based on the account's province.
Service-call billing modes
- Time-based (timer): the tech starts the timer on arrival, the app rounds to 15 minutes and applies the hourly rate (day, evening, night, weekend, holiday).
- Flat rate: an agreed amount, with taxes-included or on-top, and parts included or billed separately.
- Under warranty ($0): no charge to the customer, but the real time and parts are tracked internally so you know the true cost of the visit.
- Accepted quote plan: the invoice uses the price the customer accepted, not a recalculation by the hour.
Taxes by province, automatically
Every invoice uses the tax structure of the company's province:
- Quebec: GST 5% + QST 9.975%.
- Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador: HST.
- Alberta, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut: GST 5% only.
- British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba: GST 5% + provincial sales tax (PST / RST).
A tax is only added if the matching tax number is set in the profile — as the law requires, you do not charge a tax you are not registered for. When the amount is shown "taxes included", the app computes the base backwards so the displayed total is exact to the cent.
Recurring invoices for maintenance contracts
A preventive maintenance contract (for example $150/month for a grocery store) can automatically generate a draft invoice each period, with the province's taxes. Nothing is sent automatically: the tech reviews, then sends. No missed invoice, no duplicate.
From field to invoice, without retyping
The point is not to add paperwork, but to remove it: the work order, the parts and the measurements feed the PDF report and the invoice directly. The technician stays in the field; the admin follows on its own.
Read next: preventive maintenance contracts in refrigeration, field tools for the refrigeration tech, or see FrigoTechPro plans.