PlumbingBossPro Blog — Plumbing Software

Switching Plumbing Software Without Losing Customers or a Week of Work

Switching from one plumbing software to another feels riskier than starting from paper. You already have years of customers, jobs and invoices in the old system, and you are worried about losing some of it or stalling the business while everyone learns new screens. The worry is reasonable. A switch that is planned well, though, takes a few evenings of office work and about a week of the crew getting used to new buttons.

Why Shops Switch

Most switches start with a demo that showed the gaps, like the ones in What to Look for in a Plumbing Software Demo.

The common reasons plumbing companies leave their current software:

• It is generic field-service software that does not know what a water heater is.
• The price keeps climbing as you add techs.
• It was built for much bigger companies and is more than a small shop can use.
• Recurring work like flushes and backflow tests is clumsy or missing.
• The techs never really adopted the app.

Write down your reasons. They are your checklist for whether the new software actually solves them.

Pick the Right Time

There is no perfect week, but some are better than others. Avoid the coldest stretch of winter if frozen pipes make that your busiest season. Avoid the week before a holiday. A normal week in a slower month gives everyone room to learn.

Also look at your billing cycle. If you send monthly statements to property managers, switch right after one goes out, so the next one comes entirely from the new system.

Bring Your Customers Over

Almost every field-service program can export customers to a spreadsheet. From there:

• Export customers and addresses from the old system.
• Clean the file: remove duplicates, fix addresses, group multi-address clients.
• Import it into PlumbingBossPro by CSV. The addresses are placed on the map automatically.
• Look over the map for pins in the wrong place and fix those addresses.

The details are covered in CSV Import: Moving Your Plumbing Customer List Into New Software. Keep a copy of the export. Old job history and invoices can stay in that file or in the old system's read-only access for reference.

Rebuild the Things That Do Not Export Cleanly

Some things rarely come over in a spreadsheet, and it is better to set them up fresh:

• Recurring services. Set up each maintenance customer's service with its minimum days between visits: 365 for a yearly flush, 14 or 30 for grease-line jetting. They will come due on the Waiting List from there.
• Your service list. Enter the services and prices you actually charge. A clean list is a good chance to drop old items nobody uses.
• Equipment. If your old system had equipment in notes, add it to the house as techs visit. Do not try to type it all in on day one.
• Billing settings. Set property managers and restaurants to Monthly if they get one statement.
• Employees and vans. Add each tech with a PIN and a van, and add office users with the right roles.

Cards on File

Saved cards usually cannot be moved between systems, for good security reasons. Plan for customers to add their card again. A few ways to make it painless:

• Send customers a short note that you have new software and a new customer app, with the link.
• Ask for the card when booking their next job.
• Remind maintenance plan customers to add their card in the customer app before their next visit comes due.

Most active customers will be back on file within a few months just through normal bookings.

The First Two Weeks

The switch is really two weeks of habits:

• Day one: every new call goes into the new system only. No double entry.
• First few days: the office builds each van's day on the dispatch board and techs work from the tech app. Do a ride-along with each tech for part of a day.
• First week: check the Waiting List daily for anything overdue that slipped through.
• Second week: look at open invoices and make sure nothing from the switch week was missed.
• End of week two: cancel the old software once you are sure nothing is left behind.

The 14-day free trial lines up well with this. You can import your customers, run real jobs and confirm everything works before you pay. PlumbingBossPro is $59, $89 or $199 a month for Start, Pro and Crew, with no credit card needed to start. For the full overview, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing software page.