PlumbingBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Choosing Plumbing Billing Software: What to Check Before You Switch

There is no shortage of software that will make an invoice. Accounting programs do it. Generic field-service software does it. The big enterprise platforms do it, along with a long list of things a three-van plumbing shop will never use. The question is not whether a tool can produce an invoice. It is whether it fits how a plumbing company actually gets paid.

Before You Switch

The steps for actually moving off paper are in Moving Plumbing Billing Off Paper Invoices and the Carbon Pad. This article is about choosing what to move to. Take this checklist into every trial.

1. Is Billing Tied to the Job?

The biggest difference between billing tools is whether the invoice comes from the job the tech did, or has to be typed separately. Ask:

• When the tech finishes, is the invoice created automatically?
• Do approved estimates carry onto the job and then the invoice, line for line?
• Can the office see the job's photos and notes next to the invoice?

If invoices live in one program and jobs in another, someone is going to be copying between them every night.

2. Line Items and Sales Tax

• Can invoices show the service call, labor, parts, fixtures and extra charges as separate lines?
• Do lines come from a service list you control, with your own prices?
• Is sales tax handled on the invoice?

3. Getting Paid

This is where most tools fall short for plumbers. Check for:

• Card on file, captured on a sign-up form or added by the customer.
• Charging at completion, when the tech marks the job done, and the option to charge on a schedule instead.
• Online payment where the customer can see invoices and pay from their phone.
• Customer card updates, so declined and expired cards get fixed without the office reading numbers over the phone.
• Past-due follow-up by text and email.

4. Accounts With Many Addresses

If you work for property managers, landlords or restaurants, this matters a lot:

• Can one client have many addresses?
• Can that client get one monthly statement covering every address, with each line labeled?
• Can recurring work, like grease-line jetting every 14 or 30 days, come due on its own and land on that statement?

Many tools treat each address as a separate customer, which turns one property manager into thirty invoices a month.

5. Recurring Plans

Yearly water heater flushes, softener service and backflow tests are steady income. Check whether the software brings those visits due on their own, lets customers sign up with pricing shown, and bills them at completion without anyone remembering.

6. The Tech's Side

Billing starts with the tech tapping a button. If the tech app is clumsy, billing suffers. Check that it runs on the phones your techs already carry, shows the job details and equipment at the house, takes photos, and makes completing a job one tap. A tool that needs special devices or an app store rollout adds friction.

7. Price and Fit

Watch out for pricing that grows with every feature you need. Billing, card on file and monthly statements should not be expensive add-ons. Also watch for tools built for companies far bigger than yours, where the setup alone takes months.

PlumbingBossPro's plans are $59, $89 and $199 a month (Start, Pro and Crew), with billing and payments on every plan, and a 14-day free trial with no credit card. It works in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, billing customers in their own currency.

Involve the people who will use it. Have your office person build an invoice and a monthly statement, and have your most skeptical tech run a day on the phone app. If they can both get through it without calling you, the software will work for your shop. If they struggle during a free trial, they will struggle more once it is real. Their opinion matters more than any feature list, because they will be the ones using it every day.

Run a Real Trial

Do not judge billing software from a sales demo. During the trial:

• Import a slice of your real customers with a CSV.
• Set up your ten most common services and your sales tax.
• Run a real job from estimate to invoice to payment.
• Set up one property manager as Monthly and look at the statement.
• Have a tech complete a job on their own phone.

If all of that works and feels simple, you have your answer. The complete picture of plumbing billing is in Plumbing Invoicing Software: The Complete Guide to Billing and Getting Paid for Plumbing Work, and the overview is on the PlumbingBossPro plumbing invoicing software page.