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You’ve built your membership in ServiceTitan. Pricing is set, deferred revenue is configured, recurring services are attached. Now you actually have to sell it. The process differs depending on whether it happens in the field or from the office.
This walks through the complete membership selling workflow, what techs do on mobile, what the office does, and how accounting responds automatically.
Why memberships matter
A maintenance membership isn’t just recurring revenue. It’s retention. Members call you first. They accept recommendations more often. They don’t shop around. A strong membership program replaces unpredictable reactive service revenue with a predictable base of work.
The ROI compounds over years of customer retention. Train your team to present memberships on every eligible call and make it easy. ServiceTitan’s mobile workflow supports this.
Selling from the mobile app
The most common place memberships get sold is in the field, at the end of a service call.
Step 1: Build an estimate first.
Even if the tech knows what they’re doing and plans to build the invoice directly, create an estimate with multiple options including the membership. This shows the customer choices and makes the value visible.
Step 2: Add the membership to the invoice.
Go into the job, dispatch, arrive, and open the invoice. Tap Add Items and navigate to your membership category.
Step 3: Select the duration.
When you tap the membership, you see the options you’ve configured (monthly and/or annual plans). The technician picks the right one. This is a training point: if you have both monthly and annual, make it obvious which is which. Use large, bold images in your pricebook items. Picking the wrong duration causes billing problems later.
Step 4: Add add-ons if applicable.
If you have per-system pricing like $20 for the first system, $10 for each additional, tap the add-on option and select the additional unit. If the customer has two systems, add one add-on. If they have three, change the quantity to two.
You can also select which specific equipment on the account is covered. Useful when a customer has three units but only wants two covered.
Step 5: Collect payment.
The customer signs the invoice. Payment is collected. The membership is created on the account.
Step 6: Mark the first recurring service complete if applicable.
If the tech does the initial maintenance visit right then (common in HVAC), go to the customer’s account, History tab, Recurring Services, find the service that was just created, and tap Mark Complete.
Don’t rely on your techs to do this perfectly. Build it into your dispatcher debrief. Someone in the office should verify that if a tech sold a membership and did the first visit, the recurring service got marked complete.
What happens on the accounting side
When a membership is sold with deferred revenue configured, ServiceTitan does this automatically:
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The membership sale creates an invoice with a task mapped to the membership liability GL account. Money goes into liability, not income, because you haven’t earned it yet.
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When the tech completes a recurring service event, ServiceTitan generates deferred/recognized revenue tasks that move money from liability to income.
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The amount moved is based on your revenue allocation setup. If a membership includes two annual visits with 50/50 allocation, completing one visit moves 50% of the annual revenue into income.
Example: customer on a $30/month plan ($360/year) with two included visits. Each visit is worth $180. Complete one visit, $180 moves from liability to revenue.
This matters operationally. A loose cancellation policy like “cancel anytime” creates an accounting mess where you recognize revenue for visits you don’t deliver. Set a clear policy: customers commit to the full year or cancel before the next visit. This protects your accounting and reduces refund problems.
Selling from the office
Not every membership sale happens in the field. Office staff can sell memberships from a customer’s location page. Useful for phone sales, renewals, or when a customer calls asking about your plan.
From the customer’s location page:
- Click the kebab menu (three dots) in the upper right
- Select Sell Membership
- Choose the business unit, membership task code, and duration (monthly or annual)
- Choose whether the membership applies to this location or all the customer’s locations
- Click Create
This creates an invoice for the sale. Since you’re creating it outside of a job, payment is typically collected over the phone.
Adding membership add-ons from the office works differently. The “sell membership” flow doesn’t have a direct add-on button like the mobile flow. Go to the created invoice, manually add the add-on task, and assign it a parent task (the main membership task). The price auto-populates.
After the sale: what to verify
Someone on the office side should verify these things after each new membership:
Correct duration — is it monthly when it should be? Annual when it should be? A tech who accidentally picks annual when the customer wants monthly is easier to fix immediately than three months later.
Correct recurring services — the membership should have generated the right number of recurring service events on the account. A “two-visit plan” should have two upcoming events.
First visit completion — if the tech did the initial visit during the same call, that recurring service should be marked complete. If not, accounting won’t reflect the completed visit.
Payment collection — if it was sold in the field, the invoice should have a payment. If sold from the office, confirm the payment method.
Build this debrief into your closing-of-day process. Catch errors before they compound.
Membership billing
Once a membership is active and set up correctly, recurring billing runs automatically. ServiceTitan generates invoices on your configured cycle and charges the saved payment method.
What needs human attention:
- Failed payments — if a card is declined, ServiceTitan can send follow-up notifications. Someone needs to contact the account and get updated payment info.
- Expired cards — reach out to members before their cards expire.
- Cancellation requests — when a member cancels, understand the deferred revenue implications and handle correctly (refund, recognize, or both).
The goal is automated billing with a human layer watching for exceptions. Not fully manual, not fully hands-off.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a customer have multiple memberships active at the same time?
Yes, if your membership settings allow it. Check your settings to control this.
What if a technician picks the wrong duration?
Fix it immediately. Wrong duration means wrong billing going forward. Much easier to fix before the first billing cycle.
How does the customer know they’re a member?
They receive the invoice showing the purchase. The customer tag gets applied to their account. If the Customer Portal is enabled, they can log in and see their membership status.
Do memberships auto-renew?
Yes. That’s how ongoing memberships work. They keep billing automatically until the customer cancels. No action needed from them or your team.
What if a member moves?
ServiceTitan has a “When a Customer Moves” workflow that relocates their account, equipment, and membership to the new address or transfers them to the new owner. Train your office staff on this since it happens regularly.
The bottom line
Selling memberships in ServiceTitan is straightforward once the setup is right and your team knows the workflow. Field techs need to find the membership in the pricebook, choose the right duration, and add add-ons. Office staff need to sell from the location page and verify post-sale setup. Your accounting person needs to understand the deferred revenue implications of each completed visit.
Build training around these workflows and the program runs itself. For more on initial setup (settings, GL accounts, billing templates, recurring services), see the companion post on ServiceTitan Membership Setup.
Related guides: ServiceTitan membership setup and ServiceTitan Customer Portal.