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Service Agreements help you bill your customer on a separate frequency from when you visit. By creating a Service Agreement for a customer, you’ll have the option to bill the customer monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually for their agreement. You can also connect work orders to the agreement to track when you need to visit the customer. Make sure that you get familiarized with The Service Agreement Center before proceeding.
To get started with Service Agreements, head over to Administration > Service Agreement Types and create the different types of Service Agreements your company offers.
In the example above, our demo company offers different levels of Service Agreements: silver, gold, and platinum level which all carry different benefits. There are several ways you could offer your customer a Service Agreement, but the common options are:
- Offering one type of agreement
- Offering different packages
- Residential vs. commercial agreements
- Full service vs limited service agreements
Now that you have created names for your Service Agreements, you will need to create billing items that represent the total dollar value for those Service Agreements. If you are using QuickBooks Online, you're going to need to create these items in QuickBooks Online and import them into Smart Service Cloud. Learn more about QuickBooks Online Integration here.
If you are NOT using QuickBooks Online go to Administration > Items and then create a new item by clicking on the plus symbol on the bottom right of your screen.
Be sure to name each item the same as you did when creating Service Agreement Types. Enter category and description information.
In this example, our Gold Maintenance Agreement lasts for a year, so enter the rate that you will be charging for the entire year.
The dollar value of this item will cover the contract period, and be divided by the billing frequency to determine the customer’s payment amount. You do not need to list individual items that will be used during the life of the contract, or the dates you plan to visit the customer here. We’re going to create an appointment next to track those things. The service agreement itself is all about billing the customer appropriately.
Now that you have created your Service Agreements, and have created corresponding billing items, you can start scheduling them. Open up a customer record, or create a new one. Click on the "Service Agreements" tab, then click on "New Service Agreement".
Each section of the Service Agreement has different header names with options contained within. Check out each option below but the important ones are:
- Service Agreement Info
Description
Type
- Service Agreement Details
Expiration Date
Contract Period
Billing Frequency
- Invoicing Details
Next Invoice Date
You can ignore the Contract Amount and Billing Amount for now. These fields will be automatically populated after you add billing items later.
After adding some of the information for the fields described above. Save your Service Agreement at the bottom, which will send you back to the customer record. Click on the service agreement to open it back up again and access the following options.
Click on the “Billing Items” tab and then click on "New Item". Add the item that you created earlier. In this case, Gold Maintenance Agreement.
If you have serviced this customer in the past, you might already have their equipment on file. Click on the "Equipment" tab to see. If there is no equipment record for the customer, you can always add the information here or have your tech get the customer equipment information when they visit the customer.
Learn more about customer equipment below.
You will be sent back to the customer profile. Now it’s time to schedule the initial visit with a Work Order that is attached to the Service Agreement. It’s important to note that you won’t be billing from the Work Order; rather, you will be billing from the Service Agreement.
However, you still need a work order for multiple reasons. In some instances, you might charge the customer for other items on top of this Service Agreement contract, such as "Air Filters."
Or maybe you decided that the air filters are to be built into the total cost of the Service Agreement, but you still want to keep track of your air filter inventory. Also, if you are using the Smart Service Cloud Mobile App, you will need a Work Order to send your technicians out to perform the service.
To create a Work Order, click on the “Appointments” tab. Then select “New Work Order”.
Give the Work Order a description. Then, schedule the initial visit. Assign the initial visit to an employee or a crew. Fill out any other field if you would like. Then hit “save”.
Now that we have the initial visit scheduled, you can schedule the monthly visits now, if you would like. You can always edit them later if need be.
Click on the work order that you just created. Go to the “Accounting” section near the right of your screen. Click on the arrow next to the work order. Find the “Schedule” tab near the top of your screen and click on it. Then, click on edit at the bottom of your screen.
On the left you can see the initial visit. Since we will be visiting this customer every month for a year on the 30th day, in the "Recurring" section, we will select "Monthly" and then select "Day" followed by 30. Since this Service Agreement ends after a year, we will fill in the "End Date" accordingly. Be sure to hit save.
To learn more about how recurrences work, click on the link below.
Once the visit to the customer is scheduled and the service tech starts working, they can click on the work order and add any items, such as an air filter. Also, they can add information about the equipment, including warranty information and images.
Since you are not charging from the work order, the service tech can simply mark the work order as complete when they are done for the day.
Make a note to visit the Service Agreement Center to find agreements that are ready to be billed. You could carry out this process monthly, or more frequently depending on when you choose to bill for agreements.
Click on the Filter tab to find agreements that are ready to be billed. By selecting "Active Ready to Bill", this will find all Service Agreements which have a next invoice date of today or earlier. Select all, or some of you wish. Then click on the invoice button on the left.
There are other filters available as well to help you track and manage the Service Agreements you have entered into Smart Service Cloud for your customers. This is a great way to find Service Agreements that are missing billing information.
You can undo a filter by selecting the “Clear Filter” option at the bottom of the screen. Doing so will display all of your Service Agreements.
Learn more about all of our filtering features by clicking on the link below.
