HVACBossPro Blog — Maintenance Agreements

Yearly HVAC Maintenance Plans: When 365 Days Between Visits Makes Sense

The two-visit plan gets most of the attention, but plenty of customers do not need it or will not pay for it. A once-a-year plan is a simpler offer, and for the right homes it is the honest one. Here is when it fits and how it runs.

The Other Plan on the Menu

The two-visit plan is covered in Spring AC and Fall Furnace Tune-Ups: Setting HVAC Maintenance Agreements to 180 Days. A yearly plan works the same way in HVACBossPro, with one change: the minimum days between visits is 365 instead of 180.

After the member's visit is completed, the next one comes due about a year later and shows up on the Waiting List map on its own. Nothing else about the member changes. Their equipment record, card on file, tags and reminders all work exactly the same.

Homes Where One Visit Is Enough

Some systems only have one season that matters. A yearly plan fits them naturally:

• Boiler-only homes. No central air, one heating season. A visit before the cold arrives covers what the customer needs.
• Furnace-only homes. Same idea. Window units or no cooling at all means the spring visit has little to check.
• AC-only homes. In warm climates where heat is rarely used, a spring visit before cooling season does the job.
• Mild climates. If the system rarely works hard in one of the seasons, one thorough visit a year may be what you actually recommend.

Being straight with the customer about this builds trust. Selling a boiler owner a two-visit plan that includes a “spring AC check” on equipment they do not have is the kind of thing that makes people cancel.

Customers Who Want a Lower Price

Some homeowners like the idea of maintenance but balk at the two-visit price. A yearly plan gives them a way in. It also gives you a step up to offer later. A member who has been on a yearly plan for a couple of years, and who had a no-cool call in July, is often ready to hear about adding the second visit.

Keep the yearly price honest relative to the two-visit plan. If your two-visit plan runs $179 a year and your one-off tune-up is $99, a yearly plan around $99 to $109 with a member repair discount makes sense. The exact numbers are yours. How to think them through is covered in How to Price an HVAC Maintenance Plan Customers Will Keep.

Rentals and Second Homes

Landlords often want the minimum their lease or their own standards call for, and a yearly check fits that. A landlord with many rental homes is one client with many addresses, each on its own plan. Some get 365 days, the newer systems might stay on yearly while older ones move to 180. Every address has its own equipment and its own due date.

Second homes and seasonal properties are similar. One visit timed before the owner arrives for the season is often all they want. Write the timing in the access notes, such as “owner arrives early June, do visit in May,” so the office books it at the right time.

Picking the Right Month

A yearly plan has one weakness: it can drift into the wrong season. If a boiler visit done in October slips to November, then December, the member eventually gets their pre-season check after the season has started.

The Waiting List helps here. It shows pins that are not due yet along with those that are, so the office can pull upcoming yearly visits forward into a slow week and keep them anchored. A good habit is to decide, for each yearly member, which season their visit belongs in and note it on the client. A custom field like “Preferred visit: Fall” makes it obvious when the office is building routes.

Mixing Yearly and Twice-a-Year Members

On the Waiting List, yearly and two-visit members appear side by side. That is a good thing. A fall route can include due furnace tune-ups from 180-day members and due boiler visits from 365-day members on the same street. The dispatch board treats them all as stops on the tune-up van, auto-routed from the shop.

Tag both kinds of members Maintenance Plan so the office and techs know they are on an agreement. If you want to tell them apart in reports, add a second tag or a custom field for the plan type. The member tagging approach is covered in Tagging HVAC Maintenance Plan Members So the Whole Team Knows.

Same Software, Different Number

The beauty of setting plans by days between visits is that you are not locked into anyone's idea of what a plan should be. 365 for yearly, 180 for twice a year, 90 for quarterly commercial PM, or anything else your agreements promise. The Waiting List handles them all the same way. See how the pieces fit on the HVAC maintenance agreement software page.