12-Month & 24-Month Warranty Touch-Ups

What the warranty touch-up workflow does

Most GCs publish a 12-month workmanship warranty and then never proactively honor it. The homeowner discovers a slight settle in the drywall at month 14, calls, gets told “your warranty’s just expired” — and the 5-star review they wrote in month 1 becomes the 1-star review they leave in month 15. The warranty workflow forces the proactive call before that ever happens.

• Month 12 walk-through SMS + email — schedules a 60-minute return visit, free, with a checklist of common settling/finish items to inspect.
• Month 24 deep check-in — for projects in your extended warranty band (structural, roofing, additions), a second proactive visit at the 24-month mark.
• Pre-visit homeowner checklist — sends the homeowner a 12-item self-check 7 days before the visit so they show up with concerns already noted.
• Field-completion checklist — your PM or warranty tech walks through with a digital checklist; any issues found auto-spawn a punch-list ticket in the warranty pipeline.
• Auto-thank-you + Google review re-ask — if the warranty visit closes cleanly with no issues, a follow-up SMS asks the homeowner to update their existing Google review with a “still 5 stars at the 1-year mark” addendum.

How it works under the hood

The workflow lives on the long-running contact timeline and fires off scheduled dates relative to project close:

1. Trigger — project pipeline stage = closed-warranty-active. Workflow stamps the close date and schedules the 12-month and 24-month touches.
2. 30-day-before nudge — sends the homeowner an “your 1-year warranty walk-through is coming up” email so it doesn’t feel out of the blue.
3. 7-day-before checklist — pre-visit self-inspection checklist via SMS with a one-tap return form.
4. Day-of dispatch — PM gets the route, the project notes, the original photo archive, and the homeowner’s pre-visit concerns.
5. Post-visit branch — clean visit → review re-ask. Issues found → spawn punch items into the warranty pipeline with assigned subs.

What it’s NOT

• Not a 5-year structural warranty. Workmanship warranty (typically 1-2 years) is what the workflow covers. Manufacturer warranties on appliances, roofing materials, HVAC equipment — those are between the homeowner and the manufacturer. The workflow surfaces them but doesn’t honor them on your behalf.
• Not a free re-do for homeowner-caused damage. The PM checklist distinguishes workmanship issues (your responsibility) from homeowner-caused issues (their cabinet door slamming for 14 months, their dog scratching the floor). The latter gets quoted as a paid repair.
• Not unlimited revisit scope. The visit is 60 minutes by default. Items found that exceed 60 minutes of fix-time get scheduled as a follow-up return; the PM doesn’t get trapped doing 4 hours of unpaid work on the spot.
• Not a marketing-disguised maintenance plan. This is warranty fulfillment, not an upsell. Paid maintenance plans are a separate offer the PM can mention if relevant, but the warranty visit itself stays unconditional.

Why month 12 and not month 11

Month 11 makes sense from a “let’s catch it before warranty expires” CYA perspective, but homeowners read that as cynical — “they’re squeezing in the visit one month before they can stop helping us.” Month 12 lands as the anniversary, a moment of pride for both sides. The homeowner shows you their kitchen a year in. You catch the settle. Everyone wins.

If you find a structural issue at the month-12 visit that needs major work, the workflow has a documented exception path — issues identified during the formal warranty visit extend the warranty on those specific items by 90 days, giving you working room to schedule the fix without forcing it the same week.