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Coverage and covered items

Pro and Enterprise feature

Service agreements are available on the Pro and Enterprise plans. On Pro, an agreement covers a customer or one of their sites, with labor-only or inspection-only coverage, and its fee can be billed. Agreements tied to individual equipment and coverage that includes parts need the Enterprise plan, because they build on asset management and inventory. Compare plans to find the right fit for your business.

Coverage is the whole point of an agreement: which parts of a job the customer has already paid for, and which parts you still bill. FSM Navigator® lets you say that precisely, because no two agreements are sold on the same terms.

The tick list decides

On the agreement form, What this agreement covers is a set of tick boxes:

Item type Typically
Labor The technician's time on the job
Part Materials fitted during the visit
Permit Permits pulled for the work
Inspection Inspection line items
Travel Travel charged to the job
Other Anything that does not fit the above

Tick what the agreement waives. Anything left unticked is billed to the customer as normal.

Ticking nothing waives nothing

An agreement with no boxes ticked covers no charges — every line is billed. That is a valid thing to sell (an agreement can be about response times alone), and the form says so when you leave the list empty. It is not an error, but it is worth being sure it is what you meant.

Coverage type is the older, blunter setting

Coverage type — full, parts only, labor only, inspection only — is still on the form. When you pick one, the tick list fills in to match it (inspection only ticks just Inspection), and you can change the ticks from there. For agreements written before the tick list existed, the coverage type still decides on its own:

Coverage type Waives
Full coverage Labor and parts
Parts only Parts
Labor only Labor
Inspection only Nothing is waived automatically (older agreements only)

Labor only and inspection only are available on Pro and Enterprise. Full coverage and parts only cover parts, so they need inventory and are part of the Enterprise plan. On the Pro plan you still see them in the Coverage Type list, greyed out and marked (Enterprise), with an upgrade link underneath, so you know they exist and where to get them.

Where the tick list is used, it decides and the coverage type does not. If you tick anything — or deliberately tick nothing — that is your answer. The coverage type only applies to an agreement that has never had the tick list set.

Older inspection-only agreements bill as normal

An inspection-only agreement written before the tick list existed reaches the job and waives nothing, because the system cannot tell on its own whether a given visit was the inspection the agreement covers. It tells you the agreement is there and leaves the decision with you. When you next edit and save one, the tick list is set to Inspection, so inspection lines are waived and everything else bills as normal.

What happens when you invoice

Raise an invoice for a job an agreement reaches and FSM Navigator:

  1. Works out which agreement governs the job — the narrowest one that reaches it.
  2. Pre-ticks the coverage box if the agreement covers the work.
  3. Names the agreement beside the box, so you know which one it found.
  4. Says so even when the agreement reaches the job and covers nothing, rather than leaving you to wonder why an agreement you know exists produced no tick.

A covered line keeps its real hours and quantities, so the paperwork still shows the work that was done. What it charges depends on the agreement's coverage rate.

When an agreement covers only part of a line

An agreement can absorb all of a covered line or only a share of it. At 100% — the default, and what every older agreement uses — a covered line drops to zero charge exactly as it always has.

Below 100%, the line is reduced rather than zeroed, and the invoice says so in plain words underneath the line:

Service agreement covers 50% of this line — $61.73 covered, $61.72 billed to you.

Both halves are shown on purpose. The percentage explains why a line marked Covered still carries a charge; the amounts say what the agreement absorbed and what is actually owed. A customer given only the rate would have to do the arithmetic themselves against a figure the invoice never prints, and a customer given only the amounts could not tell a partial waiver from a billing error.

The same sentence appears in three places — the invoice document you send, your own invoice screen, and the customer's portal — so you and your customer are always reading the same words.

A partially covered line is not struck through

A fully covered line is shown struck through, because nothing is owed on it. A partially covered line is not, because the amount beside it is money the customer really does owe.

0% is a real setting, and it still shows

An agreement set to 0% absorbs nothing, and the line is billed in full — but it is still recorded as covered and still says so on the invoice. That is deliberate: the visit happened under the agreement even though no money moved, and hiding that would make the agreement look like it had not applied at all.

Untick it when the job was out of scope

The pre-tick is a default, not a decision. Untick it to bill a job the agreement does not really cover, or leave it ticked as a goodwill call. Either way the invoice records what you chose.