Maintenance Budget per Site: A Simple Model

It is the second week of January and your accountant asks for next year's repairs and maintenance number. You have twelve sites. Last year's figure is one lump on the P&L, mixed in with a walk-in cooler compressor, a roof leak and about forty small invoices nobody remembers. A maintenance budget multi-unit operators can trust does not need to be complicated. It needs to be split into the right pieces, tracked per site, and compared against something.

This guide gives you a model you can build in an hour. Every figure below is illustrative: round numbers chosen to show how the model works, not benchmarks. Replace them with your own invoices, in your own currency.

Why one lump number fails

A single repairs line hides three kinds of spending that behave differently:

• Some of it is predictable. You know the filters, grease trap service and extinguisher checks are coming.
• Some of it is random. A fryer thermostat fails on a Friday.
• Some of it is a big, lumpy replacement you could see coming if you looked at the age of the equipment.

Mixed together, a bad month looks like a budget problem when it may be a planning problem.

The three-bucket maintenance budget multi-unit model

Split each site's budget into three buckets.

Bucket 1: Planned maintenance

This is recurring work you can schedule: filter changes, hood and exhaust cleaning, grease trap service, coil cleaning, HVAC tune-ups. Frequencies come from your manufacturers, insurer and local authority, so check with them rather than copying anyone else's calendar.

To price it, list each recurring task for one site, multiply by visits per year and your contractor's rate, and add them up. Then copy that across sites, adjusting for size and equipment.

Illustrative: $6,000 per site per year.

Bucket 2: Reactive repairs

This is the 9pm call. Budget it from history, not hope. Pull the last 12 months of invoices and tag each one to a site. If all you have is a lump, work from supplier statements and tag the big ones first.

Use the median reactive spend across your sites, not the average. One disaster site skews the average and makes everyone else's budget too generous.

Illustrative: $5,000 per site per year, with older sites running higher.

Bucket 3: Replacement reserve

This is the compressor, the rooftop unit, the fryer battery. It is not an expense this year, but it will be one. Treat it as money set aside.

For each major piece of equipment, divide the replacement cost by the expected remaining life in years. Expected life is a judgement. Ask your technician or the manufacturer, and be conservative.

Illustrative: a $9,000 rooftop unit with about 6 years left needs $1,500 per year. Add a walk-in cooler, fryers and a water heater, and a site might carry $4,000 per year.

Total for one illustrative site: $6,000 + $5,000 + $4,000 = $15,000 per year, or $1,250 per month. For ten sites that is $150,000 per year. The number matters less than being able to see where it comes from.

Adjust by site, not by gut

Three adjustments cover most of the difference between sites:

1. Equipment age. Older sites shift money from bucket 1 into buckets 2 and 3. Add a premium where major equipment is past its expected life.
2. Hours of operation. A 24-hour location wears equipment faster than one that closes at 9pm.
3. Format. A full kitchen with heavy frying has more to maintain than a grab-and-go counter.

Keep adjustments to something like plus or minus 10%. If you need a spreadsheet tab to explain one, it is too clever.

Set a trigger, not just a total

A budget you only look at in December is a report, not a control. Add two rules:

• Approval threshold. Any single repair above a set amount, say $1,500 (illustrative), needs a call to the owner or operations manager before work starts. Below it, the store manager or your regular vendor can proceed.
• Repair-or-replace flag. When cumulative repairs on one piece of equipment reach a share of its replacement cost, flag it. Pick a share that fits your experience, such as half, and adjust after a year of data.

Together they stop the slow leak of small invoices on a unit that should have been replaced.

What you need to track

Four fields on every maintenance cost: site, equipment, bucket, amount. Without equipment you cannot run the repair-or-replace test. Without site you cannot compare locations. Without bucket you cannot tell planned from reactive.

A spreadsheet handles this fine if everyone fills it in. The usual failure is that invoices arrive by email, text and paper, and nobody tags them.

Where Concoct fits, with limits. A work order belongs to a location and can be linked to an equipment record, which holds make, model, serial number and install date, the inputs for the reserve calculation. Budgets and spend reporting are on the Professional tier only. Vendors cannot upload invoices through the vendor portal; they email them and your team attaches them, so someone still has to do that step. On Starter or Growth, keep the budget in your own spreadsheet and use the work order history to fill it in.

Software is a line in the budget too. As an illustration, 10 Professional locations on annual billing at published rates is 5 x $59 + 5 x $53 = $560 per month, billed in USD, with unlimited users. The per-seat versus per-location breakdown shows how that scales. Check the pricing page for current rates.

Review it quarterly

Once a quarter, take 30 minutes:

1. Compare actual to budget by bucket for each site.
2. Look at the three sites furthest over and ask why. Equipment age? One big repair? A vendor charging more than the others?
3. Update the reserve for anything replaced.
4. Move money between sites only on purpose, and write down why.

If you are still building the routine side, the maintenance checklist for restaurants and convenience stores is a practical start for bucket 1. For rolling a system out across sites, see the 30-day rollout plan.

Where to go from here

The pricing page lists every tier and rate in USD. If you would rather see work orders, equipment records and spend reporting together, book a demo. We will say so plainly if a lower tier and a spreadsheet is enough for you.

FAQ

How much should a convenience store or QSR budget for maintenance?

There is no honest single number. It depends on equipment age, hours and format. Build it from your own invoices using the three buckets. If you use a commonly cited percentage-of-revenue figure, treat it only as a sanity check and confirm it locally.

Should every site get the same maintenance budget?

Start with the same template, then adjust for equipment age, hours and format. Keep adjustments to simple percentages so you can explain them to a site manager in one sentence.

What is a replacement reserve and do I need one?

It is money set aside each year for big equipment you will have to replace. It stops a failed rooftop unit from becoming a surprise. If cash is tight, start with the two or three most expensive items per site.

Do I need software to run a per-site maintenance budget?

No. A spreadsheet works if every invoice is tagged to a site, equipment item and bucket. Software helps when invoices and requests come from many people and tagging gets skipped.

Which Concoct tier includes budgets and spend reporting?

Professional. Starter and Growth cover work orders, equipment and scheduling, but budgets and spend reporting are Professional only.