How to Set Up Automated Gas Boiler Service and Safety Check Reminders (UK, 2026)

Annual gas safety check and boiler service reminders can run two ways: a spreadsheet or diary you check by hand, or software that fires the reminder itself once a customer is on file. Checker’s automated version sends a branded annual service reminder eleven months after a customer is added, with replies landing in your own inbox, on the Pro and Pro+ plans. Below is how to build the manual version properly first, with a template you can copy today, then how the automated version works and where each method earns its keep.

Key takeaways

• A manual spreadsheet or diary works fine at low customer counts, but usually breaks once nobody owns the weekly job of checking it.
• The legal duty to renew a gas safety check every twelve months sits with the landlord, under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. A boiler service on an owner occupied home isn’t a legal requirement, though most manufacturers require one to keep the warranty valid.
• HSE guidance allows a landlord’s check up to two months early without moving the renewal date, so a reminder around month ten or eleven protects that date better than one sent in month twelve.
• Checker’s automated annual service reminder fires eleven months after a customer is added, is branded to your business, and routes replies to your own inbox. It needs Pro or Pro+; Lite has no CRM and no reminders.
• A full system also needs a plan for customers who don’t reply, and Checker’s quote chaser (days 7, 10 and 14) and invoice chaser (after payment terms expire) cover the other two points where jobs go quiet.

What’s the difference between a gas safety check and a boiler service?

Engineers often use “gas safety certificate” and “boiler service” as if they’re the same job. They aren’t, and mixing them up leaves the customer unclear what they’re paying for.

The paperwork from an annual landlord check isn’t technically a certificate at all. HSE guidance and Gas Safe Register both describe it as a record: a written account of what was checked and found safe that day, not a guarantee covering the following twelve months. “CP12” is the trade nickname that stuck from an old industry form number. Because the wording matters, this is worth stating upfront: in this guide, and in Checker’s gas engineer software itself, this paperwork is generated as a report rather than a certificate, since that’s the more accurate description of what it is.

A boiler service is different work again: manufacturer recommended maintenance, cleaning the appliance, checking the flue and heat exchanger, testing flame and pressure, that keeps it running efficiently and usually keeps the warranty valid. There’s no general legal requirement to service a boiler in an owner occupied home. On a rented property, most engineers combine the safety check and the service into one visit, one call out and one day off for the tenant, but they remain two separate jobs with two separate reasons to book.

Why do these reminders matter for a trade business, not just for compliance?

For a landlord customer, the legal duty sits with the landlord, not with you. What that gives you is predictable recurring work on file for every customer you’ve serviced: a gas safety check due again in roughly twelve months, a boiler service on a similar cycle. The only reason that work doesn’t automatically become next year’s invoice is that nobody chased it in time.

That’s real revenue sitting idle. A customer already serviced once is cheaper to bring back than a new one is to win, no marketing spend, no quote from scratch, just a message at the right moment. A reminder system, manual or automated, turns a single job into repeat business, and keeps that customer from drifting to whichever local engineer texts first when their boiler starts making a noise.

How do you set up service reminders manually with a spreadsheet or diary?

This is the honest starting point, and for a small book of customers it works. Here’s a version that holds up longer than most:

1. Keep one list, not several. One spreadsheet or diary, with every customer’s name, property address, last check or service date, and appliance type. Lists split across a notebook and a phone are where dates go missing.
2. Calculate the reminder date from the completion date, not the calendar date you happen to be looking at. Add eleven months to the last check date, not twelve, so there’s a buffer before any legal deadline for a landlord customer.
3. Block a fixed weekly slot to check the sheet. Ten minutes every Monday, filtering for anything due in the next six weeks, beats an occasional scroll through the whole list.
4. Send the reminder using a template, not a message written from scratch each time. A template thought through once sends faster and reads more professionally than something typed in a hurry between jobs.
5. Log the response. Booked, no reply, or declined, so next week’s check doesn’t waste time on a customer who’s already sorted.

A reminder letter, email and SMS template you can copy

This is the wording worth getting right, since it’s what a customer actually reads and responds to.

Letter or email

Subject: Your annual gas safety check is due, [Customer name]

Dear [Customer name],

Your last gas safety check at [property address] was carried out on [date of last check]. To keep the property covered and the paperwork current, this needs renewing by [due date].

Booking a little ahead of that date is worth doing. Under current guidance, a check carried out up to two months early doesn’t move next year’s deadline forward, so there’s no advantage to leaving it until the last week, and a real risk in leaving it too late.

To book a time, just reply to this message or call [phone number] and we’ll find something that works around your tenants’ schedule.

Kind regards, [Engineer or business name]

SMS

Hi [Customer name], your gas safety check at [property address] is due by [due date]. Reply YES to book or call [phone number]. [Business name]

Boiler service reminder (non landlord property)

Hi [Customer name], it’s about time for [boiler make/model]’s annual service to keep it running efficiently and your warranty valid. Reply or call [phone number] to book. [Business name]

Keep the fields in square brackets exactly as they are; they’re there for you to fill in per customer, not to be sent as they appear here.

Where does the manual method break down?

At a handful of customers, a spreadsheet is genuinely fine. The trouble shows up with volume and time. Once a business carries more than a few dozen live customers, the weekly check becomes a job that competes with paid work for attention, and paid work wins. Rows get filtered, sorted or overwritten. A busy fortnight means the sheet doesn’t get opened, and a date that should have triggered a reminder in month eleven slides past month twelve. Messages sent from a personal phone don’t look like they’re coming from a business, and replies land wherever they were sent, easy to lose among everything else. None of this is a discipline problem; it’s what happens when a recurring job depends on someone remembering to look, rather than on something that looks automatically.

How do you set up automated annual service reminders in Checker?

1. Add the customer to Checker, with their property address and appliance details. This starts the clock; there’s no separate reminder to set up by hand.
2. Confirm you’re on Pro or Pro+. Lite covers unlimited digital reports, invoicing, quotes and job sheets, but has no CRM and no reminders, so this automation isn’t available on it. Pro adds CRM and customer history, job scheduling, and the annual service reminder itself.
3. Let it run. The reminder fires automatically eleven months after that customer record was created, no diary entry or weekly check needed.
4. The message is branded to your business, not to Checker, so it reads like anything else a customer gets from you.
5. Replies come back to your own inbox, not a shared or generic one, so you follow up exactly as you would with a message you’d typed yourself.
6. Keep the record current. Update the customer’s job history each time you complete a check or service, so there’s an accurate completion date on file going forward.

No card is required to try this: Checker’s trial doesn’t ask for payment details, and real reports can be created during it.

What’s the right cadence and timing for reminders?

For a landlord customer, the underlying rule is set in law, not in software. Under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, a landlord must arrange for gas appliances and flues to be checked by a Gas Safe registered engineer at least once every twelve months, keep a record for two years, and give a copy to existing tenants within 28 days of the check, or to a new tenant before they move in. A 2018 amendment lets the check happen up to two months before it’s due while the following year’s deadline still counts from the original date, not the earlier check date. Go outside that ten to twelve month window and the clock resets from whenever the check actually took place.

That’s why eleven months, not twelve, is the sensible trigger point for a reminder, and the point Checker’s automation uses: inside the window that protects the anniversary date, with enough runway to get the job booked.

For an owner occupied boiler with no tenant involved, there’s no equivalent legal deadline. The reminder there is about manufacturer warranty terms and appliance safety and efficiency, not a statutory date, so it’s worth being straightforward with that customer about why you’re asking rather than implying a legal requirement that doesn’t apply to them.

How do you handle customers who don’t respond?

A reminder that goes unanswered needs a short, fixed follow up window rather than an open ended “chase it eventually.” A second message about a week later, then a phone call if there’s still nothing back, covers most cases without turning into pestering. Treat a quiet customer the same way as an unpaid invoice or an unanswered quote: something with a schedule, not something relying on memory to catch.

This is where the annual service reminder works best alongside Checker’s other two chasers, not on its own. The quote chaser follows up on days 7, 10 and 14 after a quote goes out, and the invoice chaser follows up once payment terms expire. Between the three, the points where a job typically stalls, after the quote, after the invoice, and a year later when the next service falls due, are covered by the same kind of branded, automatic follow up.

Manual versus automated: which is right for your business?

Neither approach removes the need for judgement; what to say to a customer who’s gone quiet is still a human call. What changes with automation is whether the reminder gets sent at all, on time, without depending on a quiet week in the diary.

If accounts work is also eating into that admin time, Checker’s accountancy integrations sync invoicing and payments both ways with Xero, QuickBooks or Sage, so the record that triggers a service reminder is the same one keeping the books current. Businesses covering more than gas can run electrical work through the same reminder and scheduling structure.

For more on setting up the full rhythm of automated messages, quotes, invoices and reminders, see Checker’s guide to automated service reminders across gas, heating and electrical work and how gas and heating engineers win repeat business on autopilot.

Frequently asked questions

Authoritative sources

1. HSE: gas safety checks for landlords
2. Warmzilla: gas safety check vs boiler service

This guide is operational and compliance-awareness information, not legal advice. Confirm the exact duty, interval and record-keeping requirement that applies to a specific property before relying on it.