Choosing to offer extended warranties at your business gives you peace of mind and an extra layer of financial protection against costly future repairs
Add additional revenue towards your bottom line from the sale of warranty programs or for the potential continuing revenue of the seasonal maintenance that some warranty programs require. Sera can help you easily sell and activate those programs through our partnership with JB Warranties.
If you are not already a dealer with JB Warranties and would like more information, they are happy to help you here!
Your Territory Manager will work with you and your team to assemble a portfolio of warranty programs that best fit your desired labor rate, included services, and upfront financial investment from your customer.
Selling warranty programs in Sera
To begin selling warranty programs within your Sera account, you will first want to ensure that you have set up your account for success for both you, your office staff, and your technicians by configuring your Equipment Types and Component Types in Company -> Equipment Setup.
Equipment Types are the binding force behind a few key elements of your Sera account, including:
- Establishing and adding to a service history of that equipment within your customer's account by reminding the technician to link the equipment through a helpful icon on the Invoice next to the task
- Linking applicable warranty programs to groupings of equipment
- and many more...
We have a tutorial on Equipment Capture & Setup that will walk you through this helpful feature.
Once you have the Equipment and Component Types created, you will enter your selected warranty programs by going to Company → Programs → Warranties and clicking the + Add Warranty button. This will open a pop-up to enter the program information detailed below:
|
Field |
Note |
|
Program Name |
The name of the warranty program offered. Note: this will be visible to technicians and customers. You will want to use verbiage that will provide clarity about the program being offered, i.e. “10 Year Furnace - Labor Only warranty” |
|
Provider |
JB Warranties is pre-populated for selection |
|
SKU Number (Product ID) |
The SKU of the warranty program |
|
Coverage Description |
The customer-facing details of the warranty program including coverage and potential exclusions. |
|
Labor Rate |
Your company’s labor rate. No calculations are performed off of this entry within the warranty program and is merely for record-keeping and tracking purposes as it relates to this program. |
|
Cost |
Your cost to purchase this warranty program from the provider. |
|
Purchase Price |
Your customer’s cost to purchase the warranty program from you. |
|
Term (Years) |
The length of time that the warranty is active and valid. |
|
Effective After (Days) |
The number of days until the warranty program is active after the purchase date. |
|
Default Accounting Category |
The Accounting Category that you would like to be used when this purchase is generated within a batch. The dropdown will be pre-populated with the Accounting Categories list from Company → Settings. |
|
Default Accounting Class |
The Accounting Class, if any, that you would like to be used when this purchase is generated within a batch. The dropdown will be pre-populated with the Accounting Class list from Company → Settings. |
|
Add Equipment Types |
Any Equipment Types that you would like to be presented to the technicians and office staff as options applicable to this warranty. The dropdown will be pre-populated with the Equipment Types list from Company → Equipment Setup. |
Once the warranty program is entered above, it will be immediately available for selection as a part of the quoting process within the Task Picker immediately below your existing Membership programs.
You are able to link the warranty programs as Add-On items to tasks within your Pricebook. This will not only allow for a more efficient and smoother quoting experience for your technicians and internal sales staff, but it will also ensure that the desired warranty program is selected for the appropriate unit every time.
Using our Group Pricing feature on these quotes will also make for a quicker, more streamlined, and more efficient sales process as there is less potential for haggling as your customer will see a single price for the entire service instead of a line item breakdown of the different prices for each task.
If you selected Equipment Types to be presented to the technician as a part of the warranty program sale, they will want to link those equipment details on the invoice using the Equipment Capture workflow. For more information about this workflow, see our article on Equipment Setup & Capture.
Note: Equipment details are a necessary part of the activation process between Sera and JB Warranties. If the details of the equipment are not linked, there is a potential that your activation of the warranty purchase might be delayed as they will have to reach out for those details.
When the invoice is created for a sold warranty program, those details will appear on the report found in Accounting → Warranties To Do. You will click the warranty program hyperlink, verify details and Save to "approve" the purchase. Sera will transmit that information over to JB Warranties on your behalf and JB Warranties will create the purchase for the customer, charge your payment method on file and will deliver back to you the receipt for the charge and also the certificate from the purchase for the customer's records within your system.
Approving the warranty purchase, with complete equipment information, will populate the warranty information section of the Equipment card within the customer's record in your Sera account.
Activated warranty programs will be available within your JB Warranties account under the Agreements header.