Service agreements

Most service businesses do not live on one-off work. Pest control sells quarterly programs, lawn care sells seasonal schedules, HVAC sells maintenance memberships, janitorial sells monthly contracts. That recurring book is predictable income, and it is the difference between chasing work every January and starting the year already sold.

A service agreement is that relationship, sitting between the client and the jobs it produces.

Set up an agreement

An agreement records who the client is, what is being done, how often, how much, and for how long. From that, everything else follows.

You create one from the client, so it lands against the right record from the start.

Send it from its page for your client to sign. Its link is emailed to the client’s own address, or to another of their contacts chosen under Send to — though the code that proves who signs always goes to the client’s own email or phone (see Choose who a document goes to). Until they sign, the agreements list, the client’s page and the agreement’s own page mark it Awaiting signature; one you have not sent yet says Draft, and so does one the client declined. Signing starts it: it reads Active.

If your client agreed in person or over the phone, They already agreed on the agreement’s page starts it instead, recorded as accepted by you rather than signed, which is how it reads to anyone who looks later. Those are the only two ways an agreement starts: there is no switch that starts one with nothing recorded about who agreed.

Its invoices are taxed at its client’s sales tax rate — the rate whose ZIP codes include the client’s address — unless you choose another under Edit billing, or No tax, and say why. An agreement made before you set up sales tax rates keeps the rate typed on it until you choose one. Invoices it has already raised keep the rate they were made with. When its client is tax-exempt, its new invoices carry no sales tax whichever rate it has, and Billing says so.

Let it produce the visits

From the schedule, the agreement produces visits — the times work is due. When it is time to do the work, a visit becomes a job.

That job is an ordinary job in every respect. Time, expenses, compliance records, photos, margin, invoicing — all of it behaves exactly as it does on work you booked by hand. Nothing about a recurring visit is a second-class record, which is what makes your reporting mean the same thing across your whole book.

Several locations

For a client with more than one location (see Keep a client with several buildings), one agreement can cover as many of them as you like — a property manager signs once for every building. On the agreement’s page, Locations → Edit: tick each location it covers and give each its part of the price for every billing period. The agreement’s price becomes their sum, and the Amount per billing period on its form follows them.

Each location then has its own visits: every date the schedule produces is a visit at each location, listed with the location’s name. Each is booked as a job at that location — its address, its getting-in details and its sales tax — and names only the units the agreement covers there; a unit at a location it no longer covers comes off it. Skipping or moving a visit, or giving it different people, is that location’s alone.

Each location is billed on its own invoice every billing period, at its price, taxed at its own address — unless you chose one rate under Edit billing, which then applies to each — and naming the location, so the client’s accounts payable matches each to its building and a statement puts them together, paid in one payment. The agreement’s Billing panel lists each period’s invoices by location. A period already billed as one invoice before the agreement named its locations is not billed again for each. If the client pays by a saved card, each location’s invoice is charged on its own. A new price for one location is not scheduled for the next term the way the whole agreement’s is; it is a change the client signs (below).

Its member benefits — a waived diagnostic fee, a member discount, priority — apply to work at the locations it covers, not at the client’s other buildings, and not to work at an address that is none of them. The job form and a request’s summary show what applies at the location chosen.

An agreement that names no locations covers its service address, as it always has, and its visits are booked at the location at that address; its invoices are taxed there, and its benefits apply wherever the client’s work is. You choose the locations before the client signs, and change them afterwards only with their signature (below); the client’s own page lists them and their prices, and so does the signed copy. On the client’s Work tab, narrowed to one building, its agreements are the ones covering it.

Change the locations after the client signs

Once the client has signed, the locations change only with their signature. On the agreement’s page, Locations → Change locations: tick the locations it should cover, each with its price — keep one, take one off, add one, or give one a new price — choose who it goes to under Send to, and Send to the client to sign. Your client gets an email saying what the change does, a line each, and what the agreement will cost; on their agreement page they sign it with the same code their signature took, or decline it.

Nothing changes until they sign. Signed, the change takes effect at the start of the next billing period that has not been billed yet: a location taken off keeps its visits and its invoices until then, and one added starts then, so no period is ever billed for half its locations and a period already paid for keeps the visits it paid for. The Locations panel shows each location’s dates, and the price until the change and after; so does your client’s page. A unit at a location taken off comes off the agreement, though its visits there until the date still name it.

While a change waits for your client, the panel says so, line by line, with Withdraw; sending another replaces it. Every change you send stays listed on the agreement — signed, with who signed it, when and from what date; declined, with their reason; or withdrawn — and the client’s history lists each one sent, signed or declined.

An agreement made before it named any locations is changed the same way to name them: until the change takes effect it goes on as one agreement at its service address, at its old price.

Let it charge a saved card

Your client can save a card against the agreement from their agreement link, on a page Stripe hosts — separately from signing, and never typed by you. The agreement then charges it when its invoice is issued or falls due, as its Automatic payment panel is set. A charge that fails is tried again on a schedule, you and your client are both told, and every attempt is listed under Charge attempts; after repeated failures the agreement pauses itself, raising no visits or invoices until you resume it. Your client can remove the card at any time, and the agreement goes back to ordinary invoices. Automatic payment is on every plan, with Stripe connected.

When a card has to be saved again

A card your client saved before your payments moved to your own Stripe account is copied there at its first charge. When Stripe will not copy it, nothing is charged: the attempt reads Card to be saved again, your client is emailed and their agreement page asks them to save your card again, you are emailed too, and the Automatic payment panel says The client’s card has to be saved again, naming the card and the day they were asked. Automatic payment starts again when they save it; until then its invoices are paid the ordinary way.

See it from the client’s page

A client on an agreement shows it on their page’s Work tab, along with what it entitles them to, and what they have been worth to you over time on its Financials tab. So the question “are they on a plan, and what does it cover” is answered where you are already standing when somebody rings.

Why it is worth doing

The recurring book is what makes a service business worth something. It is predictable, it is what a buyer pays a multiple for, and it is visible here as a number rather than a feeling — which is the first step to growing it deliberately.

Add it, or put it away

Service Agreements is one of the tools your business chooses: the owner adds it, or removes it, under Tools in the main menu — see Your tools. An agreement raises its visits and invoices on schedule only while it is on, and the same goes for the renewal notice and the visit summary and upcoming-visits digest to your client. While it is removed, no agreement raises anything. Removing it deletes nothing you have recorded; add it back and everything is where you left it, its settings included.