A service contract coverage check is the step of confirming, before you book a repair, whether an active service contract or SLA already obliges a specific vendor to do that work. It takes a few minutes when contracts are organised and saves paying twice for the same job: once in the annual contract price, and again as a one-off call-out to whoever answered the phone.
Duplicate payment for covered work is one of the most common leaks in facility budgets, and it is rarely fraud. A technician on site does not know what the HVAC agreement includes. The person booking the job does not have the contract open. The vendor who does owe the work is never called, so nobody objects. This guide explains where coverage hides and how to run the check every time.
Why a service contract coverage check belongs before the booking
After the job is done, finding out it was covered means a credit-note negotiation with one vendor and an awkward call to another. Before the job is booked, it means a phone call to the right vendor. The contract coverage check is cheapest at sourcing time, which is why it should be the first step of every request, before any vendor is ranked or any request for quote goes out.
It also protects the vendor relationship. A maintenance contractor who sees covered work going to competitors has a fair grievance, and a contract you do not use is a contract you overpay for at renewal.
Where coverage usually hides
Service contracts rarely say "covered" in one place. Check these four sections.
| Where to look | What it can cover | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled services list | Planned visits and tasks included in the price | Quarterly filter changes, annual boiler tuning, monthly pest treatment |
| Included repairs or callbacks clause | Repairs or callbacks between visits, sometimes up to a cap | Elevator callbacks during business hours, minor plumbing repairs under a set value |
| Warranty on parts and labour | Rework on recent jobs by the same vendor | A compressor replaced three months ago that fails again |
| Quotas per contract year | A number of visits or interventions included before extra charges | Four deep cleans per year, two emergency calls per quarter |
The quota row is the one most often missed. A contract that includes four carpet extractions a year is only useful if somebody knows how many have been used.
The coverage check, step by step
Run the same questions for every job, in this order.
- Which vendors hold an active contract for this trade at this site? Check the contract term dates; an expired agreement is not coverage, but a renewal in progress may be.
- Is this task in the scheduled services or included repairs? Match the job description against the services list, not against the contract title. "HVAC maintenance agreement" tells you nothing about whether a fan motor is included.
- Is there a cap or quota, and how much is left? Count the visits used this contract year.
- Is the work rework under warranty? Look at the last jobs on the same equipment and who did them.
- What are the response terms? If the contract promises a response time, the SLA applies to this call too, and a missed response is worth recording.
If any answer is yes, send the job to that vendor under the contract and record it against the contract. If all answers are no, source the job normally.
What makes the check hard in practice
The check itself is simple. What makes it fail is where contracts live: a shared drive, an email attachment, a binder in the property manager's office, or the head of the procurement lead who negotiated it. Three habits fix most of it.
- One record per contract, linked to the vendor and the sites it covers. Our facility services vendor contract guide covers what that record should hold.
- A services list, not just a PDF. Pull the included services and quotas out of the contract into a list someone can check without reading twenty pages.
- Jobs recorded against the contract. Otherwise nobody can count quota usage, and the renewal conversation has no data. See using vendor performance data for contract renewals.
How Evalystar runs the coverage check
Evalystar is vendor management software for facilities and procurement teams, and the coverage check is the first thing it does when a job is created. It checks the active contracts and SLAs on file for that trade and site, shows the services the contract includes, and tells you if the work is already covered by a specific vendor, so covered work goes to the vendor who owes it and is not billed again as a one-off. Only if the job is not covered does it move on to ranking the vendors in your pool by past performance and drafting the quote request. The check happens at sourcing time, before the job is booked; it is not an audit of finished work.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if a repair is covered by our service contract?
Check four things before booking: whether the task appears in the contract's scheduled services or included repairs, whether a visit quota applies and how much is left this contract year, whether the work is rework still under the vendor's parts and labour warranty, and whether the contract is active for that site.
What happens if we pay another vendor for work that was covered?
You usually pay twice: once in the contract price and again for the one-off job, and recovering the second payment is difficult because the covered vendor never refused the work. Record the case so it can be raised at renewal.
Who should run the service contract coverage check?
Whoever books the job should run it, because that is the last moment it is cheap; this is often a facility coordinator or the person handling sourcing, not the procurement lead who negotiated the contract.
Does an SLA mean the work is covered?
Not necessarily. An SLA sets performance targets such as response time; whether a specific task is included depends on the contract's services list, and the SLA then applies to how that included work is delivered.
How do I track visit quotas in a service contract?
Record every job against the contract it was done under, then count jobs per included service for the current contract year; without that link, quota usage is a guess.