Plumbing Pricing Apps: Top 7 Estimating Software Options

Most flat rate plumbing pricing apps provide a comprehensive database of product prices, or let you upload one. However, the majority are third-party solutions that fail to integrate with other plumbing contractor software. As a plumbing business owner or manager, this means you spend hours transferring pricing information between different apps, such as your dispatch and scheduling apps, and your inventory, accounting, and invoicing software, for example.

Also, many plumbing pricing apps lack features that streamline pricebook management, such as bulk editing. The hassle of making changes one-by-one — combined with users finding these pricing apps complex and difficult to use — often means pricebooks are only sporadically updated. Techs out in the field then end up building proposals using outdated details and prices, and you risk undercharging for your plumbing company’s services.

ServiceTitan’s flat rate pricebook features solve all of these problems by improving pricebook management efficiency and fully integrating pricing and proposals with the rest of your service company’s workflow. In this article, we’ll walk you through how it works.

Specifically, we’ll cover:

• Pricebook setup and management features

• Creating Good-Better-Best proposals

Finally, we’ll provide a list of 6 other plumbing estimating software and pricing apps you can consider. 

We’ll cover the following options:

• ServiceTitan

• simPRO

• Procore

• FastPIPE

• Jobber

• Service Fusion

• FieldEdge

How ServiceTitan’s Pricebook and Estimating Features Work

Getting Started with ServiceTitan’s Pricebook

ServiceTitan gives you several ways of building your pricebook:

• Upload a pricebook that your business is already using, so you don’t need to start from scratch if you already work with one. You can upload it via .xls file and then update and manage it from within ServiceTitan.

• Build your pricebook from scratch by adding each item or product one by one. This can be a useful route for small businesses offering a limited range of plumbing services to a relatively small number of customers.

• Use ServiceTitan’s Pricebook Pro catalog. This is our add-on pricebook product, which comes with a wide range of pre-built, flat rate plumbing services to give you a huge head start on building out your pricebook (we discuss Pricebook Pro in detail below).

Organizing Pricebooks to Find Items Quickly and Easily

ServiceTitan lets you organize the items in your pricebook in a variety of ways, depending on how you and your techs find it easiest to search through them. 

Organize your pricebooks by verticals and business units, which saves time because there is no need to trawl through huge lists of catalogs, products, and materials to find exact details of the right part when you need it. Just click through each category to get to the specific part you are looking for.

ServiceTitan provides easy access to a range of pricebooks and catalogs for both residential and commercial services, as well as covering multiple verticals such as electrical and HVAC, so all your needs are covered.

Pricebook Editing Features and Automations Keep Prices Current 

Prices for products and materials can change frequently, so plumbing contractors need to keep on top of those fluctuations as they happen. 

Most pricebooks force you to export lists of items to a spreadsheet, use formulas to make changes externally one-by-one, and then re-load updated prices and details back into the app. This is a complicated process and takes up tons of time that service businesses could use to focus on generating more revenue. 

To cut through this and allow you to update prices and details on multiple items at once, ServiceTitan gives you advanced filtering and editing tools so you can easily apply changes to more than one product at a time. It also allows you to automate certain pricing updates through our Dynamic Pricing feature.

Here are the options for editing your pricebook in ServiceTitan:

Individual Item Editing

Edit individual services or pricebook items manually, including as much or as little detail as you want.

Bulk Editing

You can apply edits and markups on multiple services, materials, or equipment across your entire pricebook at once, or select groups or categories of items to automatically apply changes to.  

You can easily:

• Add or remove images 

• Add or remove a category

• Add or replace item descriptions

• Add or remove a primary vendor

• Add or remove time increments to all items selected

• Increase, decrease, or set prices as a flat amount or percentage

Dynamic Pricing Automations

Lastly, you can use our Dynamic Pricing feature that leverages automation to make pricebook management even more efficient. 

For example, with just a few steps, Dynamic Pricing allows you to set up rules that automatically update your pricing when material costs and labor rates change. Not only does this save you significant time, but it helps maintain profitability because each estimate that’s generated from that point will reflect the most up-to-date pricing. 

In addition, Dynamic Pricing further enables you to charge the right prices at the right times, automatically applying “after-hours” price increases when doing work outside of normal business hours. 

In combination, these editing and automation features are game changing for streamlining pricebook management — maximizing profit margins while freeing up teams to focus on other key areas of the business.

Automation and Upselling Features Through Pricebook Connect

Your company may already work with a specific supplier that is integrated with ServiceTitan. If so, you can keep your materials and equipment prices automatically updated through Pricebook Connect, so you can safeguard your margins and profitability. 

Automated update features link supplier catalogs directly to your pricebook — so as soon as an integrated supplier makes any changes to their prices, product descriptions, and images, for example, you can be notified of them, or choose to make the changes to your pricebook automatically. Pricebook Connect also sends out notifications to add upgrades or recommendations that sell well for the specific plumbing services you offer.

This seamless access to supplier catalogs is also an opportunity to add new items to your pricebook and to keep on top of the latest products on the market so you can include them in proposals. This gives you the chance to sell higher-ticket products as they become available.

Pricebook Pro: See a 13% Increase in Revenue with a Well-Built Pricebook

Although ServiceTitan makes it easier to keep your pricebook up to date with the organization and editing features we described above, if you opt to upload your own pricebook or build one from scratch, someone from your team still needs to monitor supplier catalogs for changes in pricing of equipment and materials.

This monitoring and updating process can be very time-consuming, and if prices are not consistently updated, your bottom line is at risk. Your pricebook needs to reflect every price change so that estimates can remain accurate and you can protect your margins.

On top of that, you also need to spend time deciding which flat-rate services to offer, what to include in each service, and calculating how much to charge based on the fluctuating costs of labor, materials, and equipment.

ServiceTitan’s add-on service, Pricebook Pro, takes that grind and time out of creating and managing your pricebook in three ways:

1. Giving you a well-built plumbing pricebook from the outset, based on industry average prices and best practices, saving you hours of pricebook setup time. (You can add your own items and make adjustments to this base pricebook, as your business requires.)

2. Keeping on top of price updates. Our team monitors changes in supplier pricing on your behalf and updates prices on a monthly basis.

3. Pricebook Pro also provides a comprehensive range of pre-designed flat rate services based on industry best practices and trends, which keep track of updated prices. 

As a result, you can feel confident that your plumbing business is always offering the latest prices, along with the best flat rate services, at the right prices for profitability, without your team having to do any of that ongoing work. This saves you hundreds of hours of pricebook set up and maintenance time.

According to a survey of ServiceTitan users who signed up for Pricebook Pro, their choice to do so has been responsible for an average year-over-year increase in revenue of 13%. 

Pricebook Pro includes product images, upgrades, and recommendations, and all the materials, equipment links, and PDF documents related to services. Plumbers can easily access these and show them to customers on their mobile device while still on the job site. 

Once customers are shown these recommendations and presented with a range of options, they are more likely to opt for a higher-ticket service.

ServiceTitan’s Mobile Functionality

ServiceTitan’s mobile app has a highly intuitive interface on both Android and iOS (iPhone and iPad) mobile devices, making it straightforward for your plumbers to navigate. 

Whether you choose to build your own pricebook, or opt for Pricebook Pro, they can show customers high-quality images and descriptions of exactly what they will be purchasing with the service they choose. 

The mobile search functionality prevents your plumbers from having to trawl through huge lists of products/services to find exactly what they are looking for. They can simply search by keyword to be presented with the service or product they have in mind. 

Services and products are also organized by category, so if a tech doesn’t remember the name of the service they are searching for, they can just hone in on it by business unit or product category, for example.

The thorough product details and high-quality images included in your pricebook, estimates, and proposals are useful for techs to reference. They can access them on a mobile device to learn more about the products you offer, and use them to educate and upsell to customers.

Build Estimates and Proposals Right From a Tablet in the Field

ServiceTitan’s mobile functionality offers the ability to access estimate templates (which can be easily built by office staff via the desktop side of our software) that make it easy to build proposals (a range of estimates) via a tablet in the field. 

Additionally, Pricebook Pro users have access to a wide array of top performing pre-built plumbing proposal templates based on industry best practices.

As soon as they’ve input basic customer information, techs can create estimates and proposals by simply selecting appropriate pricebook items and attaching them, complete with photos and other visuals to help explain the need for each repair or service to the customer.   

Create Good-Better-Best Proposals

Providing a range of service options for customers to solve their plumbing problems is a proven way of increasing sales and average ticket prices. The most common approach to this is to offer three options: Good (low price), Better (medium price), Best (high price) — although some plumbing contractors will offer four or more choices.

When customers sense some flexibility in their options, they are more likely to spend more than they initially would, and most often go for a mid-priced option.

ServiceTitan’s proposal software makes it easy to create Good-Better-Best proposals on the fly. Plumbers can do this on their tablet in real-time out in the field, or back at the office.

Once a customer chooses which option they want, ServiceTitan then provides a seamless connection to the rest of your plumbing business workflow. ServiceTitan keeps track of the entire process from estimate, to purchase order, to invoicing, payments and beyond, thus saving time and reducing input and transfer errors.

To summarize, once a customer has settled on an estimate, ServiceTitan facilitates:

• The ability to generate electronic purchase orders and requisition equipment or materials. 

• Work order and plumbing invoice generation.

• Acceptance of check or credit card payments on the spot via mobile app as well as through the ServiceTitan customer portal, where users can log in to their account to see their job/order history, and pay outstanding invoices. The immediacy of these options is great for plumbing business cash flow and means you make fewer follow up calls to chase customers for payment.

• Creation and sending email invoices to customers. These are stored in the cloud rather than on paper and immediately sent to your back office. This makes it easier to keep track of all your current and past invoices and means no more bits of paper piled in the back of a truck or stuffed in a file. There’s also no need to wait for invoices to be filed back at the office once a week, or whenever your plumbers get a break in jobs to do it.

Additionally, ServiceTitan provides seamless integrations with accounting apps such as Intacct and QuickBooks, so you don’t have to change your current processes. These integrations included in our plumbing business software simplify the reconciliation process of invoices, payments, and more. ServiceTitan communicates directly with these accounting software tools, so there’s no need to double check that everything has been transferred correctly.

ServiceTitan: Save Time and Hassle on Pricebook Management and Protect Your Margins

By using ServiceTitan, you can streamline the process of managing your plumbing pricebook, which saves you both time and hassle. ServiceTitan’s pricing features let you and your team:

• Quickly set up a well-built pricebook that’s easy to reference and manage, both at the office and in the field.

• Bulk edit pricebook details (price, description, photos, and technical specs).

• Create accurate estimates and proposals using templates.

• Bridge the gap between your pricebook and your inventory, accounting, and invoicing software by integrating them seamlessly into one plumbing business platform.

ServiceTitan protects your margins by giving you the tools you need to stay on top of the fluctuating prices of materials and equipment, in an easy way that lets you put your focus on other essential business tasks. If you’d like to find out more about how ServiceTitan’s all-in-one contractor software can help you grow your plumbing business, book a free demo here.

Other Plumbing Pricing and Estimating Apps

simPRO

simPRO describes its product as an “End-to-End Field Service Management Software.” Like ServiceTitan, it offers a wide range of features for field service businesses such as estimating and quoting, scheduling and dispatching, and more. 

Procore

Procore describes its product as a construction management software. It offers a suite of features for plumbers whose businesses are primarily or solely construction-focused, including tools for: preconstruction, project management, training management, resource management, financial management, and analytics. 

If you’re a hybrid shop or have any focus outside of construction, this likely is not the right solution for you. But if you’re solely construction-focused, it may be worth looking into. 

FastPIPE

FastPIPE is a mechanical estimating software product for plumbing, mechanical, HVAC, and industrial HVAC piping. It’s one of several products created by the estimating and takeoff software company FastEST, which also has FastDUCT — an estimating solution for HVAC and ductwork. This is an estimating-only solution with very specific uses. 

Jobber

Jobber is a field service scheduling software that also offers a wide range of other features for running a field service business. Like ServiceTitan, it offers functionality for estimating, quotes, scheduling, invoicing, and more.

We’ve written a detailed comparison of our two products, which you can find here: Jobber vs. ServiceTitan. 

Service Fusion

Service Fusion describes itself as an “All-In-One Field Service Management Software.” Like ServiceTitan, it offers a wide range of features including estimates, customer management, scheduling and dispatching, and more. 

We’ve written a detailed comparison of our two products, which you can find here: Service Fusion vs. ServiceTitan. 

FieldEdge

FieldEdge is a field service management software and field service app for service businesses. It offers a wide range of features like ServiceTitan, including functionality for things like quotes and invoicing, scheduling and dispatching, service agreements, and more. 

We’ve written a detailed comparison of our two products, which you can find here: FieldEdge vs. ServiceTitan.