AMC Contracts for Computer Shops — What to Include and How to Price
AMCs turn one-time repair customers into steady monthly income. What to cover, per-PC and per-site pricing, sample inclusions and renewal reminder tips.
Every computer shop owner knows the feast-and-famine cycle: a great month of laptop sales, then weeks of silence broken only by Rs 300 format jobs. The way out is the AMC — the Annual Maintenance Contract. Instead of waiting for things to break, you charge offices, schools, shops and clinics a fixed yearly fee to keep their systems running. Done well, AMCs become the steady backbone of a shop's income and the reason customers never call your competitor. Done badly, they become unpaid slavery. This guide covers what to include, how to price, and how to keep renewals flowing.
What exactly is an AMC?
An AMC is a written agreement: for a fixed annual fee, you maintain a defined list of equipment for a defined customer with a defined service level. The three words that matter are defined, defined, defined. Most AMC disputes come from vagueness — the customer assumes everything is covered forever; you assumed only PCs, not the billing printer their nephew bought. Write it down, even if it is one page in simple language.
What to cover in the contract
Scheduled visits
Promise a fixed rhythm — typically one preventive visit per month or per quarter: physical cleaning, dust blowing (Gujarat's dust is a genuine PC killer), Windows updates, antivirus checks, disk health, backup verification and a quick word with the staff about problems they have been tolerating silently. Preventive visits are what justify the fee even in months when nothing breaks.
On-call and remote support
Define response times honestly: for example, remote support within 2 working hours, on-site visit within 24 hours for normal issues and same-day for a down server or billing PC. Remote tools (AnyDesk and similar) let you resolve 60-70 percent of complaints without travelling — build remote-first support into the contract because it protects your time, especially for clients in surrounding villages and towns.
Parts policy — the clause that saves you
Be explicit about the two AMC types:
- Non-comprehensive AMC: your labour and visits are covered; parts are billed separately at agreed rates. This is the standard and safest model for small shops.
- Comprehensive AMC: parts included. Charge substantially more, exclude items with unpredictable failure costs (laptop panels, SSD data recovery, printer heads), and cap the total parts liability per machine per year.
How to price: per PC or per site
Per-PC pricing
The common market model. Typical 2026 ranges for non-comprehensive AMCs in Gujarat tier-2 and tier-3 towns: Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,800 per desktop per year, Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,500 per laptop, Rs 2,500 to Rs 5,000 per server, and Rs 800 to Rs 1,200 per printer or CCTV DVR. Comprehensive versions run roughly double. Offer slab discounts: 10 PCs at list price, 11-25 at 10 percent off, above 25 negotiated.
Per-site pricing
For small offices with mixed equipment, quote one clean number: "Rs 18,000 per year for your office — 8 PCs, 2 printers, 1 CCTV setup, monthly visit, unlimited remote support." Customers love the simplicity, and it hides per-item haggling. Sanity-check it against your per-PC math plus travel cost. A useful floor: your AMC price should recover at least 12 technician-hours per site per year at your hourly rate, plus travel.
Sample inclusions and exclusions
Included: preventive maintenance visits; unlimited remote support in working hours; OS and driver reinstallation; antivirus management; printer configuration; network troubleshooting on existing setup; priority response over non-AMC customers.
Excluded (state these in writing): physical damage and liquid damage; electrical burnouts from power fluctuation; consumables (ink, toner, cables, keyboards/mice unless comprehensive); data recovery beyond basic attempts; software licence costs; new installations and expansions (quote separately); problems caused by the customer's own experiments — politely worded as "unauthorised modifications".
Renewal reminders: where the real money leaks
Most shops lose AMC revenue not to competitors but to silence — the contract quietly expires, months pass, and restarting means renegotiating from zero. Treat renewals as a process:
- Maintain a simple sheet or software with every AMC's end date.
- Send a WhatsApp reminder 30 days before expiry with a one-line summary of the year's work: "This year we completed 11 visits and resolved 26 complaints — your AMC renews on 5 August." That summary is your best sales pitch, so log your visits all year.
- Follow up at 15 days and 5 days, then call. A bulk WhatsApp tool such as Krishna AI can send these scheduled, personalised reminders automatically from your customer sheet, so no renewal slips through.
- Raise prices 5-10 percent at renewal when justified — inflation is real, and a customer who saw 26 problems solved rarely argues.
Start small, stay disciplined
Begin with your five most regular repair customers and offer them a simple one-page AMC — many will sign just to stop thinking about computer problems. Serve them visibly, document every visit, and let each satisfied office refer the next. Twenty sites at even Rs 15,000 average is Rs 3,00,000 a year of predictable income before you sell a single new machine. In a business as seasonal as computer retail, that predictability is what lets a shop grow instead of merely survive.