HVACBossPro Blog — Maintenance Agreements

HVAC Maintenance Agreement Software: The Complete Guide for Heating and Air Companies

Almost every heating and air company sells maintenance agreements. Far fewer run them well. The plan gets sold at the kitchen table, written on a paper form or typed into a spreadsheet, and then it depends on somebody remembering to call the member in March and again in September. When that person gets busy, the visits slip, and the member who paid for two tune-ups gets one, or none.

This guide walks through how an agreement program works when software does the remembering: how plans are set up, how visits come due, how the office books them, how members sign up and pay, and where landlords and commercial buildings fit in.

Start With What an Agreement Promises

Strip a maintenance agreement down and it promises three things: regular visits on a schedule, some kind of member benefit, and a simple way to pay. Everything the software does should serve those three promises. If you want the bigger picture of how agreements fit with dispatch, estimates and billing, the HVAC maintenance agreement software page gives the overview. This guide goes deeper on each part.

The schedule is the promise that breaks most often, so it comes first.

Plans Set by Days Between Visits

In HVACBossPro, a recurring plan is set by the minimum number of days between visits. That one number covers most of what an HVAC shop sells:

• 180 days — the classic spring AC tune-up and fall furnace tune-up. Two visits a year, roughly six months apart.
• 365 days — a yearly plan, for customers who only want one check, or for equipment like a boiler that gets one visit before the heating season.
• 90 days — quarterly preventive maintenance for commercial buildings and rooftop units.

The count starts from the last completed visit. If a spring tune-up is done in April, the fall visit comes due in October. If the April visit slipped to May, the fall visit moves with it, so members are never booked two weeks after their last tune-up. One-time service calls and repairs live in the same system, they just do not repeat.

The Waiting List: Where Due Tune-Ups Show Up

When a plan's days have passed, the visit appears on the Waiting List, a live map and list of every piece of recurring work that has come due. Nobody has to run a report or scroll a spreadsheet. The pins are colored by status:

• Not due yet — coming up soon, useful for planning a route a little early.
• Due now — ready to book.
• Overdue — past a 7-day grace after the due date. These members have waited longest.

Because it is a map, the office can see clusters. Eleven due tune-ups in one part of town is a full day for the tune-up van. A lone overdue pin across town is a stop to fit in next to a repair call already headed that way. The pin colors are covered in detail in Not Due, Due, Overdue: Reading the Pin Colors on Your HVAC Tune-Up Map.

From the Map to a Booked Route

Due visits get assigned to a van and a day on the dispatch board. The board filters by van, auto-routes Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, and lets the office set the order by hand or drag a job to another day. A common setup in a small shop is one van on repair calls and one on tune-ups, so the no-heat call on a cold morning never bumps a plan member who was booked a week ago.

The tech sees the same route on their phone, in the browser on iPhone or Android with no app store download. Each card shows the equipment on that address: system type, brand, model, serial, tonnage, year installed, filter size, where the unit sits and how to get to it. “Central AC + Furnace · Trane XR14 · 3 ton · installed 2012 · filter 16x25x1.” The tech loads the right filters before leaving the shop and walks in knowing the furnace is in the garage and the attic ladder is in the hall closet.

Members get automatic on-the-way and arrived texts, and they can pick reminders the night before or when they are next on the route.

Selling the Plan and Signing Members Up

The best time to sell an agreement is at the end of a repair call, when the customer has just felt what a broken system costs. HVACBossPro gives you a few ways in:

• On an estimate. Add your maintenance plan from your service list. The customer approves online, and the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job.
• Through your website. The sign-up form captures the customer's details and a card. It flows into Form Responses, and one click converts it into a client.
• From the customer app. Existing customers can sign up for services and pricing you offer, including a maintenance plan.

Once someone is a member, tag them Maintenance Plan. Tags show on the client, so whoever answers the phone knows they are talking to a member before they quote a wait time.

Pricing, Inclusions and Member Benefits

The software does not set your prices, and it should not. You decide what a plan costs and what it includes. Many shops price a two-visit plan somewhere around what they would charge for two separate tune-ups, with a small break for committing up front, say $179 a year against a $99 one-off tune-up. Common inclusions are the two visits, a filter at each visit, a cleaned condensate line and a look at capacitors and contactors. Common benefits are priority booking when the weather turns and a member discount on repairs.

Whatever you choose, write it down and keep it. A priority-service promise you cannot keep in a heat wave does more damage than no promise at all. Pricing and inclusions each get their own guide in this series.

Getting Paid for Agreement Work

An agreement with a card on file is easy to collect. When the tech taps Complete, the invoice is created and the card can be charged right then. Some shops would rather bill the plan fee on a schedule instead of per visit, and that works too. Past-due follow-up handles the cards that fail, and members can update their card and pay invoices from the customer app.

Landlords and Commercial Buildings

A landlord with twenty rental homes is one client with twenty addresses, each with its own equipment and its own tune-up schedule. Set that client to Monthly and they get one statement each month covering every visit, with each line labeled by address. Commercial buildings work the same way, usually on a 90-day quarterly PM plan, with every rooftop unit or system recorded on the address.

Keeping the Program Healthy

Agreements are a long game. Members renew when they get both visits on time and feel looked after. They cancel when a visit gets missed, when the price surprises them, or when they sell the house. Keep a custom field or a note for why someone left, use tags and reports to watch the member list over time, and look at the Waiting List every week so overdue pins never pile up.

The rest of this series takes each part in turn, starting with why agreements are worth the effort at all: Why HVAC Maintenance Agreements Smooth Out the Slow Seasons. When you are ready to see the whole setup in one place, head back to the HVAC maintenance agreement software overview.