On 1 January 2027 the last stage of Queensland's smoke alarm law takes effect. Rentals, homes being sold and substantially renovated homes have had to meet it for years. From the new year it covers every remaining house, townhouse and unit, which mostly means owner occupiers who have not sold or rented since 2021.

Insurance Business reported in May that more than a million Queensland homes may still not comply, and quoted a Townsville electrician expecting stock and contractor shortages. If your phone is already taking "do I need new smoke alarms" calls, it will take more of them before Christmas.

Each call is a site check, a quote, an install across several rooms, a record and an invoice. Done on paper and in texts, the margin goes into admin and second visits. Run as one campaign out of ServiceM8, it gets quicker each time.

What the law asks for from 1 January

Under the Fire Services Act 1990 and the Building Fire Safety Regulation 2008, every alarm in a Queensland home must:

They go in every bedroom, in the hallway that connects bedrooms to the rest of the home (or the part of the storey between them if there is no hallway), and on a storey with no bedrooms, on the most likely path out. The Queensland Fire Department adds that interconnection can be wired, wireless or a mix.

The rule that turns a battery swap into your job: if the old alarm was hardwired, the new one has to be hardwired too, and 240 volt alarms have to be connected by a licensed electrician. Our QLD smoke alarm requirements guide sets out each section, including what to certify.

Treat it as ten weeks, not a stream of one off jobs

Counted from the last week of October, there are ten working weeks to 1 January, and one of them is Christmas. Every job runs through the same five steps, so set them up once. Tell past customers in the first two weeks, while the diary still has room. Keep site checks and quotes going into December, leave the last weeks for installs, and set each home's replacement reminder as its job is completed.

A ten week timeline from the week of 26 October to 1 January 2027. Tell past customers in the first two weeks, site checks from week one to week eight, quotes from the bundle from week one to week nine, installs with the alarm form from week two to week ten, and at each completed job a reminder set for before the alarm turns 10.

The same five steps for every job, from late October to the deadline.

One job template for every smoke alarm call

A job template in ServiceM8 fills in the job card for you: the description, a checklist, documents and materials. Make one called Smoke alarms QLD 2027 and use it for every call.

Put in it:

  1. A checklist for the site check: number of bedrooms, hallways and storeys, whether the existing alarms are hardwired, the manufacture date on each one, and roof space access for wiring.
  2. The smoke alarm form's badge, so the tech is prompted to fill it in on every job.
  3. A follow up badge for the replacement reminder (more on that below).

ServiceM8's help notes that a follow up badge only creates its reminder if it is on the job before the job is marked Completed, and suggests adding it to the job template for that reason.

Quote from bundles, not from a blank page

The site check tells you two things that set the price: how many alarms the home needs, and whether the existing ones are hardwired. Build a bundle for each answer:

A bundle carries its alarm, labour and consumables, and the customer sees only its name. A four bedroom house then quotes as a quantity on each line, not a parts list. Insurance Business put a typical four bedroom install at $800 to $1,000, depending on whether the alarms are hardwired or battery powered.

Then turn on Quote Follow Up Automation. It sends up to five emails or texts after the quote goes out and stops when the customer accepts online. In a rush, nobody in the office has time to chase quotes by hand.

Put the rule on the quote, not just the price

Most owner occupiers have heard there is a deadline and not much else. A short paragraph in the quote saves a phone call:

From 1 January 2027 every Queensland home needs photoelectric smoke alarms that are interconnected, in every bedroom, in the hallways that connect them and on every storey. Your current alarms are hardwired, so the law requires hardwired replacements. This quote covers [number] alarms to meet that.

Record every alarm while you are standing under it

The Fire Services Act prescribes no smoke alarm compliance certificate, and QFD says a certificate of compliance is not a legal requirement. What protects you is the record. For hardwired work, the Electrical Safety Regulation 2026 already asks for a certificate of testing and compliance, showing the customer's name and address, what was tested, the date and your electrical contractor licence number, with a copy kept for 5 years.

A ServiceM8 form can hold the rest: one block per alarm with its location, power source, AS 3786:2014 marking, manufacture date and a photo of the label, plus a pass or fail on the interconnection test. Mark the questions mandatory and the completed form becomes a PDF in the job diary, ready to email to the owner that day. The smoke alarm compliance form for QLD homes lays out the questions room by room.

If the home is later sold, that dated record is what the seller relies on when they tell the buyer whether compliant alarms are installed.

Tell past customers, the right way

Past customers in owner occupied homes are your warmest leads. But a "the deadline is coming" text is marketing, and ServiceM8's own help says the platform is not designed for bulk SMS or email marketing, and that having someone's number is not consent to market to them.

So use ServiceM8 for the list and send through the right channel. The client card holds each customer's job history, so the list of homes you have worked in is already there. Email the customers who opted in to hear from you, ring the ones you know, and put the same message on your Facebook page and website for everyone else.

Any of that is advertising, and the Electrical Safety Regulation says an electrical contractor's advertisement must state the name you are licensed under (or your registered business name), that you are licensed, and your electrical contractor licence number. If you also hold a QBCC licence, QBCC's advertising rules ask for that number on websites and Facebook pages too.

Set the replacement reminder the day you finish

Every alarm you fit has to be replaced within 10 years of its manufacture date. That is the next job at the same house, and it is easiest to set up now.

The follow up badge on your template creates a Reminder when the job is completed. A Reminder lands in the ServiceM8 Inbox a week before it is due, so the office can ring the owner and agree a time, rather than the system booking a tech years ahead. Our guide to recurring jobs and reminders in ServiceM8 explains the difference.

Count the interval from the oldest manufacture date on the form, not the install date, since stock can sit on a shelf for a while. ServiceM8's help does not state the longest interval a follow up badge accepts, so check yours reaches nine years or more before you rely on it. Either way, note the oldest manufacture date in the client diary, where it shows on every future job for that customer.

If you only set up one thing before the calls build, make it the site check on the job template. When every call starts with the same questions answered, the office can sort the list by what each home needs, quote from the right bundle and book the installs in a sensible order, instead of ringing people back to ask how many bedrooms they have.

Rentals are a different job

Rentals have had to meet the full standard at every new or renewed tenancy since 1 January 2022, and the lessor must test and clean every alarm within 30 days before each tenancy starts. That work carries on after January. The new tenancy smoke alarm check covers it, and if you work for agents interstate, the rental inspection form is built around the NSW and Victorian rental checks.

Send owners to the checker first

Plenty of callers will not know what they have. Before the visit, send them the QLD smoke alarm checker: seven questions on type, age, power, interconnection, rooms and storeys. They arrive knowing roughly what they need.

The deadline is fixed and the work repeats. Set the template, the bundles, the form and the reminder up once, and every call after that runs the same way. If you want that built into your account before the rush peaks, that is the ServiceM8 work FFP does for trade businesses in Ipswich and Brisbane.