How to write a business plan for a boiler service start-up

1. Draw the service area by drive time, not distance

Your service area is the set of places you can reach quickly enough that the job still makes money. Draw it in minutes, not kilometres.

Start with your base, then list every town or neighbourhood within 20, 30 and 40 minutes in normal traffic. Mark the barriers: bridges, ferries, mountain passes, highways that jam at rush hour. A circle on a map hides all of these.

For each zone, estimate how many homes and buildings likely use boilers. Your provincial heating mix is a starting point. Natural gas is the main heating fuel in most Alberta and Saskatchewan households, for example, while electricity dominates in Quebec (the region pages on our areas page give the Statistics Canada figures). Within a city, older housing stock, larger detached homes and low-rise apartment buildings tend to be where hydronic systems cluster. Walk or drive the neighbourhoods; chimneys, radiators visible through windows and boiler vents on side walls tell you a lot.

The test: if more than a third of your planned calls are in the 40-minute zone, your windshield time will eat your margin. Narrow the area or price the drive.

2. Write down your price assumptions

You do not need final prices in a plan, but you do need written assumptions. List each service and the number you expect:

Then add the cost side for each: your loaded hourly cost (wage, payroll costs, van, insurance, tools, phone, software, divided by billable hours), and the parts margin you expect.

A worked example. Suppose your all-in cost of running the van and yourself is $95,000 a year, and you expect 1,300 billable hours. Your loaded cost is about $73 an hour before you earn a cent of profit. If your diagnostic fee assumes an hour on site and 30 minutes of driving, it has to be at least $110 just to cover your time. Many founders underprice the service call because they compare it with their old employer's rate, which was set by a company with a dispatcher and a full schedule.

3. Size the opening parts stock

Parts stock decides your first-visit completion rate, which is the share of calls you finish without a second trip. A second trip costs you an hour or more of unpaid time and costs the customer another day without heat. It is the fastest way to lose a new customer.

Build the opening shelf in three layers:

1. Universal consumables. Fittings, gaskets, thread sealant, fuses, wire, small valves, fill and purge supplies. Cheap, used constantly.
2. Common failure parts. Ignition and flame-sensing components, circulator pumps, expansion tanks, pressure relief valves, air vents, zone valves and actuators, low-water cut-offs, pressure gauges. These finish most no-heat and leak calls.
3. Brand-specific parts. Control boards, gas valves, sensors and fans for the two or three boiler brands and generations you will see most. This is where money gets tied up, so buy only for the equipment that dominates your area.

Where do you learn what dominates? From your own call history if you have worked in the area, from supplier counter staff, and from the first 50 calls you run. Keep a simple log of every part you wished you had. After three months, that log is your restocking list.

A worked example. Suppose your first quarter has 120 calls and 18 needed a second trip for parts. Your first-visit completion rate is 85%. If the parts behind 12 of those 18 were the same four items, stocking those four takes you to 95%, and saves roughly 12 to 18 hours of unpaid driving per quarter. That is the kind of decision the plan should make visible.

The plan should also say who decides on technical choices. We make no technical or code decisions; your licensed judgement and your supplier's guidance do.

4. Set a hiring trigger in writing

The second person in a boiler company is usually hired too late, after the owner is exhausted and customers have gone elsewhere. Write the trigger down now.

Good triggers are measurable:

• Calls turned away or pushed past 48 hours for four weeks in a row in heating season.
• Owner billable hours above 45 a week for eight weeks.
• Admin work (quotes, invoices, scheduling) taking more than 10 hours a week of the owner's time.

The plan should also say who comes first. Often it is not a technician. A part-time person answering the phone and booking calls can free 10 to 15 billable hours a week for the owner, which may be worth more than a second van in year one. When the trigger is a technician, decide between experienced and apprentice, which the hiring guide covers in detail.

5. Build the marketing budget backwards

Do not start with "how much should I spend on marketing". Start with what the plan needs to happen, then work out what that costs.

A worked example. Your revenue plan needs 10 installs and 120 care-plan customers by the end of year one.

• Installs. If you close 1 in 3 qualified install quotes, you need 30 quotes. If 1 in 4 enquiries turns into a quote you can run, you need 120 install-type enquiries.
• Agreements. If you can sign 1 in 4 repair or maintenance customers onto a plan, and you run 400 such calls, that is 100 agreements. You need 20 more from a direct offer to past customers or from referrals.
• Enquiry cost. If your early paid search costs $70 per genuine enquiry, 120 install enquiries alone would cost $8,400 if they all came from ads. In practice some come from your listing, reviews and referrals, which is why those come first in the first-year marketing plan.

Now the budget has a reason behind every line, and you can see which assumption to watch: if quotes close at 1 in 5 instead of 1 in 3, you need 50 quotes, not 30, and the plan changes.

Test the plan against all 52 weeks

Most boiler plans look healthy because they are built on the heating season. Lay your revenue out week by week across a full year. You will usually find a gap from late spring to late summer.

That gap is where the care plan earns its keep: agreement visits booked in the shoulder months, plus the repairs and replacement quotes they produce. It is also where marketing shifts from urgent repair searches to maintenance and replacement content. If your weekly view shows three months of near-zero revenue, either the agreement target is too low or the cost base is too high for year one. See building your service-agreement base for how to design the plan around that gap.

What to leave to other professionals

A business plan touches areas we do not advise on:

• Financing. Your lender decides what it needs. We give no lending advice.
• Legal structure and contracts. A lawyer should review your care-plan terms and any partnership agreement.
• Tax. Your accountant should advise on structure, sales tax registration and the financial statements.
• Licensing and codes. Your provincial regulator sets the rules. Each region page links to the official bodies.

Checklist before you call it finished

• Service area drawn in minutes, with barriers marked
• Every price written as an assumption, with the cost behind it
• Opening parts list in three layers, plus a "parts I wished I had" log
• Written hiring trigger and the first role you will hire
• Marketing budget built backwards from installs and agreements
• A 52-week revenue view with the summer gap addressed
• Four monthly checks: calls, average ticket, first-visit completion, agreements

If you would like help turning this into a finished plan, that is our business plan service. Otherwise, use it as it is; that is why it is free.