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Maintenance memberships are one of the highest-leverage tools in a home service company. They create recurring revenue, improve customer retention, and give your dispatchers steady scheduled work. ServiceTitan has a robust membership setup, but it has a lot of steps and several settings that aren’t obvious on the first pass.
This walkthrough covers how to build a real-world membership in ServiceTitan, one decision point at a time.
Before You Start: What You’ll Need Ready
Before you touch the membership settings, have these ready:
- A name for the membership (e.g., “Platinum Comfort Club”)
- A customer tag that marks members in the system
- Pricebook task codes for the new sale, renewal, and billing
- General ledger (GL) accounts for membership liability (for deferred revenue)
- Recurring service types for the maintenance visits included in the membership (e.g., AC maintenance, heating maintenance)
If your accounting setup and pricebook aren’t in order first, the membership build will stall. Get those squared away before you start.
Step 1: Name the Membership and Assign a Tag
Go to Settings → Invoicing → Membership Types and click to create a new membership type.
Name it what your team will recognize—”Platinum Comfort Club,” “Gold HVAC Plan,” whatever fits your brand. If you want a different display name in the customer portal, you can set one, but it’s simpler to keep the name consistent everywhere.
After naming it, assign the customer tag that identifies members. When a customer buys this membership, they automatically get this tag on their profile. You can create the tag right from this screen if you haven’t yet.
Step 2: Duration and Billing Frequency
This is one of the most important decisions: ongoing vs. fixed duration.
Ongoing means the membership auto-renews indefinitely until the customer cancels. This is strongly recommended. It reduces administrative overhead, eliminates the risk of customers falling through the cracks at renewal time, and is the model customers expect from subscription services.
Fixed means the membership expires after a set period (e.g., 12 months) and requires active renewal. Avoid this unless you have a specific business reason. It adds complexity, manual work, and churn.
Within ongoing, you can offer multiple billing frequency options. Monthly and annual are common. Both can be ongoing (auto-renewing), they just differ in how often the customer is charged. Offering both gives customers flexibility without adding much complexity to your setup.
Step 3: Configure the Membership Discount
Membership discounts incentivize customers to stay and give them visible value on every invoice.
Show Membership Savings on Customer-Facing Invoices. Leave this checked. It adds a “you saved X” line on invoices, which is a built-in value reminder every time a member gets a bill.
For how the discount applies, you have options:
- All services. One discount percentage applies to everything.
- By business unit. Different discounts for different business units.
- By pricebook category. The most granular option. Different discounts per category.
The “all services” approach is simplest but dangerous if you have high-ticket installs. A 10% discount on a $15,000 system install because the customer has a maintenance plan is a serious margin hit. Most companies discount their service and maintenance categories generously (10–20%) and apply a much smaller discount (2–3%) to their install and equipment categories, or exclude them entirely.
If you have specific pricebook items with member pricing already set in the pricebook itself, ServiceTitan applies whichever discount is larger: the pricebook item’s member price or the membership settings percentage. They don’t stack. The better deal wins.
Step 4: Locations — Single or All?
Does this membership cover one customer location, or all of their locations?
For most residential companies, the answer is single location. A customer with two homes buys two memberships, one for each address. If you intentionally want a customer-level membership that covers all their locations, choose “All Locations.”
Step 5: Set Up Pricing with the Membership Pricing Table
This is where you set the actual dollar amounts customers pay for each billing frequency option.
Use the pricing table (select Yes when asked). This lets you set prices in one place and apply them to both monthly and annual plans. It also enables duration-related logic, like charging a slightly lower annual rate compared to monthly.
You’ll also answer two questions:
- Sell price = billing price? If yes, the amount on the initial sale invoice is the same as what’s billed each period. If no, you can charge a different (often higher) upfront price.
- Renewal price = sale price? For ongoing memberships, this typically doesn’t matter, but for fixed-duration memberships it determines whether renewals cost the same as the initial sale.
Set your prices. For example, $20/month for the monthly plan, $276/year for the annual plan.
Step 6: Attach Pricebook Task Codes
You need two types of task codes linked to the membership:
New Sale Task. This is the item that appears on the invoice when a technician or office staff sells the membership. Since you’re using the pricing table, set the price on this task to $0 in the pricebook (the pricing table overrides it automatically). Tie this task to your membership liability GL account.
Billing Template. This is a separate task used for the automatic recurring billing invoices. This is what generates the $20 (or whatever your price is) charge each billing period. Like the sale task, set it to $0 in the pricebook and let the pricing table handle it. Also tie it to the membership liability GL account.
Both tasks need to be findable in the pricebook. Make sure they’re assigned to a category so techs can locate them on the mobile side.
Step 7: Add Recurring Services
The whole point of a maintenance membership is the included visits. Add them here.
Click Add Existing Service and attach the recurring service types that come with this membership (e.g., AC Maintenance, Heating Maintenance). These become the scheduled visits ServiceTitan will track and remind you to complete.
For revenue allocation, if you’re using deferred revenue, set this to “Divide Evenly” between the recurring services. With two services, that’s 50% each.
Step 8: Deferred Revenue Setup (If Applicable)
If you’re accounting for membership revenue as deferred (the industry-standard approach), you need to set up invoice templates for each recurring service. These templates contain two tasks:
- A negative $1 task mapped to the membership liability GL account. This moves money out of liability.
- A positive $1 task mapped to an income GL account. This moves money into revenue.
ServiceTitan sets both at $1 and then calculates the actual amounts automatically based on the membership price and the number of visits. These task names will appear on customer invoices, so name them clearly. For example, “Maintenance Visit—Credit Applied” and “Maintenance Revenue Recognized.”
When a recurring service event is completed, ServiceTitan uses these templates to automatically recognize the appropriate share of revenue.
For deferred revenue, also configure:
- Recognize revenue at point of sale or defer? Select Defer.
- Auto-calculate deferred revenue? Select Yes.
- How to handle dismissed recurring service events? “Give the option” is the safest choice, since dismissing can happen for different reasons.
- If a membership is canceled with a deferred balance remaining? “Give the option” to create a charge/refund invoice case-by-case.
Add-Ons: Charging Per System
If you want to charge differently based on how many systems a customer has (e.g., $20 for the first system, $10 for each additional), set up Membership Add-Ons in the pricebook.
Create separate task codes for the additional system pricing for each billing frequency (monthly additional, annual additional). Link those as add-on options when building the membership. On the mobile side, the technician adds the base membership and then applies the appropriate add-on task for each additional system.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does ServiceTitan recommend ongoing over fixed memberships?
Fixed memberships require manual renewal tracking and create more opportunities for customers to lapse. They add administrative complexity. Ongoing memberships auto-renew, reducing churn and office workload.
What happens to deferred revenue if a customer cancels?
If recurring service events that were included in the membership haven’t been completed yet, the deferred balance may need to be resolved by refunding or recognizing the remaining revenue. ServiceTitan can help automate this if set up correctly.
Can I offer different discount percentages for service vs. installations?
Yes. Use the “By Business Unit” or “By Pricebook Category” discount setting to apply different percentages to different types of work.
Does the membership need to be sold through a job, or can it be sold standalone?
Both. Technicians can sell it during a service visit (common), or office staff can create a standalone membership sale from the customer’s location page using the “Sell Membership” option in the kebab menu.
Do I need to rerecord my membership setup if ServiceTitan updates the customer portal?
Possibly. The customer portal interface is periodically updated, and the membership view within it may change. Core membership settings don’t change, but anything related to portal-facing display may need to be revisited.
The Bottom Line
A properly configured ServiceTitan membership becomes a reliable revenue engine. The setup has many steps, but each one serves a purpose. Get it right once, and it runs mostly on autopilot. Automatic billing, automatic recurring service scheduling, and automatic revenue recognition do the heavy lifting. The setup time investment pays itself back quickly.
For the selling side of memberships—how technicians present and close them in the field—see the companion post on Selling Memberships in ServiceTitan.
Related guides: selling memberships in ServiceTitan and ServiceTitan Customer Portal.