Sales · How-to
Maintenance agreements for contractors: what to include, how to price and sell them
A maintenance agreement is a scheduled-visit plan with a few perks, like priority service or a repair discount, sold for a monthly or yearly price. Build it around the work that prevents breakdowns in your trade, price it from your own visit costs, follow your state’s auto-renewal rules, and offer it at the end of every service call.
What a maintenance agreement does for a small shop
A maintenance agreement (also called a service plan, membership or club) is a promise to come back on a schedule for a set price, plus a few perks. The customer gets a system that breaks less and a company that knows their house. You get scheduled work in slow months, customers who call you first when something fails, and a list of homes to sell replacements to when the time comes.
ServiceTitan, which sells software for running these plans, describes service agreements as a source of predictable, recurring revenue during slower seasons [2]. That’s the main draw. A plan sold in July fills a tune-up slot in October, when the phones are quiet in a lot of markets.
The catch is that a plan is a promise. Sell more than your crew can deliver and members get skipped, then cancel, then complain. Build the plan around what you can actually do on schedule. Plans are the “keep” half of the last stage in the contractor sales guide.
What to include, by trade
Each trade’s plan should be built around the work that actually prevents failures. For HVAC, ENERGY STAR’s checklist is a good public baseline: check cooling in the spring and heating in the fall, before contractors get busy [1]. Its list includes tightening electrical connections, lubricating moving parts, checking the condensate drain, cleaning coils, checking refrigerant, and inspecting gas connections, burner combustion and the heat exchanger [1]. Other trades don’t have a single public checklist, so the rows below are typical examples to adapt, not standards.
| Trade | Visits (example) | What the visit covers | Common perks |
|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC | Two a year: cooling in spring, heating in fall | The ENERGY STAR checklist items above, filter check, written condition report | Priority scheduling, a repair discount, no extra after-hours fee for members |
| Plumbing | One a year | Water heater check and flush where appropriate, visible leaks, shutoff valves, water pressure, drains, sump pump test | Priority scheduling, member repair pricing, annual camera inspection discount |
| Pest control | Quarterly | Exterior treatment and inspection, interior service on request, monitoring stations | Free re-service between visits if pests return |
| Lawn care | Per round through the season | Fertilizer and weed control rounds; mowing on a weekly plan | Aeration or overseeding priced as add-ons for members |
| Electrical | One a year | Panel inspection, GFCI and AFCI testing, smoke and CO alarm check, surge protection review | Priority scheduling, member repair pricing |
Whatever the trade, every visit should end with a short written report and photos. That report is what makes a member feel the plan is worth renewing, and it’s where you honestly note anything that will need repair or replacement.
What the agreement itself should say
Put the plan in writing, even if it’s one page. ServiceTitan’s guidance lists the contractor’s responsibilities, payment terms and amounts, and contract length and termination as the core terms [2]. In practice, cover:
- What’s covered. Each visit, what’s done on it, and which equipment (one furnace and one AC, or every system in the house).
- What isn’t. Parts, refrigerant, repairs and anything found broken, unless a perk says otherwise.
- Price and billing. Monthly or annual, and the payment method.
- Term and renewal. Twelve months is common, and ServiceTitan notes month-to-month options appeal to customers who want less commitment [2]. Say whether it renews automatically and how you’ll remind them.
- How to cancel. A simple method, any refund for unused visits, and when cancellation takes effect.
- Scheduling. Who books the visit and what happens if the customer can’t be reached.
- Perks in plain numbers. “15% off repairs” is clear; “member savings” is not. (That 15% is an example, not a recommendation.)
- Transfer. Whether the plan transfers to a new owner if the house sells.
How to price a plan
Price from your own costs, not from a competitor’s postcard. ServiceTitan’s advice is to run enough of your own numbers to make sure each agreement is profitable [2]. A simple method:
- Time the visits. Average on-site time plus drive time for each visit in the plan.
- Cost the labor. Multiply by your fully loaded hourly labor cost (wages, payroll taxes, insurance, truck).
- Add materials. Filters, chemicals, fertilizer, small parts the visit includes.
- Cost the perks. Estimate what discounts and priority service give away in a year.
- Add overhead and margin. The same targets you use on regular work.
- Sanity-check against your single-visit price. The plan should cost the customer a bit less than buying the visits one at a time, and still pay you properly.
Worked example (illustrative numbers only): Two HVAC visits at 1.5 hours each including drive, at a loaded labor cost of $60 an hour, is $180. Add $20 in materials and $40 for the expected value of the repair discount: $240 in cost. At a 50% gross margin target, the plan is $480 a year, or $40 a month. Use your own figures; these are made up to show the math.
Monthly billing usually feels easier for homeowners, while annual billing gets you cash up front and fewer failed payments. Offer both if your payment system handles it. If you sell plans in tiers, the logic in our good-better-best pricing guide applies.
Renewals and auto-renewal laws
Auto-renewal keeps members, but it’s also where plans get businesses in legal trouble. This isn’t legal advice; it’s a map of where the rules are.
Federal. The FTC’s “click-to-cancel” amendments to its Negative Option Rule were struck down by the Eighth Circuit on July 8, 2025, before they took effect [5]. The Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act still requires clear disclosure of terms, consent before charging, and simple cancellation for plans sold online [5]. In March 2026 the FTC opened a new rulemaking on negative option practices with an advance notice, and noted these practices are governed by a patchwork that includes Section 5 of the FTC Act, that same online-sales law, the Telemarketing Sales Rule and state automatic renewal laws [6].
State laws are stricter, and growing. Some examples:
- California requires clear disclosure of renewal terms before the sale, the customer’s affirmative consent, a written acknowledgment explaining how to cancel, online cancellation for online signups, and an annual reminder for yearly plans; the current version applies to plans sold or renewed since July 1, 2025 [3]. Price changes need notice 7 to 30 days before they take effect [3].
- Minnesota’s law, in effect since January 1, 2025, requires at least an annual written notice with the terms and how to cancel [4].
- Utah requires a renewal reminder 30 to 60 days before renewal for terms longer than 45 days, and Massachusetts rules effective September 2, 2025 require a pre-renewal notice 5 to 30 days ahead for plans longer than 31 days and a cancellation method as easy as signing up [4].
The practical standard that satisfies most of these: get a clear yes to auto-renewal at signup, send a written confirmation with cancellation steps, send a reminder about 30 days before each renewal, and let people cancel the same way they joined. ServiceTitan notes that homeowners now expect an automated reminder before a plan renews [2]. Before you launch a plan, have a local attorney read the renewal and cancellation terms against your state’s law.
Renewal reminder text: Hi Jordan, your Comfort Club plan with Northwind Heating renews on March 3 for $216 a year, charged to the card ending in 4410. It covers your spring and fall tune-ups. To cancel or change it, reply CANCEL or call 555-0188. Thanks for being a member.
Selling plans on every call
The best time to offer a plan is right after you’ve fixed something, while the customer is relieved and you’re standing next to their equipment. Make it part of the close-out on every service call, not a separate pitch.
- Show what you found. The dirty coil, the corroded anode, the ant trail at the foundation. A photo on your phone works.
- Connect the plan to that problem. “This is the kind of thing the fall visit catches.”
- Give the price and the one perk they’ll care about. Usually priority scheduling or a repair discount.
- Offer to apply today’s visit. Some shops credit part of the current call toward the first year.
- Accept no gracefully. Leave a card, and note it in the customer record so the office can offer it once more at the next visit. On bigger replacement jobs, raise the plan during the in-home sales visit instead.
HVAC close-out: You’re all set. Your capacitor was the problem, and it’s replaced. I also noticed the outdoor coil is pretty dirty, which makes the system work harder. Our plan covers a spring and a fall visit where we clean that and check everything else, plus members go to the front of the line in a heat wave. Want me to set that up while I’m here?
Plumbing close-out: The leak’s fixed. While I was under there I saw your water heater is about twelve years old and has sediment. With our yearly plan, we check it and the rest of your plumbing once a year and you get member pricing on repairs. It’s a good way to catch problems before they flood the basement.
Pest control close-out: We treated the ants today. Most homes we see with this keep getting them each spring. On the quarterly plan we treat the outside every season, and if they come back between visits, we come back at no charge.
Lawn estimate add-on: Mowing’s weekly as quoted. If you want the yard thicker by next summer, the season plan adds fertilizer and weed control rounds, and members get aeration in the fall at a lower price.
Track one number: plans sold per service call, by tech. The techs who sell the most are usually the ones who show the customer something, not the ones who talk the most. Use the plan list in slow weeks to fill the schedule, and when a member’s equipment is near the end of its life, that’s a warm, honest replacement conversation. For writing that estimate, see how to write a contractor estimate.
Common questions
Sources and how we compared
Maintenance tasks come from ENERGY STAR, plan structure advice from ServiceTitan (vendor guidance), and renewal-law details from California’s statute and law firm summaries of federal and state rules, all opened October 4, 2026.
- ENERGY STAR: Maintenance checklist for heating and cooling — U.S. EPA ENERGY STAR program
- ServiceTitan: Maintenance agreements guide — December 2025; vendor guidance
- California Business and Professions Code §17602 — Automatic renewal law
- Kelley Drye: Auto-renewal laws 2025 round-up (PDF) — 2025; law firm summary
- Alston & Bird: FTC click-to-cancel rule vacated — July 9, 2025; law firm summary
- Covington: FTC launches new rulemaking on the Negative Option Rule — March 2026; law firm summary
Last updated October 4, 2026. Prices change; if something here is out of date, call or text (507) 628-0400 and we’ll fix it.