PlumbingBossPro Blog — Property Managers & Commercial

Commercial Plumbing Software: The Complete Guide to Property Manager, Landlord and Restaurant Accounts

Most small plumbing shops start out on homeowners. A clogged kitchen sink, a leaking water heater, a running toilet. Then one day a property manager calls about a rental, likes the work, and asks if you can take the other thirty-nine. Or a restaurant owner asks if you can jet the grease line every month so the Friday-night backup never happens again. That is the moment a plumbing company stops being a list of houses and starts carrying accounts.

Accounts are good work. They call more often, they pay on a schedule, and they send recurring visits you can plan around. They also bring a different kind of paperwork, and a shop that runs them out of the same tools it uses for one-off service calls usually finds out the hard way.

What Changes When You Take On Accounts

The PlumbingBossPro commercial plumbing software page gives the short version. Here is the longer one. A homeowner is one customer at one address who pays when the job is done. A commercial account is different in four ways:

• Many addresses. A property manager might have rental houses, duplexes and a couple of small apartment buildings. A restaurant group might have three kitchens. All of it belongs to one customer.
• Someone else lives there. The person who pays is not the person standing in the kitchen. Tenants, kitchen managers and office staff are the ones who open the door.
• Recurring work. Grease-line jetting, yearly backflow tests and water heater flushes come back on a schedule whether anyone calls or not.
• Billing by the month. Managers do not want thirty separate invoices. They want one bill they can sort by property.

Software built around one customer at one house struggles with all four. You end up with the same manager entered under forty names, invoices that nobody can match to a building, and recurring work that only happens when somebody remembers.

The Account and Its Addresses

In PlumbingBossPro, a commercial customer is one client with as many addresses as they need. The property manager is the client. Every rental house, every building and every store is an address under that client. A restaurant group works the same way, with each kitchen as its own address.

Each address keeps its own history, its own access notes and its own equipment list. When a tech pulls up 412 Oak Street, they see the water heater in that garage and the lockbox code for that door, not a jumble of every building the manager owns. When the office pulls up the account, they see all of it in one place. For the setup details, read One Account, Many Addresses: Setting Up Commercial Plumbing Clients the Right Way.

If the manager hands you a spreadsheet of properties, CSV import brings them in and places each address on the map automatically, so the account is ready to dispatch the same day.

Equipment at Every Building

Commercial and rental work runs on knowing what is in the building before you get there. Every address in PlumbingBossPro keeps a list of its equipment: water heaters (tank or tankless, gas or electric), water softener, whole-house filtration, sump pump, sewage ejector, well pump, garbage disposal, main water shut-off, sewer cleanout and backflow preventer. Each one can carry brand, model number, serial number, year installed, size, fuel or power, location and access notes.

The tech sees it on the job card: “Water Heater - Tank (Gas) · Rheem XG50T06 · 50 gal · Natural Gas · installed 2014,” with the serial on the next line and “Garage · Shut-off is in the meter box at the curb” under it. New jobs at that address fill in from the saved equipment with the From House picker, and anything the tech updates on a job flows back to the address.

For a landlord, that list answers the questions they always ask: how old is the water heater in the duplex, and is it time to budget for a replacement?

Recurring Work: Jetting, Backflow and Flushes

Recurring visits are the backbone of commercial plumbing. PlumbingBossPro sets them by minimum days between visits. A restaurant grease line might be every 14 or 30 days. A backflow test or a water heater flush might be every 365. When a visit comes due, it shows up on the Waiting List, a live map and list of every visit that is ready to schedule.

Pins on the Waiting List are colored by status: not due yet, due now, and overdue past a 7-day grace. The office can see at a glance which restaurant is coming up on its jetting and which apartment building is past its yearly test, then put them on a van and a day. Restaurant jetting has its own walkthrough in Restaurant Grease-Line Jetting on a Schedule: Every 14 or 30 Days Without the Reminder Call.

Scheduling, Access and the Tech's Day

Commercial work has rules about when and how you get in. Kitchens are only quiet before the lunch prep starts. Offices want water shut off after hours. Rentals need a key from a lockbox or a tenant who is home. Those details live in the access notes on each address and show on the tech's phone with the job.

The dispatch board shows jobs by day and lets you filter by van, auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, set the route order by hand, save views and print route sheets. A common setup is one van on recurring jetting and backflow work, and another on service calls for managers and landlords.

On the tech app, each tech logs in with the company login and a personal PIN, works the day's calls in route order, taps navigation, reads the equipment and access notes, and taps Start, Skip or Complete. Before-and-after photos and the inspection checklist are on the same screen.

Proof for the Person Who Was Not There

The manager who pays is almost never at the building. They need proof. Photos taken on the tech's phone stay with the job. The inspection checklist covers the main shut-off, water pressure, water heater temperature, T&P valve, visible leaks, toilets, faucets, drains and more, with readings and a condition of Good, Needs attention or Repair recommended. The office can print it as a Plumbing Inspection Report for the owner.

Two-way texting from the office keeps managers and kitchen managers in the loop. When a repair needs approval, an estimate built from your service list goes out, the manager approves it online, and the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job.

Billing the Account Once a Month

Set a property manager or restaurant to Monthly, and instead of an invoice for every job, they get one statement each month covering every address. Each line is labeled with the address, so the manager can split the bill across owners or locations without calling you. Smaller landlords who prefer it can stay on card on file, charged at completion or on a schedule, and past-due follow-up handles the accounts that run late.

Invoices carry line items and sales tax, and customers can see invoices and pay from the customer app.

Where PlumbingBossPro Fits, and Where It Does Not

PlumbingBossPro is built for service, repair and recurring maintenance across many addresses: rental portfolios, small apartment buildings, restaurants, offices, retail shops, churches and small warehouses. Large new-construction and high-rise projects, with phased bids and months-long job schedules, are outside the typical use, and we would rather say that plainly.

Plans are $59, $89 and $199 per month for Start, Pro and Crew, with multi-address accounts and monthly statements on every plan. The rest of this guide series covers each piece in detail, from winning the first manager to keeping the account renewing. To see the overview again, go back to the commercial plumbing software page.