Ruth King at HVACR Business Management Magazine offers great advice on six actions you must take to increase your maintenance customer base. Offering these preventive maintenance/service agreement contracts to your customers helps customers avoid equipment outages, helps them increase the lifespan of their equipment, and helps you strengthen the relationship with your customers.
Whether your goal is to sell to Commercial or Residential customers, the Preventive Maintenance/Service Agreements add-on module for Intuit Field Service Management will help you and your team deliver on those service contracts and manage billing through our integration with QuickBooks Pro, Premier, and Enterprise Edition.
Map view of pending service agreement visits
Get More Business – This module enables you to set up recurring work orders based on the contract you sell to the customer–intervals of weekly, monthly, seasonally, and just about anything in-between (such as every third Monday at 9:15am) are available. The module also alerts staff about upcoming contract renewals.
You define a list of services that need to be provided as a checklist. You then associate the different pieces of equipment at the customer site to each checklist and service interval. For example, you may perform a “5-point winter checklist” on a roof-top unit annually in the late autumn, and perform a different “10-point spring checklist” on the same unit annually before the start of summer. Your technicians see the appropriate checklist on their Field Service Management mobile app (works on all Android and all Apple devices), as well as equipment attributes. The equipment attributes area is designed to track serial numbers, warranty information, as well as update information regarding pressure readings, equipment conditions, etc. and monitor trends over time.
Scheduling Made Easy – This module auto-creates work orders based on the intervals you define. Work orders with recurring appointment times can be assigned directly to preferred technicians who are most familiar with the customer’s equipment. Work orders can also be created as “to be assigned” and “to be scheduled”, and then viewed as a list (such as by Zip code) and geographically on the map. Your service manager/dispatcher can easily see which service techs are in the area and available–and assign accordingly.
Get Paid Faster – This module allows you to define three different payment methods, all integrated with your QuickBooks. You can collect a fixed amount for each visit (such as $99 for each seasonal check-up), and collect a fixed amount on the next visit. The third option is to have the module rely upon a “memorized transaction” inside QuickBooks, whereby you can provide service on one schedule and invoice for payment on a separate frequency (such as invoice $25 per month throughout the year for the Preventive Maintenance Agreement while providing service quarterly). Also, the module instructs your technicians to apply a discount to the customer invoice (if that is part of the contract). Integration with QuickBooks adjusts your inventory accordingly (such as by technician truck).
Update Your Customers – the Customer Notifications feature within Field Service Management sends a message to your customer regarding their upcoming appointment and keeps them updated throughout the process.
Watch this demonstration to learn more about the Preventive Maintenance/Service Agreement module for Intuit Field Service Management!
