Maintenance contracts are the best revenue an aircon company has. They are predictable, they recur, and they turn one-off customers into accounts. They are also where small companies quietly lose money: a missed quarter nobody noticed, a unit nobody remembers servicing, a renewal meeting where you cannot show the client what you actually did all year.
None of that is a technician problem. It is a scheduling and record-keeping problem, and it usually starts with a spreadsheet.
Where Contract Servicing Goes Wrong
- The schedule lives in one person's spreadsheet, or in their head.
- Visits are booked from memory, so a site slips a quarter before anyone notices.
- The unit list is out of date: units get replaced, added or moved.
- Reports are scattered across WhatsApp chats, email and paper job sheets.
- At renewal there is no clean way to show the client every visit and finding.
Step 1: Build the Unit Register First
Before you schedule anything, list every site and every unit under contract. It is tedious once, and it saves you every quarter after that.
- Site name and address
- Unit name or location label (for example "Level 3 Pantry")
- Equipment type, brand, model and serial number
- Installation date and warranty expiry, if you know them
In FieldSign you can import the list from a spreadsheet template instead of typing each unit in. Each unit can also get its own QR code, which becomes useful in step 4.
Step 2: Create One Schedule per Contract, Not One Booking per Visit
Booking four visits a year by hand is how visits get missed. Set the rule once instead: what gets serviced, how often, by whom, and until when.
A FieldSign maintenance schedule holds the frequency (weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly), the start and end dates, the assigned technician, a preferred time and the contract reference. On each due date, FieldSign creates the job automatically from 9am in your time zone and emails you a summary of the jobs it created. When the contract end date passes, the schedule closes itself.
If a contract covers different work on different cycles, such as quarterly general servicing and a yearly chemical wash, create one schedule for each. They run independently.
Step 3: Report Every Visit Against the Unit
When the technician finishes the job and the client signs, the report is saved against the unit. Over a year this builds a service history you can open in seconds: every visit, every finding, every photo, in date order.
That history is what makes the difference when a client asks why a unit failed, or when a new facilities manager takes over and wants to know what has been done.
Step 4: Handle Breakdowns Between Visits
Contracts generate calls between scheduled visits. "The unit in Meeting Room 3 is leaking" is a typical one, and it usually arrives as a WhatsApp message with no unit details.
Put a QR sticker on each unit, or one poster per floor. The client scans it, describes the problem, and gets a fault number and a page to track progress. Your office sees exactly which unit and site it is, and can turn the fault into a job or a quotation. We cover this in more detail in our guide to QR code fault reporting.
Step 5: Make Renewal Easy
Renewal should not be the first time the client sees your work. Walk them through the service history: visits completed, faults handled, recommendations you made and whether they were acted on.
On the Business plan, each client also gets a portal link with their reports and upcoming visits, so they can see your work all year rather than only at renewal.
How Often Should Contract Units Be Serviced?
Frequency is a commercial decision between you and the client, and it depends on the equipment and how hard it works. In Singapore's climate, quarterly general servicing is a common default for offices and homes, with chemical washes or overhauls scheduled less often. Units that run long hours, such as those in server rooms or busy F&B outlets, are often on monthly contracts.
Whatever you agree, put it in the schedule rather than in someone's memory.
What It Costs in FieldSign
Unit registers, maintenance schedules and QR fault reporting are part of the Asset Suite. It is included in the Growth plan ($149 per month) and the Business plan ($299 per month), and in every 14-day free trial. The Starter plan ($59 per month) covers jobs, service reports and signatures, but not the Asset Suite.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I schedule chemical washes on a different cycle from general servicing?
Yes. Create a separate schedule for each type of work, each with its own frequency and technician.
What happens if a scheduled visit is missed?
The job stays open. Jobs whose date has passed without being started appear in the Needs Attention view on the dashboard, so a missed visit is visible the next morning rather than at the end of the quarter.
Can different units at the same site have different technicians?
Yes. Each schedule has its own assigned technician.
Does the client need to install anything?
No. Service reports arrive as an email link, and the client portal and fault reporting open in any phone browser.