Introduction
Recurring Services are commonly offered by contractors in the Home Services industry. In the world of Water Treatment, these services commonly include filter changes, salt delivery, equipment maintenance, UV bulb changes and more. These service visits may have varying cadences, whether annual, quarterly, monthly or seasonal.
Recurring Services present various potential benefits for contractors, including forecasted streams of revenue, upsell opportunities, brand loyalty with homeowners, and a chance to keep your technicians busy when scheduling slowdowns occur.
In ServiceTitan, configuring Recurring Services begins in Settings under Invoicing > Recurring Service Types. Recurring Service Events (RSEs) are generated from Recurring Service Types based on the chosen frequency settings. Recurring Service Types can be set as continuous or limited to a specific numbers of visits. You may opt to include prebuilt Invoice Templates within your Recurring Service Types, which allow RSEs to have predefined services and materials, helping you automate your invoicing efforts.
As RSEs generate in the system, you can find them in the Recurring Service Events tab of the Follow Up screen where CSRs can follow-up with customers relating to these individual events. Clicking into these events allows your team the ability to call the customers directly to confirm scheduling, and if needed they can also “log a follow-up” which allows the ability to add notes onto the event’s record for documenting your outreach. What’s more, using ServiceTitan Marketing, you can automate service reminders to customers through SMS text messaging as well.
Automate Recurring Service Reminders with SMS Text Messaging
RSEs are also visible in other areas of the system. In ServiceTitan Office, a customer’s RSEs are verified on the Calls screen when a Service Location is selected. Additionally, when viewing a specific Service Location page, you’ll see a dedicated section for the customer’s Recurring Service(s) + events.
In ServiceTitan Mobile, while a technician is arrived at a job, they can view the Service Location’s RSEs by tapping History > Recurring Service Events. This is where they can verify any past due or upcoming RSEs for the Service Location and may also mark events as Complete when needed. By marking an event as Complete, technicians can help ensure that the office does not schedule any unnecessary work in the future, or work that you have already performed.
Recurring Services are typically included with Memberships, but they can also be applied to Service Locations without a Membership. Similarly, some users may decide to associate Invoice Templates within their Recurring Service Types, while other users may refrain from Invoice Templates entirely.
With these various methods for Recurring Services in ServiceTitan, there are important considerations to be aware of depending on your preferred operational workflows. Below, we’ll touch on four methods of configuration in ServiceTitan and some of the pros and cons of each.
Methods of Setup
In this first method, a Recurring Service Type is configured with an Invoice Template. The Invoice Template allows RSEs to generate invoices with predefined services and materials that you expect to charge your customers when completing the event. Connecting the Recurring Service Type within a Membership allows mobile users the ability to add the Recurring Service onto estimates and invoices via the Membership Sale Task.
Pros . . .
✅ Memberships act as a “vehicle” for Recurring Services to be added to estimates and invoices in ServiceTitan Mobile via the Membership Sale Task. This is a great way to enable technicians the opportunity to offer Recurring Services when creating estimates.
✅ Memberships also offer the ability to associate equipment with a Membership, which in turn connects the Recurring Service to a specific piece of equipment. This is especially useful for jobs where technicians service multiple equipment items at a single Service Location.
Cons . . .
⛔ Invoice Templates may present difficulties if your Recurring Services are typically more custom and don’t normally follow a strict outline. If users manually delete line items from an RSE's Invoice Template, the RSE will detach itself from the job. If you re-link the event to that job, the system will re-add the Invoice Template line items onto the job’s invoice, potentially duplicating some of the invoice line items if you’re not paying close attention.
💡 To help mitigate issues with Invoice Templates, when you need to remove line items from the event's Invoice Template, utilize negative quantity line items instead to reflect the removal. This minor workflow change will ensure any services or materials that you need to “delete” from the invoice are essentially cancelled out.
⛔ Placing responsibility onto technicians to “sell” a Membership in order to activate Recurring Services for new customers may be untrustworthy for some organizations. Users may prefer to have office staff apply Recurring Services onto Service Locations themselves via daily job auditing at the end of the day.
💡 Reduce potential technician failures by including the Membership Sale Task into Pricebook Templates that are grouped with applicable equipment. Additionally, utilizing the Recommended option in Pricebook line item settings allows you to associate the Membership Sale Task with other Pricebook items, allowing technicians to see the task as “Recommended” when those items are selected.
In this second method, there is no Membership in the equation. As a result, this method relies on office staff to manually apply Recurring Services onto Service Locations when applicable since technicians won’t have access to the Membership Sale Task to act as a "vehicle" for auto-applying a Recurring Service onto a Service Location. Without a Membership, technicians are unable to “sell” or activate a Recurring Service for a location.
Pros . . .
✅ As mentioned previously, since organization may be hesitant to place responsibility onto technicians to “sell” or activate a Membership for new customers via the Membership Sale Task, removing Memberships will ensure office staff are completely reliant in this process. This can be a positive for some operations.
Cons . . .
⛔ The lack of a Membership removes automation for automatically applying a Recurring Service to a Service Location via the Membership Sale Task. A lack of automation requires manual entry from the office, which could result in errors.
💡 Establish end-of day job auditing routines to help ensure office staff stay on top of manual entry of applying Recurring Services onto Service Locations when needed.
⛔ Concerns with Invoice Templates remain, as described in the first method.
💡 Utilize negative quantity line items when required, as mentioned prior.
In this third method, a Recurring Service Type is configured without an Invoice Template and without a Membership. This is the most bare-boned option for setting up a Recurring Service in ServiceTitan. It relies on both office employees and technicians in different ways, but it may be a preferred method if your Recurring Services are typically more custom and are normally invoiced on a job-by-job basis.
Pros . . .
✅ If your invoices for Recurring Service Types are created on a case-by-case basis, as there’s simply too many factors to standardize an Invoice Template, this method can be a preferred option for many.
Cons . . .
⛔ Removing Invoice Templates can make forecasting revenue on your RSEs via reporting more difficult.
💡While forecast reporting won't come easy without Invoice Templates to rely on, there are still ways of predicting potential revenue from upcoming RSEs that don't have Invoice Templates. This would involve looking at past trends of RSEs, calculating averages, and then multiplying your averages by the number of upcoming events you're measuring for the future.
In this fourth method, a Recurring Service Type is connected with a Membership, but the Invoice Template is excluded. Adding a Membership will allow technicians to “sell” or activate the Recurring Service via the Membership Sale Task, while a lack of an Invoice Template provides an open slate for less standardized event invoices.
Pros . . .
✅ As mentioned in the first method, Memberships provide mobile users access to the Membership Sale Task, which can be added to estimates and invoices to automatically activate Recurring Services for new customers in sales opportunities.
✅ Memberships offer the option of connecting equipment to specific equipment at the Service Location.
✅ As detailed in the third method, a lack of an Invoice Template can be beneficial for organizations.
Cons . . .
⛔ As brought up in the first method, some organizations may feel more comfortable with having office staff manage Recurring Services for new customers vs. expecting their technicians to make it happen.
💡 Pricebook Templates and the Recommended Pricebook option may assist technicians.
⛔ As touched on in the third method, a lack of Invoice Templates removes your ability to easily forecast revenue connected to RSEs via reporting.
💡 Identifying past trends and calculating averages will help you forecast revenue of upcoming RSEs without Invoice Templates to rely on.
Relevant Resources
🧠 Settings & Setup
Create and edit Recurring Service Types
Create and edit Invoice Templates
Create Membership Types
Setting Up Memberships
🧠 Office Workflows
Attach equipment to Memberships from the Office
Book Recurring Service Events from Call Screen
Create Recurring Service Campaigns using SMS
Manage Recurring Service Events
Sell Memberships from Office
View a Customer’s Recurring Service Events
🧠 Mobile Workflows
Attach equipment to Memberships in Mobile
Sell Memberships in ServiceTitan Mobile
Service equipment attached to a Membership
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