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Service contracts that renew themselves

A service round is the best income a trade business has. Known work, known duration, in a month you choose, from customers who already trust you. It is also the easiest income to lose, for a reason that makes it almost invisible: nobody rings to complain that they were not reminded.

How rounds shrink

Not through cancellations. Through a busy September when nobody sent the reminders, a customer who moved and was never chased, a contract that renewed on a date only one person knew. Each is small and none produces a complaint. A year later the round is fifteen per cent smaller and nobody can say when it happened.

The renewal belongs to the contract

The fix is structural rather than a matter of effort. If the renewal date is a property of the contract, and the reminder is triggered by that date, then renewals happen in the weeks everyone is too busy to think about them — which are the weeks they otherwise do not. If the date lives in a spreadsheet somebody has to open, it depends on somebody opening it.

What to keep against a contract

• The property, the appliance and what was fitted.
• The service month, and whether it can move.
• What is included and what is charged separately — parts, call-outs, out of hours.
• The renewal date and the price at renewal.
• What was flagged at the last visit and not done.

That last line is the sales pipeline

Every visit produces something the engineer noticed and did not do. Kept against the property, those notes are next year's quotes: work that has been surveyed, by someone the customer already lets into the house. Kept on a pad, they are nothing at all.

Spread the year

A round that all falls in October is a round you cannot service properly. If the date belongs to each contract rather than to the round as a whole, new contracts can be placed into quieter months as they come in, and the year evens out on its own without anyone reorganising anything.

Price the renewal deliberately

Contract prices drift because nobody wants the conversation. Then one year the gap is large enough that raising it is a real risk. A small annual adjustment, stated in the contract terms from the beginning, avoids that entirely — and it is much easier to apply when the renewal is a process rather than an individual decision about a customer you like.