PlumbingBossPro Blog — Plumbing Software

Plumbing Software for a Five-Van Shop

Somewhere between two vans and five, a plumbing company changes shape. The owner stops running calls every day. Someone sits at a desk full-time taking calls and building routes. There are commercial accounts with standing work. The things that used to live in the owner's head now have to live somewhere everyone can reach. That is the point where software stops being a convenience and becomes the way the company runs.

What Changes at Five Vans

The owner-operator setup in Plumbing Software for a One-Van Shop works because one person knows everything. At five vans, nobody does.

The common growing pains:

• Techs who have never been to a house keep calling the office for details.
• The dispatcher spends the morning on the phone instead of on the routes.
• Maintenance customers fall behind because service calls take every open slot.
• The owner cannot tell which van is near a new emergency without calling around.
• Commercial clients get a pile of separate invoices and pay slowly.

Each of those has a fix in the software, but only if the whole crew uses it the same way.

Split the Vans by Type of Work

Five vans give you room to specialize. A typical layout:

• Two vans on repairs and drains. The unpredictable service calls: leaks, clogs, toilets, faucets, disposals.
• One van on water heaters. Replacements, tankless installs and yearly flushes.
• One van on maintenance and tests. Softener service, backflow tests and inspection visits.
• One van on commercial. Restaurant grease-line jetting on a 14- or 30-day cycle, and calls for property managers.

The dispatch board filters by van, so the dispatcher can build each van's day separately, auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, and save a view for each one. Printed route sheets are there for any tech who wants a backup on the dash.

The Dispatcher's Day

At five vans, dispatch is a job, not a side task. The dispatcher lives in two screens: the Waiting List and the Scheduled List.

The Waiting List shows every service call and every recurring visit that came due, colored not due yet, due now and overdue past a 7-day grace. The dispatcher pulls from it to build each van's day, grouping nearby jobs on the map. When an emergency comes in mid-day, crew GPS on the office map shows which van is closest. The dispatcher drops the job onto that van, moves it to the top, and the tech's phone updates.

Skips come back with the tech's note, so the dispatcher can text the customer and rebook without chasing the tech.

Knowledge on the House, Not in the Senior Plumber

Five vans usually means a mix of experience. Your senior plumber knows half the houses in town. Your newest hire knows none. The equipment records close that gap.

Every water heater, softener, sump pump, shut-off and cleanout saved on the house shows on the tech's card with brand, model, size, year and location. Past notes show what earlier techs found. A first-year plumber walking into a house for the first time has most of what the senior plumber would tell them. More on that in Job History and Photos: Why Plumbing Software Should Remember Every Visit to a House.

Office Roles and Commercial Billing

With a dispatcher, an office manager and maybe a part-time helper, office user roles start to matter. The owner keeps the money screens. The dispatcher gets the scheduling and texting tools. The helper books calls.

Commercial work also grows at this size. Property managers, landlords and restaurant groups set to Monthly get one statement covering every address, each line labeled with its address. That keeps the commercial van's work from turning into dozens of small invoices each month.

Which Plan Fits Five Vans

The Crew plan at $199 a month is built for this size: unlimited office users and unlimited vans, with 2,000 text segments a month sent and received. Customers, addresses and employees are unlimited on every plan, so adding a sixth tech or a seventh van does not change the bill.

Shops with three or four vans land on Crew too, since Pro covers two vans. The pricing page lays out each plan. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial and no credit card.

Rolling It Out to a Bigger Crew

Switching a five-van shop is more work than a one-van shop, mostly because of people, not software. A few tips:

• Pick a start date and stop using the whiteboard that day.
• Train the dispatcher first. If dispatch works, the techs follow.
• Ride along with each tech for part of a day to show the app.
• Ask every tech to add equipment at every house for the first few months.
• Hold a short weekly check-in on what is working and what is not.

For the full overview of the platform, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing software page.