What to know before you approve a repair invoice.
A service contract and a repair invoice are written by different people, months apart, for different reasons. This is how the two fit together: the documents, the terms and the checks, in the order you will need them.
Why invoices go wrong without anyone cheating
A service contract is something you have already paid for: a fee, usually annual, in exchange for parts, labour or both on a defined list of equipment. A repair invoice arrives later and asks you to pay again. The question that matters is which lines on the invoice the contract already covers, and nobody in the usual path of an invoice is placed to answer it.
- The technicianrecords the work: what failed, what was replaced, how long it took.
- The vendor’s billing teamprices it from the work order, often at standard rates. They rarely see your contract.
- Your accounts payable teammatches the invoice to a work order or purchase order and pays it. They check that the work happened, not whether it was covered.
- The contractsits in a drawer, or with whoever signed it.
Each step is reasonable on its own. None of them compares the invoice with the contract, so a covered charge gets paid by default. Most of what goes wrong is a job raised against the wrong account or billed at standard rates, not dishonesty, which is also why it is usually fixed by a polite question rather than a dispute.
Know which kind of plan you have
The same invoice line can be owed on one plan and covered on another. Contracts vary, so treat these as the usual shapes and check yours against them:
Two other promises often sit alongside the contract: the manufacturer warranty, which usually responds first on newer equipment, and the vendor’s own workmanship warranty on a repair it carried out recently. A charge either of them should carry does not belong on your invoice. More in what commercial kitchen service contracts actually cover.
The seven parts of a contract that decide every invoice
Contracts run from a few pages to a few dozen, but the parts that decide an invoice are the same seven. Find each one once and mark it; every later invoice gets quicker.
- Term
- The start and end dates. Work done outside them is not covered by this contract at all, however the rest reads. Check the date the work was done, not the date of the invoice.
- Covered equipment schedule
- The units, by model and serial number, that the contract applies to, usually in an appendix at the back. A unit missing from it is not covered, even if an identical one beside it is.
- Coverage clauses
- What the plan includes: parts, labour, refrigerant, travel, maintenance. Read them for the shape of the plan before you read the invoice.
- Exclusions
- What the plan does not cover, usually by cause: misuse, impact, missed maintenance, water quality, power events. An exclusion beats a coverage clause. A covered part damaged by an excluded cause is not covered.
- Conditions
- What must be true for coverage to apply: maintenance kept up to date, your approval above an authorisation threshold, an emergency call authorised by you.
- Rates
- What billable work may cost: the contract labour rate, the after-hours premium, travel time and trip charges, parts markup. These apply even to charges you genuinely owe.
- Money terms
- The deductible you pay per visit or incident, and any coverage limit on what the vendor pays per incident or per year.
Contracts are often amended, and an amendment usually takes precedence over the original where the two conflict. Keep amendments with the contract and read them as part of it.
Reading a repair invoice, line by line
Every line on a repair invoice is one of a handful of kinds, and each kind is decided by a different part of the contract.
More in six charges worth questioning on a repair invoice.
The service report is the third document
The technician’s service report is the only record of what was actually found on site, and it decides more of the invoice than people expect:
- Cause. Exclusions turn on why something failed. “Condenser heavily soiled” points at a maintenance exclusion; “normal wear” points at coverage. Without a report, nobody can say which applies.
- Time. The arrival time decides whether an after-hours premium was earned, and the hours on site are what billed labour should match.
- Identity. The serial number on the report is how the repair is matched to the equipment schedule.
- Approval. Whether you authorised an expensive repair before it was done is often recorded only here.
Ask for the report with every invoice. A vendor who invoices without one is asking you to take the facts on trust. More in what a service report has to say before an exclusion applies.
Check an invoice in this order
The order matters because the early checks can settle the whole invoice before you read a single coverage clause.
- Was the work done within the term?If not, this contract covers none of it.
- Is the unit on the equipment schedule?Match the serial number, not the description.
- What kind of plan is it?Parts only, parts and labour, or full coverage settles most labour and travel lines.
- Does an exclusion apply?Read the exclusions against the cause on the service report, line by line. One visit can involve two causes.
- Were the conditions met?Maintenance up to date, approval given where the contract requires it.
- Are the rates and hours right?Labour rate, after-hours premium, hours against the report, parts markup.
- Apply the money terms.Respect any coverage cap, then subtract the deductible. What remains is what to query.
- Do the numbers add up?Quantity times unit price on each line, and the lines to the total.
This is the order Ladgerline works in too, with every clause it relies on located word for word in your contract before it is shown to you.
When a charge looks wrong
- Ask, don’t accuse. Most errors are a job raised against the wrong account or billed at standard rates. A question gets a revised invoice faster than a dispute does.
- Cite the clause and the page. “Section 2.2 on page 3 says on-site labour is included” is hard to argue with. “This seems high” is easy to ignore.
- Pay what you owe. Settling the undisputed balance keeps the relationship and your payment terms intact while the queried lines are resolved.
- Put it in writing, and keep the reply. The answer to one query often settles the next invoice as well.
More in how to dispute a repair invoice, with the clause that backs you.
What to keep on file
- The signed contract, every amendment, and the current equipment schedule.
- Every service report, filed with the invoice it supports.
- Maintenance records. They are the evidence when a maintenance exclusion is raised.
- A running note of what each unit has used against any annual allowance or cap.
- The renewal notice date, in the diary. It is the one point where rates, exclusions and the schedule are open to negotiation.
Terms worth knowing
Each one links to a plain definition in the glossary.