PlumbingBossPro Blog — Quotes & Estimates

From Approved Plumbing Estimate to Scheduled Job Without Retyping Anything

In a lot of plumbing offices, an approved quote kicks off a small amount of busywork. Someone opens the quote, opens the schedule, creates a job, copies the customer's address, copies the line items, copies the water heater details, and hopes they did not miss anything. It is not hard work. It is just work that should not exist, and every retype is a chance to get something wrong.

The Gap Between Yes and the Schedule

The customer's side of approval is covered in Online Approval for Plumbing Estimates: Letting Customers Say Yes Without a Phone Call. This article is about what happens on your side once they do.

In PlumbingBossPro, the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job. There is no second form to fill in. The job carries what was on the estimate: the customer, the address, the line items and any equipment details.

What Comes Across From the Estimate

When an estimate becomes a job, these come with it:

• The customer and the address. Including access notes stored on the property.
• The line items. Exactly as the customer approved them, with your names and prices.
• Equipment details. A water heater's type, size, fuel, model and location, if they were filled in on the estimate.

That means the tech installs what the customer approved and the invoice bills what the customer approved. The same work is described the same way from start to finish.

Putting It on the Board

Once it is a job, it is handled like every other job. On the Scheduled List and dispatch board, the office assigns it to a van and a day. You can filter by van, auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, set route order by hand and print route sheets.

Many plumbing companies split their vans by type of work. One van handles repairs and drains, another handles water heaters and maintenance. An approved water heater replacement goes to the water heater van; an approved drain repair goes to the repair van. Saved views on the dispatch board make it quick to see each van's day.

What the Tech Sees

On the tech app, the job shows up in route order on the assigned tech's phone. The card has the address with a navigation button, the access notes and the equipment details. For a water heater install, that means the tech sees the type, size, fuel and model they are installing and where it goes, before they leave the shop.

The tech taps Start when they begin, takes before-and-after photos and taps Complete when they are done. The customer gets automatic “on the way” and “arrived” texts along the way, based on the alerts they have chosen.

From Job to Invoice

When the tech taps Complete, the invoice is created from the job. Since the job came from the approved estimate, the invoice lines match what the customer agreed to. If there is a card on file, it can be charged. Customers can also pay online from the customer app.

If something changed during the job, like an extra shut-off valve the customer asked for while the tech was there, the tech notes it and the office adjusts the invoice from your service list. The point is not that nothing ever changes, but that the starting point is always the approved quote, not someone's memory of it.

Equipment Goes Back to the House

There is one more step that is easy to overlook. Equipment changes made on the job flow back to the house. When a new water heater goes in, the property's equipment record updates with the new unit. The next time you quote, flush or inspect at that address, the details are already right. More on that in Quoting Repeat Customers: How Saved House Equipment Speeds Up the Next Plumbing Estimate.

Why It Matters for a Small Shop

A company with two or three vans does not have a full-time scheduler. The person building quotes is often the person answering the phone and doing the books. Every minute spent copying a quote into a job is a minute not spent on a new caller.

More importantly, removing the retype removes a whole category of mistakes. The wrong water heater size on the job, a line item that did not make it onto the invoice, an address typed with the wrong house number. None of those happen when the job is the approved estimate.

Estimate templates make the front end faster too. When you quote the same jobs every week, a template gives you a starting point, and the whole chain from template to estimate to job to invoice carries the same wording. See Plumbing Estimate Templates: Quoting the Jobs You Write Every Week in Less Time.

For the full overview of quoting in PlumbingBossPro, see the plumbing estimate software page.