The equipment industry's contracts have shapes that generic contract modules flatten. A warranty that hands over to a paid AMC at month thirteen. A site-based contract covering whatever machines happen to be at the site. A multi-asset AMC across forty gensets where each unit meters its own hours but the commercial terms live at the contract. Warranty and AMC management software for this industry has to hold those shapes as first-class structures — not as remarks typed into a description field — because every shortcut taken at contract setup is paid for at every visit, every claim and every renewal for years. On xMatix the shapes are structural, and they run in production today: the contract is an engine with a meter, a scope and a lifecycle — not a PDF with a reminder attached to somebody's calendar.
The contract shapes the industry actually sells
Comprehensive AMC, non-comprehensive (labour-only, parts billed), preventive-visit contracts, warranty and extended warranty — each is a contract with scope and posting treatment that decide, line by line on every job, what consumes entitlement, what claims, and what invoices. Multi-asset contracts attach many machines to one commercial agreement while each asset keeps its own meter and history; site-based contracts scope to a location's installed base, and machines added or retired mid-term join or leave the scope as recorded events rather than pencil marks. Because scope is structure, the question that poisons doorstep conversations — "is this covered?" — is answered by the record before the engineer leaves the office, and the answer is the same one finance will bill by.
A worked example makes the shapes concrete. A facilities operator signs one comprehensive AMC for a hospital campus: eleven gensets across four buildings, each unit metered on its own hours, quarterly visits regardless, consumables covered, major overhauls excluded. On xMatix that is one contract, eleven asset attachments, one scope definition — and from signing day the campus behaves like what it is: preventive jobs arrive per unit as each meter dictates, the excluded overhaul is estimated and approved as chargeable work when unit six needs it, and the renewal conversation eleven months later opens with a delivery report no register could have produced.
Metered by running hours, calendar, or whichever bites first
Equipment entitlements are consumed by use, not just by time, so the metering is dual: hours from readings engineers capture at the machine, calendar running in parallel, thresholds with grace bands raising the preventive job when either approaches. Entitlements burn down visibly — services consumed and remaining, per contract and per asset — which surfaces both failure modes of an unmetered book: the loud customer consuming a sixth visit on a four-visit contract, and the quiet one whose machine has silently gone a year unserviced. The deeper mechanics are shared with AMC contract management; this industry adds the running-hours dimension and lives by it, because a genset's calendar says almost nothing about its wear.
Warranty first, AMC after — one continuous record
A machine's coverage story is a relay: manufacturer warranty, maybe extended warranty, then the AMC — and the classic industry failure is dropping the baton between legs. Because every contract attaches to the same asset record, the handover is continuous: warranty-period jobs route their covered lines to claims with evidence while the warranty holds, the expiring warranty raises the AMC conversation as a lead (with the unit's service history making the case), and the AMC that follows inherits the machine's whole record rather than starting a new file. The customer experiences one service relationship; the books see each payer correctly the entire way.
Contract creation itself is governed rather than heroic: pricing beyond policy routes through approval before the customer sees the number, the salesperson quoting a five-year comprehensive on a fifteen-year machine is stopped by a rule rather than discovered by an auditor, and the signed contract's terms are the terms the system will meter — because they are the same record. The discipline costs a day at signing and repays it at every visit for the life of the book.
Renewals raised while they are winnable
An AMC book's economics are written at renewal time, and renewals lost to silence outnumber renewals lost to competitors. Contracts entering the reminder horizon raise their own renewal leads automatically, carrying what makes the pitch: the visits delivered, the uptime story, the parts fitted under the contract. Renewal rate, attach rate and contract profitability — visits and parts consumed against contract price — are reports on the same records that ran the work, so pricing next year's book stops being folklore — the contract that consumed nine visits and a compressor at a four-visit price renews at a number, not a hope, and the profitable quiet ones stop cross-subsidising it invisibly. The industry pattern where contracts are sold by an OEM and executed by dealers is covered on OEM service contracts; the independent service company runs the same engine with itself as both seller and executor.
The contract at the moment of work
All of this earns its keep at one moment: a job line being recorded at a machine. The line inherits its route from the matching entitlement — covered, claimable or chargeable — before the work is done, so the engineer quotes extras honestly at the site, the invoice bills exactly what the customer owes, and entitlement consumption posts the moment the job completes. No month-end sweep of job cards against a contract register; the sweep already happened, one line at a time, at the machine. That is also what makes disputes short: the contract, the job and the bill are one chain of records, and the chain is showable. The customer can watch it too — a portal view of their contracts, entitlements consumed, visits delivered and invoices raised — which converts the annual "what did we even pay for?" negotiation into a statement both sides were reading all year.
What the service head sees
The book as a business: contracts by type and expiry month, entitlement consumption against plan, renewal pipeline and conversion, profitability per contract and per customer, the assets approaching their warranty-to-AMC handover — live views over the same records the engineers work on. A contract book run this way compounds: every visit adds history, every history strengthens the renewal, and the renewal funds the next year's book. The spreadsheet version leaks at every one of those joints.
Common questions
What should warranty and AMC management software handle for equipment businesses in India?
The industry's real shapes: comprehensive and labour-only AMCs, warranty and extended warranty with claims, site-based and multi-asset contracts, dual metering on hours and calendar, per-line coverage decisions on every job, GST-correct billing of the chargeable remainder, and renewals raised as leads — all on one asset record.
How does a multi-asset AMC work?
One commercial contract attaches many machines; each asset keeps its own meter, history and preventive schedule while entitlements and terms govern at the contract. Fleet-wide consumption and per-unit due dates are both live views, so the forty-genset customer is one agreement and forty honest machines.
What happens when a warranty expires and an AMC begins?
The asset record carries both, in sequence: covered lines claim against the warranty while it holds, the approaching expiry raises the AMC sale as a lead with the unit's history attached, and the new contract continues the same record — no re-registration, no lost history, no gap the customer falls through.
Is entitlement checked at the time of work or reconciled later?
At the time of work: each job line inherits covered, claimable or chargeable from the matching entitlement before execution, and consumption posts as the job completes. There is no month-end reconciliation of jobs against the contract register, because there is no separate register.