HVAC Service Contract: Why You Need Them and What to Include

HVAC service contracts can bring your business consistent revenue and improve the health of your customers’ systems.

Despite the benefits, it takes work to put together written agreements that make sense for your customers and protect your business. 

Follow this guide to HVAC service contracts—you’ll learn what they should include and how to get your regular maintenance work scheduled and paid for.

Your HVAC maintenance contract should set expectations with your customers—including the type of work you’re doing, how often they’ll see you, and your scheduling and payment processes.

Here are all the details you need to include in every HVAC maintenance agreement:

1. Business information

Include your HVAC business information on the contract so your client knows how to get in touch. Your business details should include:

• Your HVAC company name
• Contact person
• Email address
• Telephone number

2. Customer information

Include any information you may need to get in touch with your customer, including:

• Customer name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Mailing address

For commercial properties, you’ll also want to include:

• Company name
• Business address
• Contact person name, email, and phone number

3. Property address

Provide the complete address for the service location, including:

• Street number
• Street name
• City/Town
• State
• Zip or postal code

Pro Tip: Putting together an HVAC service contract or proposal template can help you avoid the time consuming process of creating one from scratch every time.

Just make sure to leave blank lines that you can fill out with your customer’s contact information and property address.

4. Maintenance schedule

State clearly how many scheduled maintenance visits your customer can expect. Your visits could be twice a year, for instance, or annually with check-ups scheduled once every three months.

Include the date of the first visit if that’s been scheduled already, and a date for the end of the contract.

5. Scope of services

List each furnace, air conditioning unit, and other HVAC systems that need servicing and describe the work you plan to perform during your maintenance visits. This could include:

• Standard tests and inspections
• Tune-up and cleaning tasks
• Rewiring electrical components
• Parts replacements

If you sell multiple tiers of HVAC maintenance packages, include a line that lets you specify which package your customer has selected.

6. Terms and conditions

Clarify any additional details about your service guarantees, your HVAC company’s insurance policy, payments, and termination policy.

Be sure to answer the following questions:

• Are there any service blackout dates? (Christmas day or New Year’s day)
• What type of business insurance coverage do you have? (Include all required insurance such as workers compensation, liability insurance, etc.)
• How much notice is required to terminate the HVAC contract?
• Are there any penalties or fines when terminating the agreement?

7. Invoice schedule and payment terms

The payment terms of your HVAC maintenance contract should tell customers:

• Payment due dates
• Penalties or fees for late payments
• What payment methods you accept (cash, check, online card payments, or mobile credit card payments in person)
• How and when you’ll send invoices

8. Signature line

Leave a space at the end for both you and your customer to sign off on the contract, along with the date the contract was signed.

Pro Tip: Speed up the process of getting signatures securely and legally by connecting Jobber with DocuSign.

DocuSign automatically drafts up an HVAC maintenance agreement for your client when a quote is sent or approved, or when a job is created in your Jobber account.

Create your agreement template in DocuSign. When the template is ready, your HVAC contract will show up with blank fields.

You can then drag and drop details from your Jobber account into your agreement—like your customer’s property address and the quoted price of each maintenance visit.

Your drafted agreement is linked within Jobber so you can easily edit and send the final agreement to your client through DocuSign.

After your customer selects a package, copy the included services onto your HVAC service agreement.

2. Set recurring visits easily

Once your customer has signed the HVAC service agreement, get their maintenance visits into an online calendar right away.

In Jobber, you can create a recurring job and choose how often your maintenance visits happen.

3. Assign the best crews for the job

Select one or multiple team members in Jobber to assign them to the maintenance job.

As soon as you assign someone, they get a notification that there’s a new visit in their schedule. They’ll be able to see it in their calendar in Jobber, too.

4. Help your crews access equipment details and checklists on-site

Improve your HVAC dispatching by equipping your techs with the right information before they head to the job. Your crews can quickly access service agreements and customer details in the Jobber mobile app.

You can even attach a digital HVAC maintenance checklist so that techs can check off tasks on their phones or tablets as they inspect the customer’s HVAC system.

Checklists ensure quality control and can be shared with your clients as proof that all the work has been done.

Finally, use Jobber to store details about the customer’s HVAC equipment, including special notes and images technicians need to review before heading to the property.

When a tech needs to access details about a service call, they can simply click on the visit in their Jobber calendar and see the original HVAC work order, notes, images, and other attachments.

5. Get paid on time

It’s hard to keep up with invoicing when you’re managing multiple customers with recurring visits. Be sure you get paid on time by invoicing fast, following up frequently, and making payment easy for customers.

Here’s how to do that:

• Charge customers automatically. Get permission from customers to securely save their cards on file, and Jobber will automatically charge them when the time is right. You can decide on your invoicing schedule the moment you create a recurring maintenance job in Jobber:

Check your invoice statuses daily. Throughout your week, take a glance at your business dashboard to see how many drafted, outstanding, and past-due invoices you have.

• Follow up automatically on overdue invoices. Instead of calling and emailing customers to chase down outstanding invoices, use Jobber to have your follow-ups sent automatically over email or text.

• Collect payment on the spot. Avoid chasing payments altogether by letting customers pay you at the property—by card—as soon as the job is done. The Jobber Card Reader lets you quickly and securely accept credit card payment in person with one tap.

When you use Jobber’s HVAC software to speed up your maintenance contract scheduling, dispatching, and payments, you’ll have more time to sell and service HVAC systems.

Originally published in May 2019. Last updated on November 24, 2023.