SideQuest for HVAC distributors on QuickBooks Online
If you run an HVAC parts and equipment business on QuickBooks Online, your purchase orders show up three different ways. Contractors fax them and the fax gateway emails a PDF. Larger HVAC service companies attach a PO printed straight from their dispatch software. Smaller shops copy the line items into the email body and skip the attachment. SideQuest reads all three formats from your inbox, matches the lines against your QuickBooks item catalog, and builds a draft Estimate that your order desk reviews and submits.
What changes for you
PO intake stops being a typing exercise
Inbound POs from your contractor customers get parsed automatically. The header anchor (Customer, Bill to, Ship to, PO ref, Net terms, Need-by) gets pulled into the right QuickBooks fields. Your CSR opens Claude and sees the draft Estimate ready to review, not a blank line to start from.
Tonnage and BTU specs route to the right SKU
HVAC part descriptions hide the spec inside the line text. 'R-410A 25 lb cylinder' or 'condenser fan motor 1/4 HP 208/230V' are full sentences, not clean part numbers. SideQuest's fuzzy matcher works against both your PN list and your item descriptions, so a customer who types the spec instead of the PN still lands on the right SKU.
Reply drafts go out before the customer follows up
When the draft Estimate passes the clean gate (every line matched, no price variance, customer in good standing), SideQuest drafts the reply email back to the contractor confirming receipt, line totals, and ship date. Your CSR clicks send. The customer never has to chase you.
Why this fits HVAC parts and equipment
Catalog quirk: spec-in-description
HVAC catalogs lean on descriptions to carry the spec. Tonnage, voltage, refrigerant type, BTU rating, blade count, all live in the text. SideQuest's matcher reads the description alongside the PN and the customer's own part number, so the right SKU lands in the draft even when the contractor only types '3 ton condenser, 208V single phase' with no PN attached.
Customer mix: net-30 contractors plus COD walk-ins
Your AR pattern is split. Recurring service contractors run on net terms with a credit limit, and walk-in techs pay COD. SideQuest's Customer Risk Gate (v0.12.0) reads QuickBooks Customer.Balance and overdue Invoices on every parse. If a contractor is over limit or has invoices past 60 days, the draft Estimate gets flagged 'customer credit hold' before your CSR sees it. The COD walk-in flow stays untouched.
Seasonal volume swings
Cooling season hits and order count doubles in three weeks. SideQuest scales the throughput your CSR can handle without hiring. Throughput is a function of how fast your CSR can review drafts, and reviewing a pre-matched draft runs at a different speed than typing one from scratch.
Start free for 30 days
The Solo tier covers up to 100 POs per month. Setup is install the connector, point it at your Gmail and your QuickBooks Online file, and let it parse your next inbound PO. No credit card to start.
Quick-start guide See pricingFAQ
Does SideQuest handle line items written in HVAC spec language instead of part numbers?
Yes. The matcher reads the description and the customer's own part number alongside the PN. A line like '4 × 410A 25lb' gets fuzzy-matched against your catalog descriptions. If the match is confident, it lands on the draft. If not, the line gets flagged for review and your CSR picks from a shortlist.
What about contractor POs that come in as scanned PDFs from a fax gateway?
SideQuest runs scanned PDFs through OCR with a trust gate. If the OCR output passes the structural confidence threshold, the lines flow into the parser. If it doesn't, the draft gets flagged with the low-quality reason so your CSR knows to look at the source PDF, not the parsed text. Optional cloud OCR (Azure Document Intelligence) runs as a rescue on hard cases.
Will SideQuest auto-submit on every PO or do we stay in the loop?
Default is human-in-the-loop. SideQuest builds the draft and your CSR submits. Auto-submit is opt-in per customer through a clean-gate rule: only POs from named customers with every line matched, no price variance, and clean credit get auto-submitted. Everything else lands in the review queue.