Download Our Commercial Plumbing Proposal Template (And Increase Efficiency in Your Business)

The ability to deliver professional-looking plumbing proposals is essential for any commercial plumbing business, and we’re providing a template of one here for you to download and use. But a simple PDF bid proposal has significant limitations when it comes to operational workflows — the day to day execution of creating and tracking proposals, completing jobs, and getting paid. 

Creating commercial plumbing proposals requires efficient, accurate systems for communicating job details between field techs, office staff, and the client — but these systems are difficult to manage manually. 

Many shops use a patched-together system of phone calls, emails, handwritten documents, and cell phone images that get texted or emailed between the field and office. This slows down the proposal creation process which can be a serious problem when commercial customers expect a timely reply or urgently need work done. It can also lead to crucial data entry errors and missing documentation.

When done manually, all of these tasks take a significant amount of time and effort that your staff could be devoting to billable work. That’s why more contractors and subcontractors are adopting commercial plumbing software. 

Commercial plumbing software helps large and small businesses streamline essential operational workflows from proposal generation and tracking, to dispatching the right techs to the right jobs, to invoicing clients when work is complete. 

In this article, we'll cover:

• How to download and use our commercial plumbing proposal template.

• The problems associated with relying solely on PDFs or paper-based proposals.

• 4 key areas where commercial plumbing software can provide massive improvements in efficiency — leading to increased revenue.

» Want to see how ServiceTitan can help grow your commercial plumbing business? Get a free, personalized demo.

How to Download and Use Our Commercial Plumbing Proposal Template

Our free commercial bid template includes the following pages:

1. Plumbing bid proposal page to document job details.

2. Payment page to collect payment information.

3. Job costing page to calculate job profitability.

There is space to provide a detailed description of your plumbing business proposal and document your customer’s payment information (with stated terms and disclaimers).

Our template also includes a job costing worksheet for your internal use. This allows you to break down each job into sell price, job actual, and final profitability, to determine how much your plumbing company should charge for specific services. 

To use this plumbing services proposal template, simply download and customize it with your logo, contact information, and other details. Then, you can print copies for your team or use it as a digital template file.

However, as we mentioned above, relying on this template alone won’t solve the process-related challenges with proposal creation and management (and the other operational steps it takes to complete a job).

Problems with Relying on PDFs or Paper-Based Proposals in Your Commercial Plumbing Business

With a paper-based or PDF proposal system, information about a commercial bid lives in a computer file or (often messy) handwritten document. Not only is this a difficult way to keep track of plumbing estimates and proposals, but the same information has to be copied numerous times into work orders, invoice templates, and other documents throughout the job life cycle.

This leads to a lot of wasted time and is prone to error. And, this is only one of the core operational issues that commercial plumbing businesses face while creating and managing proposals. 

Other key challenges include:

Communication Challenges

Commercial clients require thorough documentation, particularly when information about plumbing services has to be passed up the corporate ladder for approvals. For example, if you’re servicing local franchises of nation-wide businesses. 

When photos and other important job details live in techs’ phones and miscellaneous emails and text messages, it’s very common for essential information to get lost. This can lead to difficulty providing the documentation necessary to get jobs approved.

In addition, the time it takes for techs and office staff to communicate via phone or email with part numbers and other relevant information significantly hinders your ability to get jobs done quickly — in an environment when customers often need jobs done urgently.

Tracking and Following Up on Open Bids

Plumbing contractors who use Excel spreadsheets and email to track open estimates often find it difficult to keep track of which proposals have closed and which ones need follow-up. Managing and updating spreadsheets takes a lot of time, as does manual follow-up. 

And, of course, there’s the issue of accuracy. A customer might be checked off as complete instead of needing a visit, or vice versa. If someone makes a mistake when entering a customer’s contact information, a part number, or other data, that can cause everyone at the company to lose trust in the system, forcing constant checking and double-checking of every entry. 

Managing Commercial Clients on Preventative Maintenance Agreements

Although preventative maintenance agreements generally don’t bring in the highest revenue among clients in a commercial context, they can be useful for businesses that are just starting out or that need to book jobs during slower times of the year. 

However, the detailed information needed for each agreement can be difficult to set up and maintain when using spreadsheets, a CRM, or a Microsoft Word doc. Office staff have to pull together documentation and use agreement templates to create documents for the client to sign. Then, they need to keep track of the number of visits covered under each agreement and ensure that plumbing work is scheduled and completed. And they also need to look up the discounts associated with every contract to ensure correct proposal pricing.

It all adds up to cumbersome processes, wasted time, and opportunities for errors to creep in and damage your bottom line. 

Dispatching Issues

Once proposals are accepted and it comes time to execute jobs, routing techs is time-consuming and difficult for dispatch staff when they’re relying on manual systems. 

For example, unless the dispatchers know each tech’s certifications, they have to look up whether a tech can perform a particular job — or risk sending techs out on jobs they might not have the knowledge or qualifications to perform. The result? Your dispatcher might send a tech out to repair a commercial water heater, a complex filtration system, or other plumbing system that they don’t have the qualifications to fix. 

In addition, a dispatcher who is unfamiliar with a given area might have difficulty determining the most efficient route for techs to visit job sites. They might end up sending techs on longer, criss-crossing paths instead of clustering site visits conveniently.

All of this adds up to more inefficiency, which compounds on itself throughout your operations, and cuts into your potential profits. To solve these and other operational issues, you can use a commercial plumbing software like ServiceTitan.2

How Commercial Plumbing Software Streamlines Proposals and the Entire Job Lifecycle

By enabling seamless data sharing across all aspects of your business, ServiceTitan’s commercial plumbing software facilitates everything from the first inquiry about a new project, to creating proposals, to scheduling and dispatching techs to get the work done, to invoicing and getting paid. 

Here are 4 key ways ServiceTitan can make an invaluable impact on commercial plumbing businesses operations:

1. Seamless Sharing of Information Between Field and Office Staff Every Step of Job Execution 

By providing one interconnected place for everyone in your business to input data and interface with clients, ServiceTitan makes it easy to find, use, and share information. 

Techs can get model numbers and other information in the field, right when they need it. When a client signs off on a job or agrees to a proposal, office staff can immediately view the scope of work and start sourcing parts, supplies, and equipment. Techs can thoroughly document problems, repairs, and replacements with photos and text descriptions that are saved to the client file — a particularly useful feature when commercial clients need to gain approval from higher-ups in a national chain.

In addition, there’s no need to repeatedly type in the details of each job to various templates and documents (e.g. work order, invoice, etc.). You can enter in job details once, update them as necessary, and easily create work orders and invoices based on the job agreed upon in your proposals.

ServiceTitan functions like one central repository for all the information about every aspect of your business.

2. Efficiently Track and Follow Up on Open Proposals and Estimates

Many plumbers lose out on commercial clients simply because they forget to follow up on bids that they sent out on paper or attached to an email as a PDF. But with ServiceTitan, when a prospective client has received a proposal by email and opened the proposal file, the software automatically sends an alert to staff so they can follow up with the prospect. 

The software also prompts office staff to follow up with clients who have received a bid or proposal but haven’t booked a service, and it alerts office staff if an email bounced because of a data entry error.

This way, you can avoid constantly updating spreadsheets, have trust in your data, and have a clear view at all times of which bids are open, and which need follow up. As a result, you can close more deals and increase revenue.

3. Schedule and Dispatch the Right Techs to the Right Plumbing Jobs

Once proposals are accepted and work orders are created, ServiceTitan makes it easy to schedule jobs and dispatch techs efficiently.

The system stores information about each tech’s certifications, so you can be sure that only qualified techs will be sent to complex jobs. And it also uses Google Maps to help determine the most efficient routes for techs to tackle jobs as they move throughout their day.

As a result of better routing, more jobs can be completed in a day — which means more happy customers and more revenue for your business.

4. Manage Commercial Plumbing Contracts with Ease

Lastly, ServiceTitan’s easy-to-use software helps manage even the most complex contracts or preventative maintenance agreements. 

It gets everything in writing, which holds all parties accountable. 

It provides contract templates to help you clearly state who's responsible for what, and when they're responsible. For instance, you might want to state in writing that your tech will make a preventative maintenance visit on the 15th of the first month of each quarter. If your tech shows up at 8am and they're not there, that's on them and not on you, because it was clearly stated in the agreement.

The software also keeps track of the number of visits for clients under each contract, helping prevent undercharging when a client has used up all their credits, or overcharging for services that are covered under warranty or in service agreements. It also tracks warranty information and automatically applies special pricing and discounts when appropriate.

Beyond Plumbing Proposals: Connect and Manage Your Entire Business in One Place

Commercial proposal creation and management is a complex process that requires sophisticated systems to do well at scale.

Using a template, like the free sample we provided, is fine as an interim solution. But as we’ve explained throughout this post, it won’t solve the operational challenges with managing proposals, fulfilling jobs, and handling all of the nuanced steps that commercial plumbing work demands.

No matter the size of your business, ServiceTitan helps you integrate your proposals with the rest of your business, and more easily navigate the execution of the jobs you close. Using ServiceTitan typically increases our clients’ revenues by an average of 21% in their first two years. Want to see how? Schedule a call for a free product tour and see ServiceTitan in action.