Fourlane Helps HVAC Company Migrate From ComputerEase To QuickBooks Enterprise
Overview
This heating and cooling company serves customers across multiple states, a footprint that demands precise tracking of labor, materials and taxes. With over 20 year-round employees and additional seasonal help, the organization’s leadership depends on accurate job costing, timely payroll and clear financial reporting to bid competitively and manage growth. When the team decided to replace its long-standing ComputerEase system, it turned to Fourlane for help designing, testing and launching a new QuickBooks Enterprise environment that would also integrate FieldEdge for field operations.
The Challenge
The company faced a multifaceted transition.
- Existing ComputerEase file held four years of historical financials, 94 open accounts receivable, 16 open accounts payable and four bank or credit card accounts that required monthly reconciliation.
- Company processed payroll in eight states with roaming employees, a complexity that ruled out QuickBooks Assisted Payroll and demanded an alternate provider.
- Company also needed to preserve job-level detail without inflating project costs or extending the timeline.
- Five internal users plus office staff needed carefully defined roles to keep data secure while maintaining day-to-day efficiency.
- Finally, the entire conversion had to align with an October 1 go-live date so FieldEdge could begin syncing customer and job information without interruption.
The Solution
Fourlane proposed a three-phase engagement for design and sandbox testing, data conversion and training.
The team focused first on design.
- Collected company settings
- Established account numbers
- Enabled classes for Commercial, Residential, Service and Retro work
- Set a conversion closing date of September 30 to protect historical data
A sandbox file allowed the company to review workflows before anything became final.
Because Intuit payroll could not accommodate roaming employees, Fourlane coordinated with ADP to bridge time entries from FieldEdge into payroll and then feed summary data back into QuickBooks. During design sessions held weekly, Fourlane created custom user roles: “Office Name AR” with access only to receivables, “Office Name AP” with payables and payroll authority, and a shared full-access profile for owners that blocked deletion permissions. The Controller kept accountant-level access to oversee reconciliations and reporting.
The conversion phase pulled:
- Trial balances for 2021-2024 year-end and 2025 month-over-month activity.
- Historical numbers came in as summary journal entries, limiting file size while preserving comparative accuracy.
- Open AR and AP were imported from spreadsheets that listed customer or vendor names, document numbers, dates and amounts.
- Detailed closed-job transactions stayed in ComputerEase, to hold costs steady, while the company extracted job summaries that would remain available for future bidding analysis.
Training completed the project. Fourlane delivered twelve support hours, an annual review commitment, sales tax setup across state counties and FieldEdge sync rules. The company purchased three QuickBooks Enterprise licenses and installed the software on its own server, giving additional users access through remote workstations.
The Results
By September 29 the final QuickBooks file was ready for FieldEdge’s last round of testing, meeting the customer’s internal deadline and preserving the October 1 launch. The company entered its first ADP payroll on October 3, with hours flowing from FieldEdge—including idle time and shop hours—into non-billable payroll items that posted correctly to the general ledger.
Proper Roles and Permissions give:
- AR ability to generate invoices and statements without touching vendor data.
- AP to process payables and payroll, free from banking screens.
- Owners access to real-time visibility into income and expenses but could no longer delete transactions, a safeguard that had been flagged as essential.
The transition also positioned the finance team to:
- Reconcile four bank and credit card accounts inside QuickBooks, using the same account numbers that existed in ComputerEase.
- Maintain job summaries outside the accounting file to reduce conversion complexity and help keep the overall budget within scope.
Regular design meetings ensured every setting, from duplicate bill number warnings to decimal-based time entry, was tested before go-live.
Conclusion
The company now operates on a unified platform: FieldEdge drives customer and job creation, ADP handles multi-state payroll filings and QuickBooks Enterprise records the full financial picture. The monthly subscription, sandbox testing approach and ongoing Fourlane support give the team confidence that future adjustments—whether new users, additional states or workflow tweaks—can be handled without disrupting day-to-day operations.
Fourlane Is Here To Help
If you’re looking for powerful solutions to your business’ needs, reach out to us by email, or call us at 1-800-931-2120. We’d love to help you navigate any challenges and grow your business.
About Client
Heating and cooling company that serves customers across multiple states.
Industry
HVAC Services
Location
US