# Monthly service plans
Source: https://help.mucka.ai/service-plans/set-up-service-plans
Category: Service Plans
Last updated: 2026-09-09
> What monthly cover plans are, what the Service Plans page shows you today, and what is still being built.
A service plan is a monthly agreement with a customer: they pay you a set amount each
month, and in return you service the boiler once a year and turn out when it breaks
down. Plenty of firms run these on a spreadsheet. The Service Plans skill keeps the
whole thing in one place, so you always know who is covered, what they have already
had out of you, and what the book is worth.
**Service plans are on early access.** The [**Service Plans**](/service-plans) page
shows your plans, who is on them and what the book is worth, and you can build a plan
and put a client on one from the page. Each customer gets their own page where they
agree to their cover, pay their first month and set up a Direct Debit, and Mucka
collects every month after that. Because switching it on starts taking real money
from real homeowners, we turn it on account by account after a proper chat rather than
leaving it as a toggle. Say the word if you want it.
## What the page shows you
Four tabs, at [**Service Plans**](/service-plans).
**Plans** lists the cover levels you offer, with the monthly price and everything each
one includes. Add-ons that sit on top of a plan are listed separately underneath.
**Clients** is your book: every client on a plan, the property it covers, and how much
of their allowance they have used. You will see something like **2 of 4 call-outs**
against each name, counting down as the year goes on.
**Selling** is where you put a plan on a quote or an invoice, and switch on the messages
that offer one after you have been out to somebody. That has its own article:
[**Selling more service plans**](/help/service-plans/sell-more-service-plans).
**Numbers** is the part no spreadsheet gives you. See below.
## Knowing what the book is worth
The Numbers tab shows four things:
- **Coming in each month**: the total across everyone currently paying.
- **Still with you after a year**: of everyone who joined in a given month, how many
are still paying twelve months on. Anyone buying a trades business looks hard at
this figure and expects 85% or better.
- **Why people left**: split between customers who chose to go and customers lost
because a payment failed. The second group is the one you can usually win back.
- **Coming up**: who is due to pay in the next week, and anyone already past their
date. This is the one that earns its keep straight away if you collect by standing
order, because a standing order that quietly stops is otherwise invisible until you
go looking.
## The plan follows the property, not the person
Cover is tied to the address, not the customer. That matters when a house is sold: the
history stays with the property, and the new owner starts a fresh agreement with their
own allowance. It also means one client with three rentals has three plans, which is
what you want when you are working out whether a landlord is worth having.
## Worth knowing before you write your plans
There is a line in financial regulation that catches trades businesses out, and it is
worth understanding before you word anything.
A plan that promises to **do** things sits outside financial regulation. A plan that
promises to **pay** an amount, like "repairs up to £1,500" or "£750 towards a new
boiler", can count as an insurance product, which needs FCA authorisation.
Mucka flags wording that reads like a promise to pay, explains why, and suggests a
rewrite. It will not stop you publishing. It is your business and your call, and if
your plan really does promise to pay out then take proper advice first.
The same goes for the term. A rolling monthly plan you can cancel any time is fine. The
same money described as "£180 a year, paid monthly" is an instalment agreement, which is
regulated credit. Keep it monthly and keep it rolling.
## What Mucka watches for you
Once you have a plan book, Mucka keeps an eye on it and puts a card on your Overview
when something needs you. As always, nothing is sent until you approve it.
- **A plan coming up for renewal**, using whatever notice period you set on the plan.
- **Visits you owe but have not booked.** If the plan year is running out and the
included service still is not in the diary, you get one card covering the lot. A
visit that got booked and then cancelled still counts as owed, which is the whole
point of the check.
- **A payment that has not turned up.** Mucka cannot see your bank, so what it
actually knows is that the date you expected the money has been and gone. The
suggested message asks the customer to check their standing order rather than
telling them they missed it.
- **Someone worth offering a plan to**: a customer you have been out to more than
once in the last year who is not on one.
You can also just ask. Open Mucka and try "is Margaret covered for a call-out?" or
"which plans are up for renewal?" — handy on the doorstep, where the answer you want
is whether this visit is included and what they still owe if it is not.
Mucka will not create a plan, change a price or cancel someone's cover for you. Those
stay on the [**Service Plans**](/service-plans) page, where you do them on purpose.
## Booking a job for someone on a plan
Book a job through Mucka for a customer who is on a plan and it will tell you, then ask
whether to put the visit against their plan. It never checks an allowance off on its own
— you say yes first. If their plan is paused, or they have used everything up for the
year, it says that instead, which is worth knowing before you turn up.
## What the phone receptionist knows
If you run the AI receptionist, it now knows whether the person ringing is on a plan.
It will not bring it up. It will not read their allowance out, and it will not tell them
how many call-outs they have had. What it does is stop it quoting a call-out charge to
someone who has already paid for one, and book the work as covered. If the caller asks
outright — "am I covered for this?" — it answers from what is actually on their plan and
nothing more.
The reason it stays quiet otherwise is that a phone number is not proof of who is
holding the phone. The same rule already applies to addresses: the receptionist will
confirm a street but never read out a house number or postcode.
If the caller is **not** on a plan and you sell them, it will mention it once after it
has booked them a call-out, and then leave it alone.
## Their own plan page
Every plan you put someone on gets its own page you can send them. Open the client on
the **Clients** tab at [**Service Plans**](/service-plans) and use **Get their link**.
It copies a web address you can paste into a text, an email or a WhatsApp.
The page shows them what is covered, how many call-outs they get, what it costs a month
and, if you have written plan terms, those too. At the bottom they type their full name
to agree. That is their signature, and Mucka records it with the date and time.
**Agreeing takes no bank details and no payment.** It records what they agreed to.
Once they have agreed, and if you have linked your GoCardless account, the same page
offers them the Direct Debit set-up as a separate step.
Once they have agreed, the page shows a **Pay and set up Direct Debit** button, with the
first month's amount written on it. Tapping it takes them to GoCardless's own secure page.
Mucka never sees their bank details and never stores them. When they come back, the page
tells them it is set up and, once their bank has confirmed it, when the next payment comes
out.
### They pay the first month there and then
By default the customer pays their first month straight away, out of their bank account,
in the same step as setting the Direct Debit up. They approve it in their own banking app
and it clears in minutes, not days.
This is worth having on. Without it there is a gap between someone signing up and the
first Direct Debit clearing — three working days for Bacs, and then however long until
their billing day comes round, which can be a fortnight. Their boiler is covered for the
whole of that and you have not been paid a penny for it.
**If their bank cannot do the instant payment, nothing is lost.** GoCardless falls back
to setting the Direct Debit up on its own, and the first month gets collected with it as
normal. The customer does not hit a dead end.
If you would rather take nothing at sign-up — some firms sell their plans as "nothing to
pay today" — turn off **Take the first month straight away** in
[**Settings → Money → Getting paid**](/settings/money/payments). Everything then waits for the Direct
Debit, exactly as it used to.
Direct Debits do not work on day one. Bacs, the system behind every Direct Debit in
the UK, needs three working days before the first payment can be collected. Mucka
works the date out for you around weekends and bank holidays, and shows it to both of
you. Nothing is collected before then.
The order matters and Mucka enforces it: they agree first, then set up the Direct Debit.
Asking for bank details before someone has agreed to what they are paying for is the
wrong way round, and it would leave you with a Direct Debit and no record of what was
agreed.
If you have not linked GoCardless, the page simply tells them you will sort the payment
out with them directly. It does not show them a broken button.
The link is yours, not a payment company's, and it lasts 90 days. That matters more
than it sounds. The usual way of doing this hands the customer a link from the payment
provider that dies after about a week, so they open it late, get a dead page, and you
never hear about it. If yours does run out before they sign, the page tells them to
give you a ring rather than leaving them staring at an error.
Once they have agreed, the page stays live as their copy of what is covered. Send them
back to it whenever they ask what their plan includes.
## The 14 days they have to change their mind
If you sold the plan anywhere other than your own premises, and almost every plan is
sold on the doorstep after a job or by sending a link, the customer has 14 days to
cancel, no reason needed. That is the law, not a Mucka setting.
There is a catch worth understanding, because it is the bit that costs traders money.
If you start covering them straight away and they cancel on day ten, you can only
charge for the days you actually covered them **if they expressly asked you to start
early**. Without that, you refund the lot, including any call-out you turned out for.
So the plan page asks them to tick it, in plain words: *start my cover straight away,
and if I cancel in the first 14 days I will pay for the days I was covered*. Mucka
stores that tick with the time they made it. It is a small thing that only matters
once, on the day someone cancels after you have been out to them.
The 14 days run from the day **they agree**, not the day you set the plan up. If you
raise a plan on the 1st and they sign the link on the 5th, they have until the 19th.
Mucka works that out for you.
## Taking the payment
Direct Debit runs on GoCardless, and you link your own GoCardless account to Mucka. Head
to [**Settings → Money → Getting paid**](/settings/money/payments). There are two buttons and it matters
which one you press:
- **I already use GoCardless** — takes you to the GoCardless sign-in page. Use the
account you collect on today, so all your existing customers and Direct Debits are
the ones Mucka can see.
- **Set up GoCardless** — takes you to their sign-up page. Only for firms who have
never used GoCardless.
If you already collect on GoCardless and accidentally sign up for a second account,
Mucka will be looking at an empty one while all your real Direct Debits sit in the
other. Nothing breaks loudly — it just looks like none of your customers are set up.
If that happens, disconnect and connect again with **I already use GoCardless**.
Once you are linked, Mucka watches whether GoCardless has approved you to collect and
says so on that panel:
- **Being checked.** GoCardless is going through your details. Usually one to two
working days. Nothing to do but wait.
- **Needs your details.** GoCardless has asked you for something. Sign in to
GoCardless to see exactly what. We send you there rather than repeat it, because
getting the wording wrong on something a bank has asked for helps nobody.
- **Connected.** You are approved, and the panel shows the name your customers will
see on their bank statement.
**Once you show as Connected, Mucka collects for you.** Your customers set their Direct
Debit up from their own plan page, and from their billing day onwards Mucka takes the
monthly payment and raises the invoice against it. If one bounces it gets chased rather
than the cover being pulled the same day. If you would rather carry on collecting by
standing order, you can — just keep recording payments by hand and the Numbers tab still
shows you who is due and who has slipped.
Open a customer's plan on the **Clients** tab and you will see their Direct Debit state
in plain English: **Waiting on the customer**, **Setting up with their bank**, **Ready**,
or **Their bank turned it down**. If they switch banks, GoCardless tells us, the old
instruction is marked as finished, and you can send them the link again.
One thing worth knowing: if GoCardless ever pauses your account after you have been
approved, which happens most often when you change your business bank account, that
panel turns red and tells you. It is the sort of thing that otherwise goes unnoticed
until the money stops arriving.
## When a payment does not go through
This is the bit worth reading properly, because it is where most plan money is won and
lost, and Mucka does something deliberate rather than obvious.
**Nobody loses cover the day a payment bounces.** A homeowner whose boiler packs up the
week their Direct Debit failed, who then finds out they were not covered, is a complaint
you never want to have. So there is a run of six weeks between a failed payment and cover
stopping, and most customers are back on track long before the end of it.
### Trying again
Bacs takes about four working days even to tell anyone a payment failed, so the first you
hear of it is a few days after the date. From there Mucka tries again up to three times,
spacing the attempts around when that customer has actually paid you before rather than
on a fixed schedule.
**Only a payment that failed for want of money is retried.** If the customer cancelled
the Direct Debit at their bank, or the instruction is dead, or the bank rejected it for
a reason trying again will not fix, Mucka stops and tells you instead. Retrying those
costs you a fee for a certain failure, and on a customer who has died it is worse than
that.
### The six weeks
- **Straight away** — the plan is marked in arrears and you get a card about it. **Cover
carries on.** The customer is told their payment did not go through and when the next
attempt is.
- **After 30 days** — the customer is told their cover is now at risk. **Cover still
carries on.**
- **After 45 days** — cover stops. The plan is suspended, not ended, so one payment
brings them straight back.
- **After 90 days** — the plan is cancelled and the Direct Debit is cancelled at
GoCardless.
The dates are worked out once, when the plan first goes into arrears, and then fixed. You
and the customer are both shown them, in writing, so they do not move afterwards.
### If the money is taken back after it arrived
This is a different thing from a payment failing, and it is rarer. The collection went
through, you saw it, and then the customer's bank pulled it back out again under the
Direct Debit Guarantee — usually because they asked it to. Banks are obliged to do that on
request, no questions asked, so it can happen on a payment that was completely correct.
When it does:
- **The invoice for that month goes back to unpaid**, so the month is owed again rather
than quietly vanishing off your books.
- **You get a card** saying whose payment it was, how much, and that nothing is going to
be tried automatically.
- **The plan goes onto the same six-week clock** as a failed payment, so cover carries
on while it gets sorted.
- **Mucka does not chase the customer.** They are usually the one who asked for the money
back, and an automatic demand landing the same week is the wrong move. This one is a
phone call.
If that month's invoice had already gone across to Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent or Sage as
paid, Mucka cannot undo it at their end — the card says so when that is the case, and it
needs putting right in your accounts software as well.
### What you actually have to do
Usually nothing — the chasing runs itself. What is worth acting on is the card Mucka
raises when a retry is not going to help: a cancelled Direct Debit needs a conversation
and a fresh plan link, not another attempt. Open the customer's plan on the **Clients**
tab and their Direct Debit state is in plain English.
A plan showing **Cover stopped, unpaid** is not a lost customer. The plan is still open
and the Direct Debit may still be live, so a single payment puts them back on. It is the
one status in the book most worth a phone call.