PlumbingBossPro Blog — Plumbing Software

What a Small Plumbing Company Actually Needs From Its Software

Software sales pages list everything. Marketing dashboards, call recording, membership tiers, ten kinds of reports. A shop with two or three vans does not need most of it, and paying for it means paying to ignore it. Here is the short list of what actually changes the day for a small plumbing company.

Start With the Problems You Have

If you are still sorting out the basics, read What Is Plumbing Software? A Plain Answer for Plumbing Company Owners first.

Before you look at any software, write down the three things that cost you the most time or money last month. For most small shops, the list looks something like this:

• Techs calling the office for information that should have been on the ticket.
• Maintenance work, like yearly flushes, that nobody remembered to book.
• Invoices that went out late or never went out at all.

Every item below is tied to a problem like those. If a feature does not solve something on your list, it is not a reason to buy.

1. The House Has to Remember Its Equipment

This is the one generic software gets wrong. A plumber walking into a house needs to know what is there: the water heater's type, fuel, size and age; where the softener is; where the main shut-off is; where the cleanout is.

In PlumbingBossPro, each property keeps a list of its equipment with brand, model, serial, year installed, size, fuel or power, location and access notes. New jobs fill in from the house, and changes on a job flow back to it. That alone stops a lot of calls from the field. More detail is in Equipment Saved on the House: Water Heaters, Softeners, Pumps and Shut-Offs in Plumbing Software.

2. One List for Calls and Maintenance

A small shop does not have a separate service department and maintenance department. The same two vans handle a clogged kitchen drain this morning and a water heater flush this afternoon. The software should show both kinds of work on one list.

PlumbingBossPro's Waiting List is a map and list of every visit that came due: one-time service calls and recurring work like yearly flushes, softener service, backflow tests and restaurant grease-line jetting. Recurring visits come due on their own from the minimum days you set. Pins are colored not due yet, due now, and overdue past a 7-day grace.

3. A Simple Way to Plan Each Van's Day

You do not need a dispatcher with three monitors. You need to see the day by van, put jobs in a sensible order, and move a job when a call runs long. The dispatch board shows jobs by day, filters by van, and auto-routes Closest First or Furthest First from the shop. You can set the order by hand, save views, and print route sheets for anyone who still wants paper on the dash.

4. A Tech App the Crew Will Actually Use

If the techs will not use it, nothing else matters. What makes a tech app stick is that it saves the tech time:

• Calls in route order, with a navigation button.
• Equipment and access notes on the card.
• Past notes from earlier visits to the same house.
• Start, Skip and Complete, plus before-and-after photos.
• No app store. It runs in the browser on iPhone and Android.

The tech logs in with the company login and a personal PIN. The office sees progress as the day goes.

5. Customers Told, Customers Billed

The last two needs are the ones that bring in money and cut phone calls. Customers want to know when the plumber is coming. Automatic texts the night before, when they are next and when the tech arrives handle that, and two-way texting lets the office answer questions.

Then the shop needs to get paid. Complete creates the invoice, and a card on file can be charged right then or on a schedule. Customers can pay online from the customer app, past-due invoices get follow-up, and property managers or restaurants can get one monthly statement for all their addresses.

What You Can Skip

Things small shops often pay for and rarely use: long marketing modules, complex permission trees, enterprise reporting, and anything that needs a consultant to set up. You can always add process later. It is much harder to get a crew to come back to a tool they gave up on in week one.

PlumbingBossPro sticks to the list above at $59, $89 or $199 a month, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card. For the full overview of each piece, see the PlumbingBossPro plumbing software page.