Service Plans

What A Service Plan Is

A service plan is a service and maintenance agreement, such as an annual boiler service or landlord gas safety plan. It says what is included, the billing frequency and price, any agreed yearly increase, the customer’s properties it covers and how it is billed. Manifold plans the included visits. Owners and office users manage plans; engineers do not see them.

• The plans you sell are set up once under Settings, then Service plans: a name, what is included (a gas safety check every year, a boiler service every year, priority call-outs, a percentage off parts, and any words of your own), a monthly price before VAT, a VAT rate and a term in months. Bill the customer chooses every month, quarter or year. Yearly price increase (%) is optional and defaults to zero. The term is 12 months unless you change it, and a plan renews at the end of each term until it is cancelled. Add plan does not save a form with a mistake in it: each box that is wrong (the name, what the plan includes, the parts discount, the term, the yearly increase, the price, the VAT rate) is marked and says what is wrong under it, a plan name you already use is said under the name, and focus goes to the first one.
• Put a customer on a plan from their client page (Money & services, the Service plans card, Add a plan) or from a property’s page (Service plans). Choose the plan, tick the customer’s properties it covers, and set the start date. A plan covers one customer, and a property can be on one plan at a time.
• Add a plan on a customer or property flags the same way: Choose a plan, Choose at least one property and Choose the start date are said under their own boxes. The terms are copied onto the customer’s plan when you apply it. Editing or archiving a plan in Settings changes what you sell from then on; it never changes what an existing customer agreed or is paying.
• A plan is Draft (saved, not started), Waiting for payment set up, Active, Payment overdue, Cancelled or Ended. Only an Active plan covers its visits.
• The plan shows its next renewal date, when a cancelling plan ends, Plan invoices and Payments recorded. Open the Manifold invoice for the numbered invoice and its payments. Stripe receipt is the provider’s payment record, separate from your Manifold VAT invoice.

Pricing And VAT

A plan’s price follows the same rule as an invoice line: a price before VAT, plus VAT at a rate, with the VAT rounded to the penny.

• Enter the monthly price before VAT. Quarterly billing charges three months together and annual billing charges twelve. VAT is calculated on the billing-period amount, rounded to the penny, and the form shows what the customer pays each period.
• If you are not VAT registered (Settings, Organisation), no VAT is added, whatever rate the plan carries.
• The smallest payment that can be taken is £0.30.
• A confirmed Stripe payment prepares a numbered Manifold invoice with the payment already recorded. An invoice-billed plan prepares an invoice for each due period. Manifold emails the invoice before publishing it to the customer portal. Paid in Stripe · invoice awaiting delivery means the money has arrived but the Manifold invoice has not yet been delivered. Until delivery is confirmed, the Stripe receipt keeps its original VAT reporting path. Afterwards, the linked invoice replaces that path without counting the payment twice. Historical payments without an invoice keep their original treatment.
• Delivered plan invoices appear in statements and the normal accounting sync, with their linked payments. Stripe’s receipt remains a separate payment record.
• For continuous service, the tax point is the earlier of issuing the VAT invoice and receiving payment. Preparing a draft does not create that tax point, and a late invoice is not backdated to the period’s start. Cash accounting continues to follow actual receipts and refunds.
• An agreed yearly increase is copied onto the customer’s plan and applies at the relevant billing anniversary. Editing the template does not change an existing agreement. Existing plans keep a zero increase unless an agreement already records one.

How A Plan Is Billed

The customer pays you, not Manifold. Stripe subscriptions run on your own Stripe account, the same account that takes quote payments, so you are the merchant of record and the money lands with you. A plan can instead be billed manually through recurring Manifold invoices, including when Stripe is not connected.

• With Stripe connected under Settings, then Integrations, and online payments in your Manifold plan, starting a plan creates the subscription Checkout on your account and emails the customer a Set up payment link in your branding. You can also copy the link from the plan.
• The link works for 24 hours. If it runs out, or the customer lost the email, choose Send a new link: the old one is switched off and a fresh one is emailed.
• For a Stripe plan starting tomorrow or the day after, wait until its start date to start payment setup. Manifold will not charge early to work around Stripe’s future-start restriction.
• The customer can pay by card, and by BACS Direct Debit once you have switched Direct Debit on in your own Stripe dashboard. Manifold does not force it on, because Stripe refuses a payment method your account has not enabled. Direct Debit takes longer to clear than a card, so the plan may wait a few days before it turns Active.
• The plan stays Waiting for payment set up until Stripe confirms the first payment. Completing payment setup alone does not activate the plan. A failed payment shows Payment overdue and alerts the office. Stripe uses the retry settings on your account. Retry overdue payment is available only when the current invoice is eligible; a paid or processing payment cannot be charged again through that action.
• Each confirmed payment is recorded under the plan with its date, amount, Manifold invoice and Stripe receipt. Refunds reported by Stripe retain their exact amount and date and appear under Refunds needing review. Stripe has already returned that money. Issue the matching credit note on the original plan invoice, then choose it under Resolve recorded refund. This records the credit refund once without asking Stripe to send more money. Standard VAT is adjusted through the issued credit note; cash VAT retains the original refund date. A refund that cannot be matched exactly, or affects an exported period, stays for review.
• Tick Send invoices for payment instead of charging through Stripe to email an invoice each billing period (with Stripe not connected, a plan is billed this way anyway). A pay link is included when online payments are available, or the office records a bank, cash or cheque payment on the invoice. An accounts email or contact email is needed before starting this billing flow. You can Save as a draft while that is missing.
• Manifold issues a VAT invoice and emails it to the customer when each billing period starts, for every plan billed by invoice. A new plan is invoiced from its agreed start date. A plan that already existed when invoice billing was introduced is invoiced from its first billing date after that day, and earlier periods are not billed retrospectively. While your account is paused no invoices are issued or emailed, and a period that fell due in the meantime is invoiced once the account is active again.
• If invoice delivery is uncertain, it stays held for review rather than sending again automatically. Check the plan’s billing message and contact support if the outcome remains unknown. An uncertain invoice-billed delivery blocks the affected VAT report until an owner or office user states on VAT workings whether the invoice reached the customer, because the customer may already have received a VAT invoice. That statement settles the VAT only; it does not change or resend the invoice.
• If a Stripe payment does not match the agreed price, billing period or plan, its receipt is retained and flagged for review. The affected VAT report and export stay blocked until it is resolved. On VAT workings an owner or office user can confirm that the receipt’s stored VAT split is correct for what was charged. A receipt with no stored VAT record cannot be restated there, so it stays blocked until support and your accountant reconcile it.
• You can start a plan later: Save as a draft, then Start plan on it. The billing is worked out again when you start it, so a draft saved before you connected Stripe is billed through Stripe once you have.

The Visits It Covers

An active plan that includes the gas safety check and/or the boiler service looks after those visits, so you book them first and the customer is not nagged about them.

• The plan keeps the property’s dates in step. A covered visit that has no date on the property is given one: the first date you chose when you applied the plan, otherwise a year after the start. A property with no gas safety date and no check on record is not given one, because a due date would read as Valid (in date) for a property with no certificate: its check goes on the To book list from the first gas safety date you chose, else the start date, and the property stays Unknown until the check is recorded. To show an in-date certificate from your old system, type its next due date on the property. A date the property already has is never moved, and after a visit is recorded the existing rules move it a year on.
• Each morning Manifold puts a covered visit on the To book list once it is 60 days away or nearer, or overdue: a to-book gas safety check for the annual check, and a to-book gas service job, named after the plan, for the boiler service. It does this once per due date. Running again creates nothing, and a visit that is already booked or already on the To book list is not duplicated.
• The Call list, Properties and the property page show Covered by plan, and the Call list lists covered visits ahead of the rest, so they are the first you ring about.
• Renewal reminders stay quiet about a visit an active plan covers: no gas safety or boiler service reminder email goes to the customer. The status and the office bell still show it is due. A plan that is behind on payments, waiting for payment set up, cancelled or ended covers nothing, so the customer is reminded as usual. See Renewal Lifecycle and Reminders.

Cancelling A Plan

• Cancel plan on the plan. A plan on a Stripe subscription is cancelled at the end of the period already paid: the customer keeps their cover to that day (Cancel plan says Cancelling. Cover continues to that date, and the plan then reads Ends and the date, with Cover ends under it), then the plan ends. Keep plan, before that day, puts it back.
• A plan that has not started (a draft, or one waiting for payment set up) and a plan you bill yourself stop at once. The payment link of a plan waiting for payment is switched off, so the customer cannot start paying for it; if they use it anyway, Manifold stops the new subscription.
• When a plan ends or is cancelled, its properties go back to ordinary reminders and its visits are no longer covered. A to-book job it already created stays on the To book list until you cancel or book it.
• Cancelling or changing the subscription in your own Stripe dashboard is followed: the plan shows it within moments.
• A cancellation is the audit log’s Service plan cancelled; starting and keeping a plan are recorded too.

Troubleshooting