QuickBooks for Plumbing Contractors: A Complete Guide

What is QuickBooks and How Does it Work for Plumbers?

QuickBooks is an online accounting software from Intuit that helps businesses manage their finances through a cloud-based platform.  It offers automated solutions for expense reconciliation, financial reporting, and payroll that streamline accounting workflows.

QuickBooks works for plumbers by providing straightforward, easy-to-use tools and features that allow plumbing businesses to manage their accounting in-house, even if they lack accounting experience.

Which QuickBooks Features Are Important for Plumbing Businesses?

QuickBooks is designed to simplify financial management for business owners. It provides a comprehensive feature suite with tools for various accounting and bookkeeping tasks.

Here are some of the top QuickBooks features that plumbing businesses find helpful:

• Job costing: Track your expenses at the project level to ensure profitability.  Add labor, tools, and subcontractors to jobs and create reports to help you assess project profitability and adjust your pricing strategies as needed.

• Invoicing: Create invoices from customizable templates and automate delivery and follow-ups to save time.  QuickBooks lets users accept multiple payment methods, including bank transfers, credit cards, and automated clearing house (ACH) payments.  

• Expense tracking: QuickBooks helps users quickly and accurately log and categorize expenses, which is crucial for managing financial health. The QuickBooks mobile app allows users to upload receipts on the go and link bank accounts to automatically import and categorize expenses for fuel, materials, and more.

• Payroll management: The tool automatically calculates payroll expenses, including wages, taxes, and withholdings. You can set up direct deposits to ensure your staff is paid monthly on time. The tool also helps users comply with payroll and tax regulations.

• Reporting: QuickBooks has powerful, detailed reporting features that leverage real-time data to ensure accuracy. Users can create cash flow statements, balance sheets, profit and loss reports, and job costing reports with just a few clicks.

• Automatic reconciliation: When expenses or income are logged in QuickBooks, they are automatically reconciled with the general ledger. This makes it easier to spot discrepancies, ensures accuracy, and saves your team time.

Which QuickBooks Pricing Plan Is Best for Plumbers?

The best QuickBooks pricing plan for your plumbing business will depend on several factors, such as your number of employees, the scale of your operations, and your accounting budget.

The different QuickBooks pricing plans and their key features are listed below:

• Simple Start: This plan is ideal for new plumbing businesses. It offers basic accounting features like bookkeeping automation, tax deductions, mileage tracking, and limited reports. It costs $35 per month for one user and one sales channel.

• Essentials: This plan is best for small businesses. With it, users get all the features of Simple Start plus enhanced reports, employee time tracking, and multiple currency capabilities. It costs $65 per month for up to three users and three sales channels.

• Plus: This is great for growing plumbing businesses as they scale their operations. Customers get all the features of the Essentials package, including inventory management, project profitability reports, more advanced reporting, and financial planning. It costs $99 per month for up to five users and all sales channels.

• Advanced: Designed for large-scale plumbing operations, the Advanced plan has all the features of Plus with even more advanced reports, workflow automation, revenue recognition, data restoration, batch invoicing and expenses, and more. It costs $235 per month for up to 25 users and all sales channels.

Which Version of QuickBooks is Best for Plumbing Contractors?

There are five different versions of QuickBooks, each with slightly different offerings.  You should choose the one that best suits your business needs, scale, and the devices you use.

The five QuickBooks offerings are:

• QuickBooks Online: The web-based version of QuickBooks that you can access from any device that connects to the internet. It is a popular choice with plumbing contractors as it is the most flexible option.

• QuickBooks Desktop:  The locally installed version of QuickBooks for businesses that prefer to handle accounting on a desktop instead of in the cloud.  This offering is split into Pro, Premier, and Enterprise packages.

• QuickBooks for Mac: Like QuickBooks Desktop, this version is locally installed but designed for Mac users. It doesn’t offer tiered features and only offers basic accounting tools, similar to QuickBooks Desktop Pro.

• QuickBooks Solopreneur / QuickBooks Self-Employed:  This version of QuickBooks is designed for freelancers and solo business operators, like independent plumbing contractors. 

• QuickBooks Payroll: This version is an add-on for QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop.  It automates payroll processes and helps businesses manage employee benefits, tax filing, and direct salary deposits.

• QuickBooks Commerce: This add-on provides additional commerce-related functionality, such as order fulfillment and inventory tracking. It is a good option for plumbing businesses that sell plumbing parts and tools.

What Are the Benefits of QuickBooks for Plumbing Companies?

QuickBooks offers several benefits, making it a worthwhile financial management software for plumbing companies.  

Here are some of the top benefits:

• Save time:  Plumbing companies can save time by automating error-prone manual tasks that would usually take a long time, like data entry, invoicing, and payroll payment processing.  Users can also use the mobile app to track expenses and receipts.

• Reduce errors: Automating processes streamlines operations and improves accuracy. By removing manual data entry, you ensure data is imported correctly, and there are no duplicate entries.

• Simplify tax:  QuickBooks helps keep your books straight throughout the year, so there’s no mad rush come tax season.  You can log and track tax-deductible expenses, generate profit and loss statements, and track sales tax to ensure compliance.

• Enhance profitability tracking: QuickBooks allows users to quickly assess project profitability and identify successful job types.

What Are the Potential QuickBooks Challenges for Plumbers?

Using QuickBooks as your plumbing business’s financial and accounting software has a few challenges you should be aware of:

• Initial setup costs: The initial cost of implementing and setting up the software can be expensive, especially if you have a large plumbing company, require many users, or want add-ons. 

• Complex tax setup: While QuickBooks’ tax features are beneficial, setting them up can be difficult if you don’t have accounting experience. It is vital to get your taxes right to avoid non-compliance, so consider speaking with a professional accountant to help with setup.

• Learning curve: QuickBooks is a feature-rich tool. Although it is easy to use once you learn it, familiarizing yourself with it can be time-consuming. Tutorials and webinars are available, but make sure you set aside time to learn and train employees.

• Limited support on basic plans:  Unless you have one of the premium plans that offers email and phone support, QuickBooks only provides a knowledge base to help users if they get stuck.   This and the learning curve can make QuickBooks inaccessible for some.

Can QuickBooks Be Integrated with Plumbing Contractor Software?

Yes, QuickBooks can be integrated with plumbing contractor software, like ServiceTitan.  Plumbers integrate QuickBooks with their contractor software to optimize their financial management.

ServiceTitan is an all-in-one business management software designed for home services businesses, including plumbing contractors. It offers a native integration with QuickBooks that lets users combine QuickBooks’ accounting systems with ServiceTitan’s plumbing software.

The majority of payments in the plumbing industry occur in the field. ServiceTitan's Field Service app lets users capture customer purchases from anywhere and export them instantly to QuickBooks.

Your techs can also generate invoices, purchase orders, and work orders in the field and export them immediately to QuickBooks for secure and accessible accounting.

ServiceTitan also offers robust field service accounting software of its own.  It lets users manage their accounting from a centralized hub and gain an in-depth overview of their cash flow and financial health.

The tool features a combined solution for managing vendor bills and payments with advanced reports.  This lets businesses streamline their accounts payable process and take full control of their business spending. 

With the Transaction Hub, you can oversee your accounts receivable and understand the finances you have coming in with real-time financial data.  You can also track payment status and bank deposits here.

Furthermore, with the advanced payment collection tools, you can collect deposits and apply payments in bulk or move them between invoices, allowing you to better manage overpayments.  You can even automate refunds to keep your customers happy and your books in order.

ServiceTitan allows businesses to maintain their finances accurately by creating a consistent month-end close process.  With logs that are easy to view and take in, users gain insight and a deeper understanding of their accounting practices and can quickly spot errors, reducing risk and ensuring audits are stress-free.

What’s more, ServiceTitan offers a unique Touchless Integration process that streamlines how the tools work together and eliminates the need for data duplication.  This lets businesses like Airworks Solutions handle more customers than ever before.

Jessica Woodruff Smith, accounting and process manager at Airworks Solutions, said:

“I know people who’ve had to leave Quickbooks Online because they get more than 30,000 customers or something, and they're forced to upgrade to a new accounting system. With this new Touchless Integration, that will no longer be the case.”

Additionally, the Journal Entries feature provides greater flexibility for uploading and editing accounting entries.  Speaking of this feature, Woodruff Smith said:

“It's amazing. I don't have to export batches anymore. It just shows up in QuickBooks. Instead of an invoice adjustment, now you can just go fix the invoice. You can just change it. Adjustment invoices [without Journal Entries] are messy and confusing. You've got a big trail of mess because you're fixing your mistakes on exported transactions.”

Streamline Your Business Processes with ServiceTitan

Using QuickBooks and ServiceTitan can help take the stress out of your financial management, but accounting is just one of the processes you need to get right to ensure your plumbing business succeeds.  

From business management to marketing, customer experience, inventory management, and more, ServiceTitan provides plumbing businesses with all the tools they need to optimize their business processes and increase revenue.

Book a demo with ServiceTitan today and learn how it can revolutionize your plumbing business.

ServiceTitan is an all-in-one field service management platform designed to help trade businesses take control of their accounting, business management, marketing, customer satisfaction, and more.  It is trusted by over 100,000 contractors around the nation, including those in the plumbing industry.