GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Billing Yearly Garage Door Tune-Up Plans: Charging the Visit When It Comes Due

Repair calls are unpredictable. Tune-up plans are the opposite: steady, scheduled work that comes back every year. For a garage door company, a base of tune-up customers smooths out the slow months and keeps your name in front of homeowners before something breaks. The billing side should be just as steady, with no one in the office keeping a spreadsheet of who is due and who has paid.

Plans Recur on Their Own

After-hours charges, covered in After-Hours and Emergency Charges as Line Items on Garage Door Invoices, are about the unplanned side of the business. Tune-up plans are the planned side.

In GarageDoorBossPro, recurring work is set by the minimum days between visits. A yearly tune-up plan is set to 365. When a customer's tune-up comes due, it shows up on the Waiting List, a live map and list of every visit that has come due, with pins colored for not due yet, due now, and overdue past a seven-day grace. Nobody has to remember that the Johnsons were done last October.

From Due to Scheduled to Billed

The flow for each yearly visit is short:

• The tune-up comes due and appears on the Waiting List.
• The office assigns it to a van and a day, and auto-routes the day Closest First or Furthest First from the shop.
• The customer gets a reminder the night before and on-the-way and arrived texts on the day.
• The tech runs the door safety inspection checklist, records readings and condition, and writes recommendations.
• The tech taps Complete. The invoice is created and the card on file can be charged.

With auto-charge on completion, the tune-up is billed and paid the moment it is done. The next one comes due a year later on its own.

What Goes on a Tune-Up Invoice

Most tune-up invoices are short. The plan visit itself is a service on your list with your price, such as a $129 tune-up. If the customer approves extra work on the visit, like new rollers or a bottom seal, those go on the job as their own lines, so the customer sees the tune-up price is the tune-up price and the extras are extras.

Recommendations the customer does not approve today stay on the inspection. The office can turn them into an estimate, which the customer approves online when ready.

The Inspection Report Sells the Next Year

The door safety inspection checklist is what makes a tune-up visible to the customer. Springs, cables and drums, rollers, hinges and brackets, tracks, door balance, the auto-reverse safety test, photo-eye sensors, opener force and limits, lubrication, the bottom seal and weatherstripping, the emergency release, and keypads and remotes all get checked. The tech records a condition of Good, Needs attention or Repair recommended, plus written recommendations.

The office can print a Garage Door Safety Inspection report for the homeowner. A customer who has a written report in hand understands what the plan pays for, which is what keeps them on the plan next year.

Card on File Is the Key

Tune-up billing works best when every plan customer has a card on file. The easiest way to get one is to capture it at sign-up, through your website sign-up form or the customer app, where customers can sign up for services and pricing such as a yearly tune-up plan. That is covered in Tune-Up Plan Sign-Ups With the Card Captured: Billing That Starts on Your Website.

Because a year is a long time, some cards will have expired by the next visit. Customers can update their card in the customer app, and the office can follow up with a short text if a charge does not go through.

Routing Tune-Ups Efficiently

Tune-ups are flexible on timing, which makes them perfect fill-in work. Many companies keep one van on repairs and emergency spring calls and another on installs and tune-ups. The Waiting List map shows where due tune-ups are clustered, so the office can fill a day in one part of town. Fewer miles per visit means more of the tune-up price stays with you.

Commercial Maintenance Works the Same Way

Commercial door maintenance follows the same pattern with a shorter cycle, for example every 90 days for rolling doors or dock doors. The visits come due on their own and, for accounts set to Monthly, roll into one statement each month with each line labeled with the address.

Steady Work, Steady Billing

A tune-up plan is only as good as its billing. When visits come due on their own, get routed with the rest of the day and are charged to the card on file at completion, plans run themselves. For the rest of the billing system, visit the garage door invoicing software page.