Service plans are a type of repeat subscription businesses can sign their customers up to.

Rather than having to re-secure work with a customer every year or every month, with a service plan, you can sign a customer up to a subscription and deliver a repeat service, such as a boiler check, every month or year.

This allows you to create a recurring revenue stream and help secure your income.

Service plans with Payaca are created through Stripe. This means Stripe handles the payment process, but Payaca allows you to manage and organise the plan.

To use service plans in Payaca, you first need to enable them.

To do this, click on the drop-down in the top right corner and select "Manage subscription".

Under available add-ons, you will see Service plans.

Click, "Enable".

Click "Enable add-on".

Click "Continue".

The service plan add-on will now be marked as enabled.

Go to the service plans tab.

Click "Create Plan".

The service plan editor will now open.

Add a name to your plan, this is what your end clients will see when they're invited to sign up.

Also, add your plan description, this needs to explain what your service plan is and what is included. Make sure you sell the plan to your end clients.

Next, add your terms and conditions, either by attaching a file or by using a direct web link to your terms. These are the terms your clients will need to accept when joining your plan.

Next, you need to decide whether you want the plan to be carried out yearly or monthly. This can be different to when you take payments.

Payment can be taken on a monthly or yearly basis or you can give your clients a choice. If you only want to provide one of the options only fill out one of the boxes.

You can also choose your tax rate and whether you want the price to include tax.

Choose which payment method you want to use by using the tick boxes to select or deselect.

Commitments take the form of events and tasks.

To set up commitments you first need to create event templates and tasks against your plan.

These will be used to create the events you attend for your subscribed customers.

Click "Add Event with Task"

This will open the event template editor. This allows you to create similar events very quickly with saved details such as duration, attachments and tasks.

When you're happy click "Save Event Template".

If you then want to add a linked task to this event template, click "Add linked Task".

You can now use the task template editor to design your task.

Click "Save Task Template" when you are happy. This process is the same for unlinked tasks.

For more information on tasks and forms read the help article on scheduling.

Once your commitments have been created they will be indicated on the screen.

With all the necessary information filled out the service plan can now be saved.

All your service plans will be visible on your service plans page.

There are two methods for inviting customers to a plan, via the "Invite Customer" button or using a public link.

To invite a customer using the invite button, click "Invite Customer".

Use the pop-up to choose the customer you want to invite or create a new customer.

If you have created a discount, you can apply this now.

Jump to the section on discounts for information on how to set these up.

Before sending out the request you can edit the email the request is attached to.

You can also use the "Apply a discount" drop-down to apply a discount code you have created to the invite.

When you are happy, click "Send".

You will be notified that the invite has been sent.

To invite a customer with a link, click on the three dots next to the invite customer button and select "Copy public link".

Use the pop-up to apply a discount if you want to use one.

Copy the link and you can then paste it into an email, onto your site, or wherever you want to provide people with access to sign up to your service plans.

Once you have sent a customer an email invite to your service plan, it will appear in their inbox. This is what they will see when they proceed to sign up.

The customer will click to view the invitation. This will show the service plan user portal.

At this point, the customer can view your terms and conditions and add any discount you may have provided.

Once they're happy, they can click "Join Plan".

The customer will be asked to agree to your terms and conditions before proceeding.

They will now be directed to pay via the method(s) you have chosen.

The customer will receive an email confirming their transaction and you will receive an email also.

The new sign-up will now appear on your service plans list. While payment is still processing, this will be marked as pending, once complete the name and date the customer joined will be visible.

Once you have customers signed up to your plans, you then need to manage those commitments.

This can be done from the service periods tab on the service plans page.

Those periods with a green outline represent commitments that are currently active. You will also be able to see this via the start and end dates. If the end date has passed then that commitment is no longer active.

You will also be able to see whether an event associated with that service plan has been arranged. This will be shown by the "ARRANGED" and "UNARRANGED" labels.

Click on an unarranged service period to open it.

Within the service plan period, you will be able to see the name of the customer, the start and end date of the period and a commitments section.

Click "Arrange".

This will open an event editor.

Event information will be prepopulated with the details you already have saved.

Fill out any extra information and click "Create event".

The event will now be booked in and your service period will be marked as complete.

You can also manually mark a service period as complete from within that period.

In the top right corner, click on the three dots and click "Mark as complete".

Once a person completes the task or form associated with a service plan event, that service period will be marked as complete.

You can see completed events by selecting them in your filters.

Once you've completed a service period piece of work, you may want to book in the next service period. You will be able to see this in your upcoming service period list, marked as "UNARRANGED".

From the service plans page, go to the discounts code tab.

Click "Create Discount Code".

This will open the discount editor.

In the name section, choose a name that will be used for internal reference. This will also appear on the client's receipt, so bear that in mind when choosing what to name it.

Next, choose the percentage to give off. You can customise this to your choice.

For the discount duration, you can set it to last for a defined number of months, to last permanently or set it as a one-off use.

You can also limit the date range in which customers can redeem the discount code. This means the discount will expire on a date you can set.

You also have the option to limit which service plans your discounts apply to.

Use the drop-down and tick boxes to select which plans the discount can be used on.

Finally, decide the discount code you want to use. This is the code the end customer will type in to apply the discount.

When you're happy click "Create Discount Code".

Your discount will be shown under the discount codes list with a summary of the information included.

To copy or delete a discount code click on the three dots next to the desired discount.

Choose to either copy the code or click "Delete" to delete the code.

Send email and text reminders to all customers subscribed to a service plan when their subscription is up for renewal.

From the service plans page, go to the "Customer Reminders" tab.

Click "Create Customer Reminder".

Choose a name for your reminder.

Select the reminder type - Email, SMS or Both.

Link the reminder to a Service Plan.

Select the trigger for the reminder.

Choose your message. You can customise the message by using the variables on the right-hand side.

Click save to finish setting up the reminder.

Cancellations are performed outside of Payaca via your Stripe account.

If one of your customers wants to end their subscription with you, they will need to contact you so that you can cancel their subscription within your Stripe account.

However, if a customer's payment fails, then their subscription will end automatically.

The primary Payaca account holder will receive an email alerting you that the customer has cancelled.

If you view that customer within the customers section of your Payaca account, under "Service Plans", you will see the plan that the customer was signed up to is now set to "INACTIVE".