Customer Story

Based in Toronto, Adaptive Climates has evolved from a relationship-driven HVAC startup into a high-performing commercial contractor trusted to service some of the region’s most complex facilities. Over the past decade, the company has scaled into a 14-technician operation supported by four office staff, specializing in data centers, manufacturing facilities, and condominiums where uptime, documentation, and precision define success.

The Challenge: Spreadsheets Don’t Scale

Early on, the Adaptive Climates team relied on spreadsheets, handwritten work orders, and manual billing processes. While those tools worked initially, they quickly became a liability as the company grew. Billing the work often spilled into weekends, invoicing regularly lagged months behind completed work, and the team had limited visibility into what had been completed, billed, or missed altogether.

“We were good at Excel,” explained Adaptive Climates co-founder Jason Pitre. “But spreadsheets don’t scale when you’re responsible for hundreds of assets across dozens of sites.”

Without a centralized system, contract work was frequently falling behind schedule, and missed invoices quietly eroded cash flow. Leadership knew they needed a commercial-grade platform that could connect assets, contracts, scheduling, and billing into a single workflow.

Selecting the Commercial-Grade Platform Built for Service Contractors

As the business outgrew manual tools, the Adaptive Climates leadership team evaluated several field service platforms. Each fell short for the same reason. They were built for residential or project-first contractors and lacked the commercial capabilities needed to manage complex assets, preventive maintenance, and long-term service planning. Adaptive Climates ultimately chose ServiceTrade because it was purpose-built for service-first commercial contractors.

With ServiceTrade, Adaptive Climates operates on a centralized system to track assets, schedule preventative maintenance, manage deficiencies, generate quotes, dispatch technicians, and automatically flow completed work into invoicing. Asset records include photos and documentation, ensuring technicians and customers shared the same visibility into each system.

ServiceTrade’s dispatch board became a turning point in maximizing service schedules. Instead of planning one to two weeks ahead, the team can now forecast workloads up to three months in advance, and jobs are grouped more efficiently, reducing idle time and unnecessary travel.

The QuickBooks integration with ServiceTrade eliminates manual billing handoffs and gives the office team a reliable, system-driven way to quickly and easily turn completed work into accurate invoices.

“ServiceTrade gives us the visibility I used to have at a Fortune 100 company when I was running a business with tens of millions in revenue,” said Pitre. “That level of insight used to require massive corporate infrastructure. Now we have it as a growing contractor.”

Real Results Across Revenue, Productivity, and Margins

With ServiceTrade’s support and guidance, Adaptive Climates replaced blind spots and manual processes with real-time visibility and control. Ongoing collaboration helped the team quickly adopt new workflows and apply the platform consistently as the business scaled.

The impact was immediate and measurable. Within four months, Adaptive Climates uncovered $200,000 in previously unbilled work. This was revenue that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Invoicing shifted from a weekend chore to a system-driven workflow. The company increased invoice volume by 75% while reducing invoicing staff by 50%. Invoices that once lagged two to three months are now sent within the same week of job completion.

Scheduling inefficiencies were replaced with forward-looking planning. Using the dispatch board, Adaptive Climates increased technician productivity by 100%. This brought delayed jobs back in line with contracted timelines through improved efficiency with ServiceTrade.

Standardized quoting eliminated margin inconsistency. The consistent markup tool in ServiceTrade allowed Adaptive Climates to bring their margins up to industry standards., helping them increase overall profitability by 3% per year since 2023.

Customer communication improved as well. Photos and videos attached to work acknowledgements and quotes reduced clarification questions by 95%, accelerating approvals and minimizing delays.

Together, these connected workflows, reinforced by hands-on Customer Success support, gave Adaptive Climates the visibility, control, and confidence to scale without adding unnecessary overhead. With ServiceTrade as its operational backbone, leadership now operates with real-time insight across assets, schedules, and financials, enabling proactive planning and earlier issue detection.

“I can be on a holiday anywhere and know exactly what’s going on,” said President John McLean. “The workflow allows everyone to view information at any moment in time.”

From Keeping Up to Moving Forward

As core processes stabilized, John described a shift from reacting to operational issues to proactively running the business.

“Now I know I’m in control,” he said. With fewer administrative distractions, leadership could focus on where the business was headed instead of chasing paperwork.

That control extended beyond the business itself. By reducing manual work and constant follow-up, John was able to spend more time where it mattered most.

Instead of evenings consumed by paperwork and operational cleanup, he could step away from the business with confidence—knowing systems were in place and work wasn’t falling through the cracks. For John, that meant being more present with his family, not just keeping the business running.