For many HVAC companies, HVAC maintenance agreements are the backbone of the business. They smooth out the slow months, keep equipment running and keep customers calling you instead of the competitor with the louder ad. They also create a promise: two visits a year, at the right time of year. Keeping that promise across hundreds of agreements is a scheduling problem.
Write down exactly what each agreement includes
Agreements drift when the details live in a sales rep’s head. For each one, record:
- What gets serviced: which units, at which location.
- When: usually a spring cooling check and a fall heating check, in specific months.
- How long a visit takes and how many technicians it needs.
- The price per visit, so you know what the agreement is worth over a year.
Commercial customers often have several locations with different equipment. Treat each location as its own site with its own access notes and contact.
It’s also worth recording what isn’t included. If the agreement covers a filter change but not the filter, or one unit but not the second one added last year, write it down. Technicians shouldn’t have to call the office to find out what the customer paid for.
Plan by month, schedule by week
Most HVAC maintenance agreements promise a spring and fall visit, not a date. Promising a specific date a year ahead rarely works. Promising a month does. When the month comes around, the visit should already be waiting to be scheduled, not depending on someone to remember. Then the office picks the day based on the route and the weather, and the customer gets an arrival time closer to the date.
Don’t let tune-ups fight emergency calls
The hardest weeks are the first hot ones. Tune-ups are due, and no-cooling calls are coming in. Two habits help:
- Front-load the season. Schedule tune-ups early in the window, before the heat, so emergency work doesn’t push them out.
- Give urgent calls their own clock. A no-heat call in January should jump ahead of a routine visit, and everyone in the office should know it.
Know if the season fits before it starts
Renewals deserve a date on the calendar too. An agreement that quietly lapses is a customer you have to win back. Review which agreements end in the next few months and reach out before the next season’s visit is due.
Add up the hours your agreements need each month and compare them with the hours your technicians can actually work. If April needs more technician-days than you have, you’ll know in January instead of in late April. Our crew capacity planning guide goes deeper.
How Sentra Scheduler handles maintenance agreements
In Sentra Scheduler each agreement is a recurring job on a customer’s site: the job type, scope notes, the months (for example April and October), hours per visit, crew size and a flat price or hourly rate. It shows the job’s annual value, and each visit appears in its due week, waiting in the schedule’s tray.
Agreements that are quoted but not signed can be saved as proposed jobs. They count toward pipeline value and don’t make visits until they’re active. Work that only happens when the customer calls can be kept as an on-call job, with its price and hours ready to go.
On the schedule, drop each tune-up on a technician’s lane. Sentra Scheduler leaves time for the drive from the last stop and warns about time off and hours. Service calls come in from the website, the phone and email with their own response times, so urgent work stays visible next to the planned visits.
Seeing the year ahead
The forecast adds up what your recurring jobs need month by month, in technician-days and in dollars, against what your team can work. It’s the quickest way to see that October is overbooked while there’s still time to hire, shift visits into September or say no to a new agreement.
On the visit itself
Technicians close each tune-up in the crew app with the answers your job type requires, such as filter size or a refrigerant check, plus photos and, if you want it, the customer’s signature. That record is useful the next time the customer calls, and it’s proof the agreement was kept. See proof of service photos for how to set that up.
Example: a restaurant with two units
An HVAC company signs a restaurant to a two-visit agreement: April and October, two hours each with one technician, at a flat price per visit. In the first week of April the visit appears in the tray. The office drops it on a technician who’s nearby that Tuesday morning. In October the second visit appears on its own, and the agreement’s annual value is on the customer’s page the whole time.
For a wider view of how HVAC companies use Sentra Scheduler, see HVAC service companies.