The Feast-and-Famine Problem

Every tradesperson knows the pattern: crazy busy for 6 weeks, then nothing for 2. Recurring contracts smooth it out — giving you a predictable base of monthly revenue.

Which Trades Suit Contracts?

Plumbers — annual boiler servicing, gas safety checks
Electricians — periodic inspection reports, PAT testing
Gardeners — weekly/fortnightly maintenance rounds
Cleaners — regular domestic or commercial cleans
HVAC — seasonal maintenance programmes

How to Set Up a Contract in ServicePay

Go to Contracts → New Contract
Select the customer and property
Set the frequency (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, annually)
Set the visit price and VAT rate
Enable auto-invoicing so each completed visit generates an invoice automatically

The Numbers

A gardener with 30 monthly contracts at £80/visit has £2,400 of guaranteed monthly revenue. That's £28,800 a year before they take on a single one-off job.

Tips for Selling Contracts

Offer a small discount vs one-off pricing (10% is typical)
Emphasise the convenience — 'You never have to remember to book again'

Most Recurring Visits Exist to Keep a Certificate in Date

It is easy to think of a maintenance contract as a nice-to-have that smooths your income. For a landlord or a managing agent it is nothing of the sort. The annual gas safety check is not optional, and neither is keeping an EICR current on a rented property. The visit exists because a certificate expires.

That reframes the sale completely. You are not asking an agent to buy convenience, you are offering to take a legal exposure off their desk. An agent with forty properties is tracking forty gas records and forty electrical reports, usually in a spreadsheet, usually maintained by whoever has least to do that week. The contract is attractive because it makes the problem yours instead of theirs — and you are far better placed to manage it, because you are the one doing the work.

There is a trap worth naming. Booking the visit does not make the property compliant. Only filing the certificate does. A visit that happened but whose certificate never got filed looks like a job well done in your calendar and an open exposure on the landlord’s record. The two need to be joined up, which is why it is worth tracking the obligation rather than only the appointment.

Do that well and the contract renews itself. An agent who can see, at any moment, which of their properties are in date and which are not — without ringing you to ask — has very little reason to go looking for a cheaper engineer next year. Predictable revenue is the by-product. The thing you are actually selling is that they stop worrying about it.