ElectricalBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Billing Electrical Maintenance Plans: Yearly Inspections and Generator Service That Bill Themselves

Maintenance plans are the steadiest money an electrical shop can have. A yearly safety inspection or a yearly generator service does not depend on someone's breaker tripping or a storm coming through. The trouble is that plans only pay if somebody remembers to schedule the visit and send the bill. With a list of plan customers in a spreadsheet, that is exactly the part that slips.

Where Plans Come From

Many plans start right after a big install, as shown in Billing a Whole-House Generator Install and the Maintenance Plan That Follows. Others start with a homeowner who signs up for a yearly safety inspection after a service call, or a commercial account that wants regular lighting maintenance.

In ElectricalBossPro, all of them work the same way: a recurring service with a minimum number of days between visits, on a client with a saved card.

How Recurring Work Is Set Up

Recurring work in ElectricalBossPro is set by minimum days between visits. Common electrical plans look like this:

• Yearly safety inspection plan — 365 days.
• Yearly generator maintenance — 365 days.
• Commercial lighting maintenance or relamping — every 14 or 30 days.

Each plan is priced from your own service list, such as a $149 safety inspection or a $189 generator maintenance visit at your prices.

Visits Come Due on Their Own

When a plan visit comes due, it lands on the Waiting List, a live map and list of every visit that has come due. Pins are colored by status: not due yet, due now, or overdue past a seven-day grace. The office does not have to remember who is due. The map shows them.

From there, the office assigns visits to a van and a day on the dispatch board, and they show up on the tech's phone in route order like any other job.

Billing at Completion

Plan visits bill the same way as any other job. When the tech taps Complete, the invoice is created with its line items and sales tax, and the card on file can be charged right then. The customer sees the invoice in the customer app.

That is the part that makes plans “bill themselves.” Nobody sits down once a year to send a stack of renewal invoices. Each visit is billed when it is done, and the next one comes due a year later on its own.

For customers who prefer to be billed on a schedule rather than at each visit, scheduled auto-charge is the other option, as long as you and the customer have agreed on it.

The Inspection Itself Supports the Bill

On a yearly safety inspection, the tech works through the safety inspection checklist in the tech app: panel, breakers, AFCI and GFCI testing, grounding and bonding, surge protection, connections, outlets and switches, smoke and CO detectors, exterior outlets, the meter base and service drop, and the generator, transfer switch or EV charger if the house has them. They record readings, a condition (Good, Needs attention or Repair recommended) and written recommendations.

The office can print an Electrical Safety Inspection report for the homeowner. A customer who gets a clear report with their invoice understands what the plan is doing for them, which is what keeps them renewing year after year.

Getting Customers Onto Plans

Plans only help if customers sign up. A few ways to make that easy:

• The customer app. Customers can sign up for services and pricing, such as a yearly generator maintenance plan, from their phone.
• The website sign-up form. It captures the card with the sign-up, and one click converts it into a client.
• The tech at the door. After a service call or an inspection, the tech can mention the plan, and the office sets it up.

When the card is captured at sign-up, every future plan visit is already set up to be paid.

Keeping Cards Current Over a Year

A year is a long time for a card. If a customer's card has expired by their next visit, they can update it themselves in the customer app. The night-before alert is a good reminder for them to check. Past-due follow-up covers any plan visit that does not get paid at completion. Card updates are covered in more detail in When a Card Expires: Letting Electrical Customers Update Their Card Themselves.

Plans That Run Without a Spreadsheet

Maintenance plans give a small electrical shop a base of work it can count on. In ElectricalBossPro, visits come due on their own, show on the Waiting List map, go on a van, and bill at completion from the card on file. The office never has to remember who is due or send renewal invoices by hand. To see plan billing alongside monthly statements and the rest of the billing tools, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrical invoicing software page.