The service provider issues a total annual price for smoke detectors. The invoice lists device rental, remote maintenance and replacement services under the same heading. Because the amount is charged regularly, you want to include it in the operating costs statement. Precisely at this point a separation is required: recurring payment and allocatable operating costs are not the same.
Recognise the device rental first
§ 556 BGB links the transfer of operating costs to an agreement and refers for the cost statement to the Betriebskostenverordnung. § 1 BetrKV in particular excludes administration and maintenance or repair. Number 17 of § 2 captures other operating costs only within this legal framework. It is not a blank field for arbitrary recurring invoices. [B556, BK1, BK2]
The BGH did not classify the rental of smoke detectors as allocatable other operating costs. The chosen rental economically replaces the purchase of the devices. The fact that the regulation explicitly allows rental costs for certain other devices did not justify a corresponding transfer to smoke detectors. [BGH379]
Do not pass on a package heading
As an editorial preparatory step, request a comprehensible explanation of the services included. Which item pays exclusively for the provision of devices? Which concerns an actually performed maintenance? Are replacement devices, administration or other services included in the price? Keep the service contract and service description together with the invoice.
An annual replacement service must not be regarded as maintenance merely because it is called that. Nor does the non-allocatable device rental automatically determine the outcome for each separate maintenance service. For the remaining share, actual content, legal classification and the rental contract basis must be examined separately. This article does not prescribe a blanket percentage for that.
A numerical example
Fictitiously, the annual invoice amounts to 480 euros. The service provider explains 300 euros of that as pure device rental and 180 euros as other services. The 300 euros are not adopted into the operating costs as smoke detector rental costs. The remaining 180 euros initially remain an item for examination; they are not released merely because the device rental has been deducted.
Only after clarification of their content can a possibly permissible and agreed share be decided upon. A self-invented allocation of, for example, half would not replace the missing service description. If a viable delineation is not possible, this very gap must be clarified professionally before billing.
Read the judgment with its procedural status
BGH VIII ZR 379/20 was remitted because of insufficient factual presentation in the appellate judgment. At the same time, the Senate expressly gave the legal indication of the non-allocatability of the device rental costs. This article does not turn that into a final decision about all payment items at the time nor into an approval of current service contracts. [BGH379]
For your case, the result is a cleaned-up cost statement: device rental remains recognisable as an owner’s own expense; other services are examined factually and contractually. Whether a different financing or procurement model would be sensible is then a separate decision. A possible modernisation arrangement does not replace the operating cost review and is not calculated here.