Plumbing Management App: Scale Efficiently & Boost Revenue

Traditional methods for running a plumbing business are fraught with challenges that limit scalability and revenue growth. For example, to name just a few that our customers and the industry veterans on our team have experienced firsthand:

• Massive workflow inefficiencies (e.g. repetitive and manual data entry, working with many disconnected apps, etc.)

• Critical miscommunications between field and office staff

• Constantly missed revenue opportunities

• Limited data accessibility and visibility (i.e. inability to spot problems before they lead to significant losses, or gain real-time insights for better decision making)

• Difficulty implementing standard operating procedures (SOPs) and industry best practices

To solve these and other issues, many plumbing companies are turning to plumbing software — holistic field service management software that empowers plumbing businesses with the tools and data they need to grow successfully. 

In this post, we’re going to discuss how our product, ServiceTitan, transforms business operations and job management for residential and commercial plumbing contractors. 

Specifically, we’ll cover:

• Front Office Features: Streamline Office Workflows with Seamless Booking, Communication, and Coordination

• Field Operation Features: Foster Accountability and Empower Technicians to Boost Revenue In the Field

• Management and Insights Features: Get Real-Time Insights to Make Better Decisions

Want to see how ServiceTitan’s all-in-one software solution works to streamline your plumbing business operations? Schedule a call to get a free, live, one-on-one walk-through of the features we describe throughout this post.

Front Office: Streamline Office Workflows with Seamless Booking, Communication, and Coordination

Job Booking: A Guided Workflow to Capture Initial Call Details

When calls come in, ServiceTitan’s intuitive Call Booking workflow guides CSRs through the process of collecting all necessary customer information, and auto-fills this information into an initial scope of work (or work order).

If the caller is already a customer, CSRs can easily access their complete job history, property data, and any associated warranty or membership information. There’s no need to go digging through paper files or CRMs — the information is provided to them in real time. This improves booking efficiency while enabling CSRs to provide remarkable customer experiences. 

CSRs are prompted to complete drop-down menus and text boxes that populate the job overview fields, including: 

• Job type 

• Job priority 

• Job summary 

• Additional details (such as security gate codes, notification of pets on premises, etc.)

This workflow ensures that CSRs capture all of the key information so that dispatchers and plumbing techs can be as prepared as possible as the job progresses.

For maximum efficiency, our cloud-based system automatically transfers this information into the subsequent documents needed to complete the job, such as estimates and invoices. 

Scheduling and Dispatching: Get the Right Plumbers to the Right Jobs

Once the specific job type and priority have been defined, ServiceTitan displays scheduling options directly from the call booking screen. When the customer agrees to an available date and time slot, the CSR can select an available plumber within an arrival window time and book the job.

There’s no need to put customers on hold to check white board schedules, or call technicians or dispatchers to ask questions and confirm availabilities. This information is all right at CSRs’ fingertips.

Additionally, our plumbing scheduling software includes:

• Call recordings that allow dispatchers and techs to reference the original service call when they need clarification about job details.

• Adjustable Capacity Planning, which ensures that only appointments that meet your capacity goals and strategy are available at any given time (and also prevents overbooking).

• A user-friendly website widget that allows customers to book their own appointments online without ever talking to a CSR. It still collects all the necessary job details that a CSR would on a call.

• Automated Job Confirmations that send appointment confirmation requests to the customer according to their preference (text or email), and then automatically changes scheduled appointments to confirmations on the dispatch board.

Once a job is booked and scheduled, it’s automatically viewable through the dispatch board, where dispatchers can access all of the same information and functionality discussed above. 

ServiceTitan’s dispatch software allows dispatchers to perform most of their tasks without having to leave the board. This includes being able to easily see which jobs are unassigned, unconfirmed, dispatched, working, paused, and more. 

Additional Dispatch features include:

• Drag-and-drop functionality that allows dispatchers to easily assign or reassign a tech; confirm or reschedule a job; view property data; and more. 

• An Activity Feed that allows dispatchers to see real-time job activity (e.g., Arrived, Paused, Complete) and to direct-message and communicate with techs (individually or en masse). 

• Alerts that notify the dispatcher of unusual activity or problems that need to be addressed.

• GPS tracking that allows dispatchers to track techs’ locations as they’re on their way to jobs (this notification option can also be enabled for clients, too).

• Schedule Optimization and Optimize Technician Route options that help dispatchers coordinate appointments with techs in an efficient way, including identifying jobs in locations where a tech is already working.

Combined, this suite of scheduling and dispatching features allows plumbing service companies to plan and execute plumbing jobs with far greater agility and confidence than traditional methods.

In addition to job booking, scheduling, and dispatching, our desktop features also provide office staff with access to tools for service agreement management, marketing, and more.

Field Operations: Foster Accountability and Empower Technicians to Boost Revenue on the Job

Forms in the Field: Ensure the Proper Forms Are Always Filled Out (and SOPs Are Followed on Every Job)

Particularly as a plumbing business grows, maintaining quality and consistency of services can be a huge challenge. It’s difficult to ensure that staff follow standard operating procedures and best practices in the office and field. And yet, the ability to implement SOPs and best practices is essential for being successful.

ServiceTitan’s custom form features provide plumbing businesses with tools that make SOP implementation much easier in the following ways:

1. Trigger specific forms for certain jobs. For field technicians (via our mobile app) and office staff alike, ServiceTitan can make a form show up based on the job type. For example, making maintenance checklists that show up on all maintenance jobs, and warranty forms show up on all warranty jobs. 

2. Required actions. ServiceTitan can prompt a technician to fill out a form on site — before allowing them to close out a job and move on to the next one. Managers can also determine which questions on those forms are required. 

3. Require a picture or signature. Requiring pictures of the finished installation of, for instance, a water heater, ensures that the plumbing and venting was installed properly. And requiring a signature, for example, from a customer on a disclaimer that acknowledges that the repair to their system was not the recommended repair could cover the contractor if the repair fails in under a year.  

All forms can be easily customized. And they also provide crucial documentation of work to explain to customers when an issue or breakdown needs to be addressed.

When checklists or forms are filled out, the information they contain can be accessed by office staff via our desktop app in real time (or referenced at any later date, such as the next appointment for that customer). Forms such as inspection reports can also easily be shared with the customer.

Estimates and Proposals: Increase Average Ticket Prices with Multi-Option Proposals

Executing plumbing estimating well — including getting your pricing right — is absolutely essential for the profitability of a plumbing business. However, pricebooks are out of date, technicians make pricing mistakes, and plumbing companies often don’t charge enough for their work, resulting in a loss for the business. 

Furthermore, technicians often don’t present the full range of options to customers that could increase average ticket prices.

ServiceTitan solves both of these problems, enabling technicians to create professional-quality proposals — built directly from our integrated pricebook functionality to ensure correct pricing — and then present them to customers via our mobile app. 

Techs can leverage customizable estimate templates for increased efficiency, or build estimates from scratch by simply selecting items from their pricebook. This allows them to quickly create line-item, flat-rate, or Good Better Best proposals (helping to increase average ticket prices) for customers. 

There is no need to worry about plumbers giving customers sloppy, handwritten estimates that they can barely read. These attractive digital proposals are incredibly convenient to create and impressive to customers.

Additional estimating features include the ability to:

• Add photos or videos to an estimate to provide visual evidence of damage that needs to be repaired (or images of suggested materials or equipment presented in the estimate).

• Include a written summary of the findings, work to be done, or other important information about the job.

• Provide access to financing for big-ticket items right within the proposal, allowing customers to get approved on the spot.

• Present the estimate to the customer on a mobile device (iPhone, Android, iPad, or other iOS device), so the client can immediately accept the proposal and authorize the work.

Invoicing and Payments: Automate Invoicing and Get Paid Faster

Once a job is complete, everything that’s needed to create an invoice and receive payment is already updated and ready to deliver to the customer. 

Simply click on the “Generate Invoice” button, and ServiceTitan generates a professional-looking, accurate invoice that you can mail, fax, text, or email to your customer (including a link where they can pay online).

Additional invoicing features include:

• Customizable invoice templates that allow you to add your company name and logo — and choose the colors and fonts that are in line with your branding.

• The ability to attach videos and photos to an invoice, such as before-and-after photos of the work done.

• An optional field where you can add service suggestions, warranty information, membership promotions, etc. 

• Automatically storing all invoices in the customer database so it’s easily accessible in the future if you need to access the customer’s service history.

Multiple options for accepting payment give customers flexibility and help ensure that you get paid quickly:

• Plumbing technicians can take a picture of a check and auto-deposit it immediately using the mobile app.

• Credit card payments can be processed using a Bluetooth Card Reader with a tap/swipe of the card or via a link to a customer portal where customers can pay online.

• Google Pay™ and Apple Pay® integration provide another flexible payment option.

If a customer applied for and was approved for financing through the estimate, payment is already taken care of.

Management and Insights: Get Real-Time Insights to Make Better Decisions

Reporting: Track Real-Time KPIs with Custom Reports and Dashboards

Roughly 30+ built-in reports come standard with a ServiceTitan subscription, covering things such as profitability, job costing, and field technician scorecards, to name a handful of the most popular options. Users can also customize reports with targeted filters as specific as their needs, allowing them to gather intel on KPIs like marking ROI, sales process efficacy, and revenue trends.

In addition, our platform allows you to click into any number being reported and trace it back to its original source, be that a particular job, invoice, technician, etc. As a result, we empower business owners to have the utmost visibility into their data, and therefore the greatest ability to steer their business toward growth. 

Inventory Management: Track Inventory Levels and Ensure Upcoming Jobs Run Smoothly 

ServiceTitan has built-in inventory features that allow you to manage your inventory directly within our platform. This helps to further streamline your workflows and ensure inventory is always accurate and up-to-date.

Appointed staff can access and leverage a suite of tools to optimize inventory and purchase order management, including:

• Inventory Overview: At a glance, users can view all items that they’ve added to track with ServiceTitan inventory. For each inventory item, this view displays an item name, code, description, along with quantities available, on hold, on order, and on hand, plus the average cost per unit and total value of the stock. You can see big-picture numbers, such as total inventory valuation and total number of items. Or you can drill down into individual inventory items for further detail.

• Replenishment: To track equipment and materials in your trucks and warehouse, our replenishment feature automatically updates to reflect the number of items needed in a given location. As items are added to invoices or purchase orders, these are automatically reflected in your inventory data. And users can be prompted to replenish to maintain necessary inventory. 

• Purchase Orders: Users can initiate the requisition of equipment and materials for jobs within the estimate screen. They can then create and send purchase orders to the appropriate vendors, and track those orders through fulfillment. Inventory data automatically updates to reflect all PO’s.

• And more: This feature set also includes workflows for managing adjustments, returns, warranty parts tracking, and more. 

Accounting Integrations: Get Real-Time Accounting Data and Sync with Your Accounting Software

Most of the accounting platforms used in the field service industry (QuickBooks, Intacct, etc.) are data-entry platforms that are disconnected from your field service operations. So, when jobs are completed in the field, the work that was done does not immediately translate into your accounting and inventory systems (parts or equipment installed, invoices delivered or paid, etc.). 

As a result, there is lag time in which you can’t view up-to-date financials, and there’s the need to manually enter this data into your accounting platform once you have access to the data and records from your field service technician, for example.

This inability to see real-time financials can lead to missing crucial accounting errors and ultimately huge losses for a business. 

In contrast, with ServiceTitan, once a technician leaves a job site, all of the data from the job is reflected in your accounting system in real time — with no data entry required. 

We offer Sage Intacct, Viewpoint Vista, and QuickBooks integrations, in addition to offering built-in features for the following:

• Real-Time Invoice Management: Access to invoice and accounting data in real-time while reducing manual data entry.

• Team Coordination: Streamlining accounting coordination among team members (such as the ability to assign tasks to team members to review invoices).

• Shortening Job-Costing Workflows: Making it easy to access at-a-glance summaries of job-costing data for any job. 

Get a Personalized Demo of ServiceTitan

The features we’ve discussed throughout this section are just some of the areas where ServiceTitan helps plumbing businesses streamline their operations and grow revenue.

To see why our software is trusted by 100,000+ service professionals, schedule a call to get a free, live, one-on-one walk-through of how our plumbing business software can help you grow revenue, work smarter, and keep your business operations on track.