PlumbingBossPro Blog — Plumbing Software

Service Calls vs. Recurring Work: How Plumbing Software Handles Both

Plumbing work comes in two shapes. Some of it arrives with a phone call and a problem: the toilet will not stop running, the kitchen drain is backing up, there is no hot water. Some of it arrives on the calendar: the water heater is due for its yearly flush, the restaurant's grease line needs jetting again, the backflow test is due. A small shop runs both with the same vans, so the software has to handle both without making them feel like two systems.

Two Kinds of Work, One Shop

Both kinds of work happen at a house, and the house carries its equipment, as covered in Equipment Saved on the House: Water Heaters, Softeners, Pumps and Shut-Offs in Plumbing Software. What differs is how the job gets started.

A service call is started by the customer. It has some urgency, it may need an estimate before the real work, and it may lead to a repair or replacement. Recurring work is started by time. It is usually lower urgency, priced in advance, and easy to forget about because nobody is calling to remind you.

The danger for most shops is that service calls crowd out recurring work. The phone always wins. Software has to make the scheduled work just as visible as the ringing phone.

How Service Calls Work

In PlumbingBossPro, a one-time service call or repair is booked as a job at the customer's address. The office can fill in the equipment from the house with the “From House” picker, note the problem, and the job goes on the Waiting List right away.

Service calls can also start from the customer side. A customer can request service from the customer app, or through the request form on your website, which lands in Form Responses for the office to review. And when a call needs a price first, the estimate can be approved online and then becomes the scheduled job.

Once it is on the list, a service call is dispatched like any other job: assigned to a van and a day, put in route order, and worked from the tech app.

How Recurring Work Works

Recurring work is set by minimum days between visits. That simple number covers most plumbing maintenance:

• Yearly water heater flush — 365 days
• Softener service — whatever interval you sell
• Backflow test — typically yearly, set to match the customer's requirement
• Restaurant grease-line jetting — every 14 or 30 days

When that many days have passed since the last visit, the next one comes due on its own and shows up on the Waiting List. It counts from the last completed visit, so if the restaurant's jetting slipped a few days, the next one is measured from when it actually happened.

Customers can sign themselves up for recurring services through the customer app or a sign-up form, such as a yearly flush plan with a price you set.

Putting Both on the Same Map

The Waiting List is where the two kinds of work meet. It is a live map and list of everything that came due. Pins are colored by status: not due yet, due now, and overdue once a visit is past a 7-day grace.

This changes how a small shop fills its day. Say a service call comes in on the east side for Thursday. The office looks at the map and sees two flushes and a softener service due within a few streets. All four go on the same van, in route order, and the drive time pays for itself. More on this in The Waiting List: Every Plumbing Visit That Came Due on One Map.

Splitting the Work Between Vans

A common setup for a two- or three-van shop is to give each kind of work its own van, at least most days:

• Van 1 takes repairs and drains, the unpredictable calls.
• Van 2 takes water heaters and maintenance, the planned work.

The dispatch board filters by van, so each one has its own route. When the repair van gets slammed, a maintenance stop can move to tomorrow without falling off the radar, since it stays on the Waiting List until it is done.

Why Recurring Work Is Worth Building

Service calls pay well but come in uneven bursts. Recurring work is steadier. It fills slow days, it keeps you in front of customers before they have an emergency, and it means the first call they make when something breaks is to you, because your sticker is on their water heater and your text came last year.

The inspection checklist on maintenance visits also turns up repair work honestly: a weak T&P valve, high water pressure, a heater near the end of its life. The homeowner gets a printed report, and you get the chance to quote the fix.

To see how service calls and recurring work fit with dispatch, the tech app and billing, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing software page.