PlumbingBossPro Blog — Tech App

Start, Skip, Complete: The Three Buttons That Run a Plumber's Day

The office in a plumbing company spends a surprising amount of time asking one question: “Where are you on the Garcia call?” The plumber is under a sink, the phone is in the van, and the customer at the next stop is calling to ask when someone is coming. The PlumbingBossPro tech app answers that question with three buttons. Start, Skip and Complete tell the office the state of every call without a phone call.

Three Buttons, Three Answers

The printed report that comes out of a maintenance visit is covered in The Printable Plumbing Inspection Report: From the Tech's Checklist to the Homeowner's Hands. That report only exists because the plumber completed the job. This guide covers the buttons that move every job through its day.

• Start says the plumber is on site and working.
• Skip says the job did not happen, with a note explaining why.
• Complete says the job is done.

Every call on the plumber's list ends in either Skip or Complete. Nothing sits in limbo.

Start

The plumber taps Start on arrival. That does two things. The office sees the job as underway on the board. And the customer gets the arrived text, if they turned that alert on, so the homeowner knows the person at the door is from your company.

Start also marks the beginning of time on the job. When the office looks back at a day, they can see how long a drain cleaning or a water heater replacement actually took, which is useful the next time someone quotes a similar job.

Skip, With a Reason

Not every call happens. The homeowner is not home. The tenant will not open the door. The crawlspace access is blocked by a new deck. The customer cancels at the door. When that happens, the plumber taps Skip and writes why.

The note is the important part. “Skipped” tells the office nothing. “No one home, knocked and waited ten minutes, left a door hanger” tells the office exactly what to say when the customer calls. “Water heater closet blocked by storage, customer will clear it, reschedule” tells them to rebook. The office sees the skip with the note, texts the customer and puts the job on another day.

A photo helps too. A picture of the locked gate, the blocked closet or the note left on the door backs up the skip if the customer says nobody came. And because the skip carries the plumber's name from their PIN, the office knows who to ask if the story needs more detail. Skips are not failures. They are information the office needs to fix the schedule, and a good skip note gets the job back on the calendar fast.

Complete

Complete closes the job, and it does more than mark a box. When the plumber taps Complete:

• The office sees the job done, with the notes, photos and checklist attached.
• The invoice is created from the job's line items.
• A card on file can be charged right then, if the company has auto-charge on completion set up.
• Recurring work, like a yearly flush, starts counting toward its next due date on the Waiting List.

That is why the plumber should finish the photos, the checklist and the notes before tapping Complete. The completed job is the record the office and the customer will see. Payment at completion has its own guide in Charging the Card on File When the Plumber Taps Complete.

What the Office Gets From Three Taps

Three taps per call give the office a live picture of the day. Which plumbers are on a job right now. Which calls are finished and invoiced. Which were skipped and why. Combined with crew GPS on the office map, the dispatcher can answer the customer who calls asking “when is the plumber coming?” without calling the plumber.

It also makes the end of the day simple. There is no stack of paper tickets to sort, no “did you finish the Patel job?” text at 6pm. If it says Complete, it is complete.

Good Habits for the Three Buttons

• Tap Start when you arrive, not when you leave. The arrived text only helps if it arrives with you.
• Never skip without a note. The office cannot fix what it does not understand.
• Photos and checklist first, then Complete. Complete is the last thing you do at the address.
• One job at a time. Complete the current call before starting the next one, so the office board stays accurate.

Three buttons are the simplest part of the tech app and the part that changes the office the most. For everything else on the phone, see the PlumbingBossPro plumber app page.