The Renewal Runway: maintenance agreement renewals that start 90 days out

The four markers

The Renewal Runway treats every maintenance agreement like a plane on approach: you line it up 90 days out, not two weeks before it lands. It has four markers, in this order:

1. The 90-day list. Every agreement that renews in the next three months goes on one list, every week.
2. The last-visit note. Each renewal message names the last visit: who came out, what they did, what they saw.
3. The approval. An agent drafts the notes; a person in your office reads and approves each one before it goes out.
4. The state notice. If your agreements renew automatically, you send the notice your state requires, inside its window.

The rest of this page is the setup for each marker, with the notes to copy.

Who this is for

HVAC, plumbing and electrical companies that sell maintenance agreements (memberships, comfort clubs, service plans) and lose some of them every year to silence rather than to a real no. It works whether you renew agreements by hand, by an estimate the customer signs, or automatically on a card on file. The fourth marker matters most for that last group.

Why two weeks is too late

Most field-service software can show you which agreements are about to expire, but the default view is short. In ServiceTitan, the Follow Up screen's Expiring Memberships tab defaults to memberships expiring within two weeks of today. The same help page says the Potential Membership Renewal tag, which shows up when you book a job for a customer whose membership is expiring, uses a default window of three months. So the software already admits that three months is the useful horizon for renewals; the list you open on a Monday just doesn't start there.

Two weeks leaves no room for a visit, a conversation or a customer who is traveling. Ninety days leaves room for all three, and for the legal notice window if you auto-renew.

What you need first

• An export or saved view of every active agreement with its renewal date, plan name, price, customer contact and whether it auto-renews.
• The last completed visit for each agreement: date, technician, and the technician's notes or work summary.
• One person who owns renewals each week. In most shops that's the office manager or the CSR lead.
• A short list of your state's automatic renewal rules if any agreement renews on its own. Ask your attorney for this once; it's a one-page answer.

Build the 90-day list (marker 1)

Every Monday, pull agreements with a renewal date between today and 90 days out. In ServiceTitan you can widen the Expiring Memberships filters from the two-week default; in other tools, a saved report or a spreadsheet export works the same way. Sort it by renewal date and add three columns: auto-renew (yes/no), last visit date, and status (not contacted, note sent, renewed, declined).

Rules for the list:

• One list for the whole company, not one per tech.
• An agreement stays on the list until its status is renewed or declined. Nothing falls off because a date passed.
• Anything with auto-renew on gets a second date column: the notice due date (see marker 4).

Write the last-visit note (marker 2)

A reminder that only says "your plan renews on this date for this price" reads like a bill. A note that names the last visit reads like your company remembers the customer. Pull the technician's notes from the last completed visit and use one concrete detail: a filter changed, a coil that needs cleaning, a water heater that is getting old, a breaker that was warm.

Three notes to copy (replace the brackets; keep them short and true to the actual visit):

Note A, a plan that renews by signature:

Hi [first name], it's [company]. Your [plan name] renews on [date]. When [tech] was out on [visit date] [he/she/they] [one detail from the notes], so we'd like to [what the next visit covers]. Want us to keep you on the plan? Just reply yes and we'll send the renewal.

Note B, a plan that auto-renews:

Hi [first name], it's [company]. Your [plan name] is set to renew automatically on [date] for [price] for another [term]. On your last visit [tech] [one detail]. If you'd like to keep it, there's nothing to do. If you want to cancel, reply here or call [number], and we'll take care of it.

Note C, a customer with no visit in the last plan year:

Hi [first name], it's [company]. Your [plan name] renews on [date], and we noticed we never got out for your [season] visit. Can we book that first, before the renewal? Here are two times that work: [time 1] or [time 2].

Note C matters. A customer who paid for two visits and got one has a fair reason to say no, and the honest fix is to deliver the visit before you ask for the renewal.

Approve every note (marker 3)

This is where an AI agent earns its place. Each Monday it reads the 90-day list, pulls the last visit notes, picks the right template (A, B or C) and drafts a note per customer. It does not send anything. Your office manager reads each draft, fixes anything that's wrong, and approves it. Cortex builds every agent this way: a person approves before anything goes out.

Instructions to give the agent (paste into whatever tool drafts the notes):

You draft maintenance agreement renewal notes for [company].
Input: one agreement with renewal date, plan, price, auto-renew flag, and the last completed visit (date, tech, notes).
1. If there was no completed visit in the last plan year, use Note C.
2. If auto-renew is on, use Note B and include the price, the term, and how to cancel.
3. Otherwise use Note A.
4. Use exactly one detail from the tech's notes. Never invent a detail; if the notes are empty, leave the detail out and say so in a comment to the reviewer.
5. Never promise a price, a discount or a date that isn't in the input.
Output the draft and a one-line reason for the template you chose. Do not send.

What the reviewer checks, in this order: the detail is real, the price and date match the agreement, the template fits, and nothing promises what the office can't deliver.

Send the state notice on time (marker 4)

If your agreements renew automatically, you may owe the customer a notice before the renewal, and the window depends on your state. California is the common example: for a subscription with an initial term of one year or more, the California Automatic Renewal Law requires a written or electronic notice 15 to 45 days before the renewal date, saying that it will renew, the term, how to cancel and how to reach you. Many other states have their own automatic renewal laws with different windows and wording.

At the federal level, the FTC's broader "click to cancel" rule was vacated in its entirety by the Eighth Circuit in July 2025, but that did not end federal enforcement: the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act still requires clear disclosure, express consent and a simple way to cancel, and the FTC has continued to enforce it and restarted rulemaking.

How to put this on the runway:

• For every auto-renew agreement, set the notice due date to the earliest day your state's window allows (in California, 45 days before renewal), and make sure the note is approved and sent before the latest day (15 days before).
• Use Note B for these. It states the renewal, the price, the term and how to cancel.
• Keep a record of when each notice went out. A sent timestamp in your software or your texting tool is enough.

This page is not legal advice. Ask your attorney which rules apply to your agreements and your states, then write the answer into the template once.

What to watch out for

• Stale notes. If the last visit was a year ago, the detail may no longer be true. Note C exists for this.
• Double messages. If your software already sends an automatic renewal email, turn one of them off or the customer gets two.
• Price changes. If the plan price is going up at renewal, say so in the note. A surprise charge is how agreements turn into chargebacks.
• Declines. When a customer says no, mark the status and stop. Ask once if there was a reason, and pass it to the service manager.

How to tell it's working

Track three numbers on the 90-day list each month: how many agreements were up for renewal, how many renewed, and how many were still "not contacted" 14 days before their date. The last number should reach zero first. If it doesn't, the bottleneck is the approval step, not the customers. For the rest of the renewal setup inside your own software, your free AI Operations Audit maps where it fits.