Fixed price and service based contracts

Fixed Price / Service Based is the type you use when you are servicing a client — an AMC, a cleaning agreement, a maintenance contract. This page covers how its money works: what the client pays every period, and what makes anything else chargeable on top.

For the wider picture, start with how contracts work.

The recurring fee

Contract page → Billing & Invoicing panel

You set a recurring fee and a billing frequency — weekly, monthly, quarterly, or whatever the agreement says — and the client is billed that amount every period. Tax comes from your master tax list and is applied when the invoice is raised.

A one-time deposit is kept as its own figure and charged on the first invoice only, never rolled into the recurring amount. This is the joining fee pattern you see in internet and AMC agreements: 200 to set the connection up, then 100 a month — the client’s first bill is 300, and every one after it is 100.

The panel also totals the whole agreement for you: a fee of R300 a month over a six-month term shows as a plan value of R1,800.

The rate card decides what can be charged at all

This is the single most important rule in a contract, and it catches people out: a service only becomes chargeable if it is on the rate card.

To see why, look at what happens on a job. On the Create New job screen below, the job has been put under contract CON-91 and two services picked under Job Type/Services:

Create New job screen

Selecting them tells the fieldworker what to go and do. It does not put anything on the bill — the job’s cart, which is what actually reaches the invoice, is still empty:

Create New job screen → Cart tab

Add the service to the cart and it becomes a priced line:

Create New job screen → Cart tab, after adding the service by hand

That manual step is exactly what the contract’s rate card automates. Put a service on the rate card, and selecting it on a job drops it into the cart on its own. Leave it off, and it stays a to-do that somebody would have to add by hand.

So the rule, in table form:

On the rate card?	What happens on the job
Not on it	The service stays a to-do — an instruction that the work needs doing. Nothing reaches the cart by itself, so nothing bills automatically.
On it	The service becomes more than a to-do: it also drops into the job’s cart, so it carries through to the invoice on its own.

Once a service is in the cart, its free quota decides the rest — an included line at zero, or a charge (see below).

Which price gets used

The rate card does a second job as well: it sets the price.

• Something on the contract’s rate card bills at the contract rate — the price you agreed with this client.
• Something not on the rate card can still be billed; you just have to add it to the cart yourself. It then bills at your master rate — the standard price from your service and item lists.

So leaving something off the rate card does not make it free or un-billable. It makes it manual, and priced at your standard rate rather than this client’s negotiated one.

All of this works the same way whether the job came from a work pattern or you raised it ad-hoc, and it applies to inventory items and materials exactly as it does to services.

Scheduled work does not add to the fee

The jobs your work pattern generates are exactly what the recurring fee already pays for. Where their service is on the rate card and still inside its free quota, they appear on the invoice as included lines at zero — visible, so the client can see the work was done, but not charged.

Only work beyond what’s included gets added

Every service and item on the rate card carries a free quota and a rate beyond that quota.

Contract page → Rate Cards & Billable

• Usage inside the quota is included — it shows on the invoice at zero.
• Usage beyond the quota is charged at the contract’s rate, and added onto that same period’s invoice. This is what the billing panel calls overage.
• Mark a row Unlimited and it is never charged.
• Set the quota to 0 and it is charged from the very first unit.

The same rule applies to inventory items and materials, not just services.

A worked example

Take a monthly cleaning contract:

Setting	Value
Recurring fee	100 / month
Rate card service	Visit — free quota 12 per contract, 40 beyond
Work pattern	One visit a month

The work pattern creates twelve jobs across the year, and the client is billed:

• A normal month — 100. The scheduled visit falls inside the free quota, so it appears on the invoice as an included line at zero.
• A month with an extra visit — 140. That thirteenth visit is beyond the quota, so it is charged at 40 and rides along on the same month’s invoice.

Materials behave identically: an item used within its quota is included, and anything beyond it is added at the contract rate.

Note that this example only works because Visit is on the rate card. That is what lets the visits reach the invoice at all — first as included lines, then as a charge once the quota runs out.

The same rules, two very different contracts

Because the rate card is the gate, leaving a service off it or putting it on produces two completely different commercial agreements from the same screens.

Everything included — a fixed-price contract. Leave the service off the rate card. Now however many call-outs happen in a month, each job is recorded, done and closed, and none of them adds anything to the bill. When you raise the invoice and look for jobs to bill, they simply do not appear as chargeable items. The client pays the agreed fee and nothing more.

“Unlimited support, 5,000 a month.” Log as many visits as the client needs — the invoice is 5,000 every month regardless.

Pay per visit — a service-based contract. Put the service on the rate card with a rate. Now every job for that service automatically carries its amount into the job’s items, and the invoice for that period picks all of them up. The total moves with how much work actually happened.

“Call-outs at 800 each.” Three visits in a month bills 2,400; a quiet month bills less.

And the middle ground, which is the worked example above: a fixed fee that covers a set number of visits, with anything past that quota billed on top. Between these three shapes you can model most service agreements any industry runs on.

Putting it together: a full contract

Everything above meets in one place. Here is a complete AMC, from setup to the invoices it produces.

The agreement. A client has three air conditioners. You will service them quarterly for a year, at a fixed monthly fee, with a joining fee up front.

Setting	Value
Type	Fixed Price / Service Based
Term	1 Jul 2026 → 30 Jun 2027
Recurring fee	1,000 / month, billed monthly, Automatic
Deposit	2,000, one-time
Equipment	The client’s three AC units, linked
Work pattern	AC service, every 3 months — four visits across the term
Rate card — service	AC service: free quota 4, then 900 each
Rate card — item	AC filter: free quota 4, then 250 each
Not on the rate card	Emergency call-out

What the client is billed.

• July — the first invoice carries the fee plus the one-time deposit: 3,000.
• August to June — 1,000 a month.
• The four quarterly visits — the work pattern creates them, the technician arrives with the three AC units already attached to the job, and each visit sits inside the free quota. They appear on the invoice as included lines at zero, so the client can see the work was done without being charged for it.
• A fifth visit in March, because one unit is playing up. That one is beyond the quota, so it is charged at 900 and rides along on March’s invoice. A fifth filter is fitted on the same visit, beyond its quota too: +250. March comes to 2,150.
• An emergency call-out in November. The job is created, done and closed — but Emergency call-out is not on the rate card, so nothing reaches November’s invoice. If you decide it should be charged after all, add it to the job’s cart and it bills at your master rate.

Over the year that is 14,000 of agreed money (twelve months plus the deposit) and 1,150 of extras, all of it landing on the invoice for the month it happened in.

Change one thing and it becomes a different business. Take AC service off the rate card and the visits stop being countable — the client pays 1,000 a month no matter how often you come out. Remove the recurring fee and put a rate on every service instead, and you are billing per visit. The screens do not change; the rate card does.