Recurring Service Events

[PThornton103]

Hi, we currently have our Recurring Service Events (2 per year) set to Seasonal, which has them fall in a particular Month. Has anyone found a way to have them fall 6 Months & 12 Months after the date on which the Membership is sold? We've tried selecting to monthly, and that wants to schedule 4 visit. 2 at 6 Months & 2 at 12 Months.

Thank you

[JaneanS]

I recently discovered that the key to this is in your membership - recurring services - EVENT OFFSET. We bill annually, collecting 100% upfront (or at the time of renewal). I set Duration & Billing to Fixed, 12 months, annually. Billing Frequency is Upfront, 12 months, and we do give a discount for renewals, so I entered both prices where indicated. For recurring services, let's say you have Visit #1 and Visit #2. If you go into Edit Existing Service, scroll down to the bottom. Recurrence Type is Seasonal, Duration Type is # Of Total Visits, # Visits is 1. Save. On the same line with each service is a column header Event Offset. Your 1st visit is 6 months, the 2nd is 12 months (or whatever your span is). 

When a tech sells a new membership, it automatically creates 2 recurring services with the 1st visit coming due 6 months from the date of the invoice. The 2nd visit comes due 6 months after that. So, anything sold 2/21/23 would show up with the 1st visit coming due August 21, 2023 and the 2nd visit coming due February 21, 2024. All of this is adjustable for the individual customer, such as when a 1st visit is already completed. 

I actually have someone complaining that all the memberships come across just as they should, and she doesn't have to spend several hours per day setting them up. It's actually the ones that bill monthly that are giving us troubles right now. 

[EricOlsen]

I am getting conflicting information about using the recurring service offset of 6/12 months OR specific date for season changes (4/1 for cooling 10/1 for heating) and which method is best. 

My end goal is to be able to know how many Recurring Service Events TOTAL, I have left to run.  

If I understand this correctly, using the seasonal method, should allow you to pull reports from the - Follow Up > Recurring Service Events > Dates on or after whatever season you are in... and this should give you the total number of recurring service events that I have to run before a certain date.

Using the 6/12 seems as though you would constantly need to run reports for every 6 months in order to know how many recurring service events you have left to perform.  Seems cumbersome, so what am I missing about the benefits of using this method?

Also, if I am wrong about the Seasonal approach, please advise.  I just want to get a handle on this as it seems the ship is on autopilot instead of us steering.  Thank you for any replies!