PlumbingBossPro Blog — Plumbing Software

The Plumbing Tech App: What Your Plumber Sees on the Phone at Every Stop

The office can have the best software in the world, but if the plumbers in the vans are still working from a printout and phone calls, half the value is gone. The tech app is where plumbing software meets the actual work. This article walks through what your plumber sees, stop by stop.

Getting On the Phone

The tech's list comes straight from the office, as explained in The Dispatch Board: Putting Plumbing Calls on the Right Van in the Right Order. Here is the other end of that line.

PlumbingBossPro's tech app runs in the browser on iPhone and Android. There is no app store download, and it can be installed to the home screen so it opens like any other app. That means it works on the phones your plumbers already carry, and you are not buying special devices.

Each tech signs in with the company login and their own personal PIN. The PIN ties every job, photo and clock-in to the right person. When someone leaves the company, turning off their PIN turns off their access.

The Day in Route Order

Once signed in, the tech sees the day's calls in the order set on the dispatch board. The top card is the next stop. Each card has a navigation button that opens directions to the address, so nobody is typing a street name with wet hands.

When the office moves a job, adds an emergency or pushes something to tomorrow, the list on the phone follows. The tech does not need a call or a text to know the plan changed.

What's on Each Card

This is where a plumbing tech app earns its keep. Each card carries what the plumber needs to know before walking in:

• The job — service call, flush, softener service, drain cleaning, whatever was booked.
• The equipment at the house — for example, “Water Heater - Tank (Gas) · Rheem XG50T06 · 50 gal · Natural Gas · installed 2014,” with the serial on the next line.
• Location and access — “Garage · Shut-off is in the meter box at the curb.”
• Past notes — what earlier techs wrote on earlier visits to the same house.

A tech walking into a no-hot-water call already knows the heater's age, fuel and size. On a drain call, they can see that the last visit noted roots near the cleanout. That is information the customer often cannot give over the phone.

Start, Skip, Complete and Photos

Three buttons run the job:

• Start tells the office the job is underway.
• Skip, with a note, says why the job did not happen: nobody home, no access to the crawlspace, customer asked to reschedule. The office sees it and rebooks.
• Complete closes the job.

Before-and-after photos taken in the app stay with the job. A photo of the old water heater label, the corroded supply line, the cleared drain or the new install is useful to the office, the customer and the next tech.

On maintenance and inspection visits, the tech works the inspection checklist right in the app. That gets its own article: The Plumbing Inspection Checklist and Report: From the Tech's Phone to the Homeowner's Hands.

Texts and Payment Without Extra Taps

The tech does not have to remember to text the customer. Automatic “on the way” and “arrived” texts go out as the tech works the route, for customers who have those alerts turned on.

When the tech taps Complete, the invoice is created, and a card on file can be charged right then. That means fewer invoices sitting in a pile until the weekend and fewer customers who need to be chased. Customers without a card on file get the invoice and can pay online from the customer app.

Time Clock and Crew GPS

Techs clock in and out on the same phone, so hours are recorded as they happen instead of reconstructed on Friday. Crew GPS shows on the office map, so when a call comes in, the office can see which van is closest without calling around.

Getting the Crew to Use It

Plumbers will use a tool that saves them time and ignore one that adds work. A few things help:

• Fill in equipment and access notes for regular customers early, so the cards are useful from day one.
• Show each tech how navigation and past notes work on a ride-along. That is usually enough.
• Stop sending the group text and printing the daily sheet once the app is running. Two systems means nobody trusts either.

For the office side of the platform and how the tech app ties into it, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing software page.