Writing the Scope Line for Network and App Setup
Why this matters
The water shutoff took forty minutes to mount and wire. Getting it onto the customer's Wi-Fi took an hour and twenty, because the router was in the far corner of the basement and the app wanted a phone on the same band as the valve. None of that hour and twenty was on the estimate, so the tech either ate it or argued about it at the door. Both outcomes are worse than one line written on the quote before the truck left the shop.
Network and app work is real labor with an unknown duration, done on equipment you do not own, and it ends at a boundary the customer cannot see. A scope line exists to name that labor, cap the part you can predict, price the part you cannot, and draw the boundary in words the customer agrees to before you start. This article is how to write that line.
Step 1: Split the work into the part you control and the part you do not
Before writing anything, separate the job into two kinds of time.
- Device time is everything that depends on the equipment you are selling: mounting, wiring, plumbing it in, powering it up, creating its app profile, and proving it does its job (the valve closes, the thermostat calls for heat). You can estimate this from experience, the same way you estimate any install.
- Network time is everything that depends on the customer's home: finding the router, getting the network name and password, discovering the device is in a dead spot, discovering the router only broadcasts a band the device cannot use, waiting on the internet provider. You cannot estimate this from the device. It depends on a house you have not seen.
Why first: a single lump price hides network time inside device time, and the shop's margin on the install becomes a bet on the customer's router. Skip this split and every connected install you sell carries a hidden variable you are guaranteeing for free.
Step 2: Include a fixed allowance, stated in time
Put a set amount of network time inside the install price and say so in minutes. A common starting point is 30 minutes of network and app setup included with a single-device install, and 45 minutes with two or three devices on the same visit. Tune it to your own logs after a season.
Why an allowance rather than nothing: most homes connect inside 15 minutes. If you bill every minute separately, the customer feels nickel-and-dimed on the easy jobs, which are the majority. An allowance absorbs the normal case and makes the overage rare enough to be believable when it happens.
Why in minutes, not "basic setup": "basic setup included" is the phrase every dispute is about. Minutes are countable. The tech can look at the clock, and so can the customer.
What breaks if you skip it: the first slow network turns into a negotiation with no anchor, and the tech is the one negotiating, at the door, at the end of the day.
Step 3: Price the overage as an hourly rate in small increments
Anything beyond the allowance bills at the shop's standard hourly rate in 15-minute increments, and the line says the tech will stop and ask before going past the allowance. That last clause is the important one.
Why stop and ask: the customer may prefer to call their internet provider, ask a relative who set up the network, or move the router themselves over the weekend. Each of those is cheaper for them than your time, and offering the choice is what turns an overage from a surprise into a decision they made. Where your state has rules about changing a quoted price mid-job, a written estimate plus a documented customer approval at the stop point is the honest practice everywhere; how much of an overage your state lets you bill without a signed change is a question for your own attorney, not this article.
What breaks if you skip it: the invoice shows 1.5 hours of network time the customer never knew was accruing, and the review mentions it.
Step 4: Name the boundary in plain words
The scope line must say what you will NOT do. Customers do not know where a thermostat install ends and network repair begins, and they reasonably assume the person standing in their house fixes whatever is in the way. Write the exclusions as a short list:
- changing router settings, passwords or network names
- adding, moving or replacing a router, mesh node or extender
- troubleshooting the internet service itself
- setting up devices you did not install
- account recovery for an app account you did not create
Why exclusions rather than only inclusions: an inclusion list leaves the gaps undefined, and the customer fills gaps with "of course you'll do that." An exclusion list answers the next question before it is asked. Each excluded item can be offered as a separately priced option if your shop does that work; see related: The Customer Network Is Not Your Job Until It Is.
Step 5: State who will own the app account
The line should say whose email the device account is created under. The default for a home is the homeowner's own account, created in front of them, and the line says so. If your shop keeps dealer access for remote monitoring or service, that is its own line with its own consent. Account ownership is a larger subject with real consequences at a home sale or an employee departure; the scope line only records the decision. See related: Who Owns the App Account on a Connected Device.
Step 6: State what "done" means
End the line with the acceptance test you will perform and the customer will witness. For connected work, "done" has two halves: the device does its physical job, and the app shows it doing that job from the customer's own phone. A water shutoff is done when it closes on a triggered sensor AND the customer's phone receives the alert. A thermostat is done when it calls for heat AND the customer can change the setpoint from the app.
Why both halves: a device that works locally but never reports is the most common callback in this category, and it is invisible at the moment of install if nobody checks the phone.
The scope lines, written out
Here is what Steps 2 through 6 produce for a typical job: one automatic water shutoff and three leak sensors in a house where the router location is unknown at quote time.
SCOPE - CONNECTED DEVICE SETUP
1. Install shutoff valve on main, 3 leak sensors.
2. Network + app setup: 30 min included.
3. Beyond 30 min: hourly rate, 15 min steps.
Tech stops and asks before going past 30.
4. Not included: router changes, new mesh or
extenders, internet service faults, devices
we did not install, recovering old accounts.
5. App account: created under homeowner email,
on homeowner phone. Dealer access: NONE.
6. Done = valve closes on wet sensor test AND
alert arrives on homeowner phone.
Customer initials: ____ Date: ________
Each numbered line maps to one step above, and each one answers a question that would otherwise get asked at the door.
Worked example: the shutoff in the basement corner
The quote above went out. On site, the tech's device time ran to plan: 55 minutes to cut in and wire the valve, 20 minutes to place and pair the three sensors to the valve's own hub, 75 minutes of device time in all.
Then network time. The valve's hub needed the home Wi-Fi. The router sat upstairs in a closet two floors and a concrete foundation wall away from the mechanical room. The app's signal screen showed the hub barely seeing the network and failing to join on three tries. That took 20 minutes, inside the 30-minute allowance.
At minute 20 the tech stopped, as line 3 requires, and laid out the choices:
- move the hub to a spot upstairs where the signal is good, which only works if the hub-to-valve radio link reaches that far (the tech tests that next, about 10 minutes, which brings network time to the edge of the allowance);
- add a mesh node near the basement stairs, which line 4 excludes, so it is a separately priced option, or the customer buys one and the tech returns;
- run a cable to a wired port, if the hub has one, also outside scope.
The customer picked the first option. The hub moved to a hallway outlet; the valve link held at the new spot; the hub joined the network in 4 minutes. Network time stood at 20 + 10 + 4 = 34 minutes, which is 4 minutes over the allowance. Under line 3 that bills as one 15-minute increment, and the customer had already approved going past 30 when the tech stopped at 20.
The acceptance test from line 6: the tech set a wet towel on the laundry sensor, the valve closed in under a minute by the tech's watch, and the alert arrived on the homeowner's phone, not the tech's. Both halves passed. The customer initialed the overage on the ticket.
What made this go smoothly is that every decision had already been made in writing: the allowance, the stop point, the boundary, the account. The only live choice at the door was which of three options the customer wanted, and that is a choice customers are glad to make.
Where the same quote would have gone wrong if line 3 had read "network setup billed as needed": the tech keeps trying for another 45 minutes because stopping feels like failure, the hub never joins, and the invoice carries 65 minutes of network time with no device working remotely. That is the job that becomes a dispute.
When the boundary moves: the honest exceptions
Two situations make the standard line wrong, and both should change the quote, not the conversation on site.
The device has no app without the network. Some equipment ships with a local control that works offline, and some has no useful function at all until it reaches the internet. A camera system, an alarm communicator or a monitored sensor kit has no value offline. For those, network success is part of the product, so the allowance should be larger or the network survey should happen before the sale. Quoting the standard 30 minutes on a camera job in an unknown house is underselling the risk.
You are selling remote monitoring. If the shop will watch the device for the customer, a dropped connection becomes your problem every month, not once. The scope line needs a recurring term (what you do when it drops, how fast, whether that visit is covered). See related: Remote Monitoring as a Service.
Checking the line before it goes out
Read the finished scope line as if you were the customer's adult child who was not at the appointment and is reading the invoice afterward. Four checks:
- Can they count it? Every included amount is in minutes or a number of devices, never "basic" or "standard".
- Can they find the stop point? The line says when the tech pauses and asks.
- Can they tell what is excluded? At least router changes and internet service faults are named.
- Can they tell what "done" looked like? The acceptance test names the customer's phone.
A line that fails any of the four reads as a blank check, whatever the intention behind it. And log your actual network time on every connected job for one season. If the median is under 15 minutes and almost nothing runs over, the 30-minute allowance is generous and protects goodwill. If a quarter of your jobs run over, the allowance is wrong or the shop should be surveying the network before quoting, not after arriving.
References
- See related: The Customer Network Is Not Your Job Until It Is
- See related: Who Owns the App Account on a Connected Device
- See related: The Connected-Device Commissioning SOP
- See related: Remote Monitoring as a Service
- See related: The Signed Scope That Prevents the Dispute