Troubleshooting
Role: Administrator · BookkeeperArea: Invoicing · Payments · Payroll/Commission · All versions
What you're seeing
You sell new equipment and include a free maintenance service. When the technician goes out for that free visit, the invoice is $0, so the technician isn't credited or compensated for the work.
Why this happens
Reason 1
The full cost was collected on the equipment sale, so there's nothing on the free maintenance invoice to credit the technician.
The full cost was collected on the equipment sale, and the later maintenance visit is free to the customer, so there's nothing on the maintenance invoice to credit the technician with. To compensate the technician fairly without charging the customer again, you set aside (defer) part of the sale amount and apply it to the maintenance invoice later.
Note: If the free maintenance is delivered through a membership or a service agreement with recurring services, use ServiceTitan's native Deferred Revenue feature instead of the manual method below. Deferred Revenue recognizes a portion of the upfront payment as each recurring service is performed, using proper GL liability and income accounts. See Set up deferred revenue (for memberships) or Set up deferred revenue for service agreements. The manual method below is for one-time equipment sales that include a free visit and are not tied to a membership or service agreement.
How to fix it
Defer part of the equipment-sale payment and apply it to the free maintenance invoice later.
Caution: Before you start — this is a manual accounting workaround. Confirm the approach with your accountant or bookkeeper before using it, since unapplying payment as credit and manually editing a service cost affects how revenue and technician compensation are recorded.
1Defer part of the equipment-sale payment and apply it to the maintenance visit
Complete the sale of the new equipment.
Collect the payment for the equipment sale.
Decide how much to defer, then unapply that amount from the equipment-sale invoice.
Leave that amount on the customer record as credit until the maintenance visit.
When preparing for the free maintenance visit, open the invoice for that job and add the service that was provided for free.
Manually edit the cost of that service to the deferred amount you decided on (for example, $159.95).
✓ Done · The technician is credited with the deferred amount for the maintenance visit, and the customer isn't charged again for the free service.
Still not working?
Contact ServiceTitan Technical Support at go.servicetitan.com/ask with:
The equipment-sale invoice number and the maintenance-job invoice number
The amount you intended to defer
Whether your account uses the Deferred Revenue feature
A description of how the credit and manual cost edit were applied
Which steps from this article you already tried
Want to learn more?
Set up deferred revenue ›
Configure the native Deferred Revenue feature for memberships.
Set up deferred revenue for service agreements ›
Configure Deferred Revenue for service agreements with recurring services.
Edit, unapply, or delete a payment credit from an invoice ›
How to unapply a payment amount and leave it as customer credit.
Set technician splits on an invoice ›
How to attribute invoice credit across technicians.