PlumbingBossPro Blog — Water Heaters & Maintenance Plans

Maintenance Plans for Landlords With Many Homes: One Client, Many Water Heaters, One Statement

A landlord with twenty rental houses has twenty water heaters, twenty sets of tenants and twenty chances for a flooded garage at 2am. They also have one bookkeeper who does not want twenty invoices a month. For a plumbing company, a landlord account done right is steady, predictable work. Done wrong, it is an administrative mess.

Many Doors, Same Engine

Commercial customers with devices at several sites came up in Backflow Testing Schedules: Keeping Yearly Tests From Slipping Through the Cracks. Residential landlords are the same idea with water heaters instead of backflow preventers: one customer, many addresses, each with its own equipment and its own schedule.

One Client, Many Addresses

In PlumbingBossPro, one client can have many addresses. Set up the landlord or property management company as the client, then add each rental house as an address under it. Each address keeps its own:

• Equipment list, with the water heater's type, fuel, size, serial, year and location.
• Access notes, such as lockbox codes, tenant contact preferences and where the shut-off is.
• Recurring plans, like a yearly flush at 365 days.
• Job history, so you can see every visit to that house.

Tags and custom fields help sort the portfolio, for example tagging addresses by neighborhood or by which property manager on the landlord's team handles them.

Equipment Records Matter Even More

Landlords often do not know what is in their own houses. They bought the property with a water heater already in it, and nobody wrote down the year. Building the equipment records on the first round of flushes gives the landlord something they did not have: a list of every water heater they own, how old it is and what condition it is in.

That list is valuable to them for budgeting. It is valuable to you because the oldest tanks are your replacement jobs for the next few years. When the inspection checklist comes back Repair recommended, build the estimate from your service list and send it to the landlord to approve online.

Scheduling Around Tenants

Rental visits come with an extra person: the tenant. Each address's access notes should say how to reach the tenant and how the landlord wants entry handled. Automated reminders by text and email can go to the right contact, and the on-the-way and arrived texts from the tech's phone let the tenant know when to expect you.

On the Waiting List, a landlord's houses show as individual pins. That is useful, because rentals are rarely all on one street. Route them by area alongside your other members, rather than trying to do all twenty in one day across town.

Vacancies are a good time for a flush. If the landlord tells you a house is empty between tenants, pull its visit forward and do it without needing to coordinate with anyone.

One Statement Each Month

This is the part that wins landlord accounts. Set the client to Monthly billing and they get ONE statement each month covering every address, with each line labeled with the address. Flushes, repairs and replacements across the whole portfolio show up on one document.

Their bookkeeper can see which house each charge belongs to and allocate it to the right property without calling you. You send one statement instead of a stack of invoices, and past-due follow-up covers the whole account at once.

Reports Landlords Appreciate

The printable Plumbing Inspection Report is especially useful for landlords. A report per house after each yearly visit gives them a record of the condition of every water heater, the water pressure and any leaks found. Some use them when they sell a property or refinance.

The inspection checklist and report are covered in The Plumbing Inspection Checklist and the Printable Report for the Homeowner.

Pricing a Portfolio

Landlords will ask for a better price for more houses. That is fair if their houses really are cheaper to serve, for instance several in the same area that can be done on one day. A modest per-house reduction, in dollars, for portfolios above a certain size is common. Avoid discounting so far that scattered rental visits lose money. Your service list holds the prices, and a landlord rate can be its own line.

A Small Number of Big Accounts

Two or three landlord accounts can fill a meaningful share of a maintenance van's year, and they tend to stay as long as the service is good. One client, many addresses, one statement and good records are what keep them. For the rest of the maintenance program, go back to the PlumbingBossPro water heater service software page.