How to sell plumbing maintenance agreements that keep renewing

What goes in a plumbing maintenance agreement

Start with the visit, because that's what the customer can see. A typical residential plumbing plan includes one inspection a year: flush the water heater, check the relief valve, look for leaks under every sink, test the shut-offs, run the drains. Some companies add a second visit or a drain cleaning. Write down exactly what the visit covers, so the plumber doing it and the customer paying for it read the same list.

Then the perks, which are what make the plan feel like membership rather than a prepaid service call. The usual set is priority booking, a discount on repairs and a waived trip or service-call fee. Only offer a perk your team will honour on a busy Monday, because a member who gets bumped behind a non-member remembers it at renewal.

Last, the terms: the price, how often it bills, when it renews, and how the customer cancels. Put all of it in one agreement the customer signs before the first charge. A signed agreement is what you point to when someone asks why they were billed.

How to price a plumbing maintenance plan

Your customers will price the plan against your own rates, so do it first. Add up what the included visit would cost as a standalone call, take a little off for the commitment, and spread what's left across twelve months. If the monthly figure looks higher than a customer will say yes to at the kitchen table, trim the visit before you trim the price.

Then check what that price does across your whole customer list. The maintenance plan revenue calculator turns a price, a visit frequency and a sign-up rate into what the program would earn over a year, which is the number that tells you whether a plan is worth running.

When to ask, and who to ask first

Your easiest members are customers you've already fixed something for. The best moment is right after the work, while the problem is still fresh: a water heater replacement, a backed-up main line, a leak that damaged a ceiling. The plumber on site offers it, and the invoice or the follow-up email carries the sign-up link.

Make signing up something the customer can finish without you. With Service Plan Pro, a shareable enrolment link lets them pick the plan, fill in their details, sign the agreement and enter a card from their phone. Put the same link on your website and in a note to past customers, and existing members can come across from a CSV, an Excel file or Google Sheets, each with their own agreement to sign.

Put every member on auto-pay

A plan that has to be invoiced and chased every month stops being worth selling. Card billing fixes that. Card-billed plans charge the member's card through your own Stripe account on each renewal date, monthly or yearly, and send the receipt. The money lands in your account, and Service Plan Pro takes no cut of it.

When a card fails, Stripe retries it over several days, the member is emailed a link to update it, and the membership shows as past due in your dashboard beside the revenue at risk. Members get a renewal reminder before their date, and the agreement renews on the same terms until it's cancelled.

For property managers and commercial accounts that pay by invoice, a recurring invoice plan sends a branded invoice on your schedule instead. The service agreement billing page covers both billing methods in full.

Plumbing maintenance agreement software: what it has to do

Whatever you run it on, the software has four jobs: get the agreement signed, charge on time, put the visits on a calendar, and tell you who's about to lapse. Most plumbing service agreement software arrives inside a full field service platform, with the agreements as one feature among dozens. Service Plan Pro is the narrow version, and it does those four jobs only. You build each plan with a name, a price, a billing interval and a visit frequency of annual, twice a year or quarterly, starting from a trade-neutral template, and add the perks in your own words.

The visit schedule is worked out from each member's enrolment date, so annual inspections spread across the year instead of landing in one week. Every due visit shows on the Schedule page, the whole calendar downloads into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook, and members get a reminder ahead of their visit. The member portal shows each customer their plan, perks, visits and billing.

It runs on its own with no field service app behind it. Connect ServiceM8 and each due visit becomes a job card on the dispatch board. Connect QuickBooks Online and paid invoices, their payments and your Stripe payouts post to your books once a day, each payout as one deposit with the fee on its own line. HVAC companies selling the same thing as a membership have their own page on HVAC maintenance agreement software.

What it costs

Starter is $29 USD a month for up to 100 active subscriptions, Growth is $59 USD for up to 500, and Pro is $99 USD with no limit. Every plan includes signed agreements, card billing and recurring invoices, the visit schedule, failed payment recovery and the member portal. There's a 14-day free trial with no credit card, and the full breakdown is in the pricing section.

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