This guide will help you understand and make the most of the Service Plans feature in Payaca. Service plans are designed for managing ongoing subscriptions with your customers, such as monthly or annual maintenance agreements. They are separate from Projects, which are used for stand-alone, one-off jobs.
Getting Started: Prerequisites
Before you can create your first plan, there are a few essential steps to complete:
Enable the Feature: Service Plans is an add-on. You must first enable it from the Subscription page in your Payaca settings.
Connect to Stripe: This feature relies on Stripe to create subscriptions and process recurring payments automatically. You must have an active Stripe account connected to Payaca.
Enable Payment Methods in Stripe: If you plan to offer Direct Debit as a payment option, you must enable it within your Stripe account settings first. If this is not enabled in Stripe, it will not work for your customers, even if you select it in Payaca.
Creating a New Service Plan
Follow these steps to build a new plan from scratch.
Navigate to Service Plans from the main menu on the left-hand side.
Click the Create Plan button in the top right.
Plan Details and Terms
This is the information your customer will see when they subscribe.
Plan Name: Give your plan a clear, customer-facing name (e.g., "Annual Boiler Health Plan").
Description: Use the text editor to detail everything included in the service. You can use formatting options like bold and bullet points to make the benefits clear.
Terms and Conditions: You can either upload a PDF document or provide a direct URL link to the terms and conditions on your website. Using a link is often easier for managing future updates.
Pricing and Payments
Here you will set up the billing frequency, cost, and payment options.
Work Carried Out: Choose the frequency of the agreement, for example, Each Year for an annual plan or Each Month for a monthly one.
Pricing: You can set a monthly price, an annual price, or both. It's common to offer a discounted annual price to encourage upfront payment (e.g., a £20/month plan could be offered at £200/year).
VAT: Select the correct VAT rate and choose whether the price you entered includes tax or not.
Payment Methods: Tick the payment methods you want to offer. You will see options for Card (which includes Apple Pay and Google Pay) and Direct Debit.
Commitments (The Work to be Done)
Commitments are the specific jobs or tasks you need to track and complete for each service period. A typical setup involves creating an Event with one or more Tasks.
Under the 'Commitments' section, click to add an event.
Configure the event details, such as the event name, a default duration, and any internal tags (e.g., "Service Plan").
After saving the event, add the tasks that need to be completed during the visit. You can add simple checklist items or attach a more detailed Custom Form that needs to be filled out by the engineer.
Once you have configured all the details, click Save Plan. This will create the plan in both Payaca and Stripe.
Subscribing Customers to a Plan
You have two primary ways to get customers signed up:
Invite a Customer: Click the three dots next to a plan and choose 'Invite Customer' to send an invitation to someone already in your Payaca database.
Copy Public Link: You can also copy a public subscription link. This can be shared on your website, in marketing emails, or in automation flows sent after a project is completed.
Managing Active Subscriptions and Booking Jobs
Once customers subscribe, you can manage them from the Subscriptions tab within the Service Plans area, or from the Service Plans tab within a specific customer's record.
The system automatically creates Service Periods based on the plan's frequency (e.g., for an annual plan, it will create a period for this year and the next).
To schedule a job for an active subscription:
Find the subscription and click the three dots to view its Service Periods.
Click on the upcoming, unarranged service period.
Click Arrange to open the calendar booking screen. The customer's details will be pre-filled.
Select a date and time, and click Create event. The job is now booked in the calendar.
Once the engineer has completed the work and marked all associated tasks as complete in the app, the service period will be marked as Complete.
Advanced Options
You can further enhance your service plans with discounts and automated reminders.
Discount Codes: In the Discount Codes tab, you can create unique codes that offer a percentage off for a specific duration (e.g., for one month, multiple months, or forever). You can also set expiry dates and limit codes to specific plans.
Customer Reminders: In the Customer Reminders tab, you can set up automated emails or SMS messages to be sent to customers. For example, you could create a reminder that is sent 30 days before their plan is due for renewal.
Important Information About Invoicing
It is essential to understand that all recurring subscription invoices for service plans are created and managed within Stripe, not Payaca. They are kept separate from your one-off project invoices. If you need to send this data to accounting software like Xero or QuickBooks, this must be done via Stripe's own apps or a tool like Zapier.