What Is a Maintenance Agreement? And What to Charge
A maintenance agreement turns one-off customers into scheduled, recurring work. Here's what goes in one, how to price it off your own costs, and how to fill the quiet weeks with it.
Every trade business has the same problem: the work arrives when it feels like it, and the quiet fortnight always lands the month you bought a ute. A maintenance agreement is the simplest fix — a client pays an agreed amount for a defined set of scheduled visits, and you get work you can put in the diary a year out. It's also the cheapest source of new jobs you have, because the servicing visit is where you find the failing unit. This guide covers what an agreement contains, what to charge for one, and how to sell it without a sales pitch.
Doing this job for a living? See job management in ServiceYak.
What a maintenance agreement is
A maintenance agreement is a standing arrangement to service something on a schedule, for an agreed price, with agreed terms for what happens when you find a fault. It covers the equipment you installed or the systems you look after — split systems and ducted units, hot water and backflow, switchboards and RCDs, pumps, grease traps, roofs and gutters, irrigation, test-and-tag.
The difference between an agreement and "give us a call when it needs a service" is who remembers. Under an agreement, you do — and you book it, which is the whole point.
- Revenue you can forecast. Work that's in the diary before the year starts, at a price already agreed.
- Fewer emergencies. Serviced gear fails less, and it fails on a Tuesday instead of at 9pm on a long weekend.
- A pipeline of real jobs. Most replacement and upgrade work a maintenance client buys is found during a scheduled visit, not from a phone call.
- Customers who don't shop around. A client on an agreement isn't getting three quotes next time something breaks.
- Something to sell the business on. Recurring contracted work is the part of a trade business that has value independent of you.
What goes in the agreement
| Section | What it covers |
|---|---|
| The assets | Every unit by make, model, serial and location — not "the air conditioning" |
| The schedule | How many visits a year and roughly when, so both sides can plan around them |
| What each visit includes | The actual checklist. This is the part that stops the visit shrinking over time |
| What's excluded | Parts, repairs, consumables, after-hours attendance — anything you'd otherwise be expected to absorb |
| Response times | How fast you attend a breakdown for a client under agreement, versus one who isn't |
| Rates for extra work | The rate that applies when a visit finds something. Agreed up front, so a repair doesn't need a fresh quote |
| Price and payment | The amount, whether it's monthly, quarterly or annual, and how it's collected |
| Term and renewal | How long it runs and how it rolls over — and how either side gives notice |
| Access | Who lets you in, keys and codes, and what happens when you turn up and can't get in |
| Reporting | What the client gets after each visit — the report is a large part of what they're paying for |
Write the exclusions and the extra-work rate before anything else. An agreement that doesn't say what happens when you find a failed part turns every service call into a negotiation, which defeats the purpose of having the agreement.
What to charge for a maintenance agreement
Price it from your own costs, the same way you'd price any job. The recurring nature is a reason to be confident about the number, not a reason to discount it.
- Time one visit honestly. Attendance, the checks themselves, the report, and travel. Travel is the one people leave out, and on a scattered residential run it can be half the visit.
- Multiply by the visits per year. Two visits at ninety minutes each isn't three hours — it's three hours plus two lots of travel and two lots of setting up.
- Add consumables. Filters, seals, test tags, sanitiser, whatever the visit actually consumes. Either include them and price them in, or exclude them explicitly.
- Apply your charge-out rate. Your normal rate, not a discounted one. Work out that rate from your own income target, overheads and chargeable hours rather than borrowing someone else's number.
- Then decide what the guarantee is worth. If the agreement includes priority response or capped after-hours rates, that's a real cost you're carrying. Price it, or exclude it.
Only then look at what the annual figure comes to, and how it divides monthly. Most clients respond to the monthly number, so quote both — but derive the monthly figure from the annual cost, never the other way around.
Resist the urge to discount the agreement to win it. The value to you is the scheduled work and the replacement jobs it uncovers, and you get both at full rate. Discounting the visit gives away the margin on the only part of the arrangement that's guaranteed.
How to sell one without a pitch
The easiest agreement to sell is the one you offer at the moment the client already believes in maintenance — which is not a cold call in March.
- At handover on a new install. The client has just spent real money on a unit. Servicing it is an obvious next sentence, and it's usually a condition of the manufacturer's warranty anyway.
- Immediately after a breakdown. They've just lived through the cost of not maintaining it. This is the highest-converting moment you'll get.
- On the second call-out to the same site. "That's twice this year — there's a cheaper way to do this."
- With commercial and strata clients. They already budget for maintenance and would rather have one contractor who knows the building than three who don't.
- In writing, with the checklist attached. Clients buy the list of what you'll actually check far more readily than they buy the word "servicing".
Then deliver the report. A one-page summary after each visit — what was checked, what was found, what's coming up — is what makes the renewal conversation a formality. Without it, the client's honest experience of the agreement is that a van turned up and they got a bill.
ServiceYak keeps recurring work on the schedule and each visit on its own job, so the service checklist, the photos and the report all live against the site — and the replacement job you found on the last visit is already sitting there as a quote when the client's ready.
Frequently asked questions
What should I charge for a maintenance agreement?
Build it up: time one visit properly including travel and the report, multiply by the number of visits a year, add consumables, apply your normal charge-out rate, then price any response-time guarantee separately. Quote the annual figure and the monthly equivalent, but always derive the monthly from the annual — not from what sounds affordable.
What's the difference between a maintenance agreement and a warranty?
A warranty covers your work failing. A maintenance agreement is scheduled servicing the client pays for. They interact: many manufacturers require documented servicing for their warranty to stand, which is a genuinely useful thing to point out when you're offering an agreement on a new install.
Should the agreement include parts and repairs?
Usually not, unless you know the equipment and the failure rates well enough to carry that risk. The cleaner arrangement is that the visit is included, parts and repairs are quoted at an agreed rate stated in the agreement, and the client gets priority attendance. That way a bad year on one site doesn't wipe out the margin across all of them.
How do I stop clients cancelling after the first year?
Send a report after every visit. The agreement's value is invisible when it's working, so the report is what makes it visible — what was checked, what was found, what you'll be watching next time. Businesses that skip the report have renewal problems; businesses that send it usually don't.