How Software Can Streamline Your Plumbing Business Processes
Simpler Scheduling and Dispatching
Filling out paper schedules and sending messages to individual techs can be cumbersome, requiring many admin hours. No matter how carefully you manage a paper-based scheduling and dispatching system, you'll have moments of confusion and miscommunication, which can lead to dissatisfied techs and clients.
When you bring your scheduling and dispatching into the digital age with well-designed software, you can drag and drop work orders and job site info directly into a shared scheduler, which updates instantly on your techs' mobile phones. At all times, you can see scheduled appointments and available time slots for each of your techs on a straightforward calendar layout. You even have built-in GPS tracking that allows you to dispatch the nearest techs to emergency jobs.
Tidier Timesheet Tracking
The inefficiencies that come with paper-based timesheets can also be cut away when you switch to a more precise digital job card system. Good plumber business software allows you to accurately track labor per project with a simple check-in/check-out system on each of your tech's mobile phones. And for your peace of mind, GPS can confirm their location at the moment of checking in and out.
Your timesheets will automatically and instantly populate with this information as it's inputted. No more costly timesheet paper trails. You can track and manage your labor better and ensure your projects always stay on budget.
Quicker Quoting
Calculating estimates and responding promptly to quote requests can cause various problems for plumbers, such as over or under-estimating the cost of a job, missing upsell opportunities, or responding too slowly and losing the customer to a competitor. With a streamlined software quoting system, you can dramatically decrease these risks and quote more precisely and quickly each time.
Quoting software can be used quickly and efficiently from anywhere, allowing you to email quotes directly to leads and clients. You can duplicate quotes for repeat clients or new leads alike, and choose whether to share price breakdowns with them. The software can also help you track follow-ups and check up on quoted work.
Instant One-Touch Invoicing
For good cash flow, bookkeeping, and tax preparation, invoices are another crucial aspect of a plumbing business to manage well. With paper invoicing, you need to spend a lot of time processing and delivering your invoices, you need to store them carefully, and you always face the risk of losing an invoice.
Paperless invoicing software allows plumbing businesses to generate one-touch invoices instantly from quotes and work orders and email the invoices to customers with a payment link included. You can also transfer signatures, pictures, and work order notes easily to your invoices. The quicker turnaround achieved is wonderful for cash flow.
Push-Button Payment Processing
The more easily you can accept payments from clients and the more payment options you can provide, the smoother payment processing becomes. With a good plumber business software system, you can send an easy-to-use payment button with your emailed invoices to accept credit card payments, or you can enable your techs to take payments on-site through a physical hand-point payment system, whichever your clients prefer.
Intuitive Inventory Management
It never looks good for a plumber business to delay a job because inventory has run out. Miscalculations that lead to sudden stock shortages can sometimes cause clients to go elsewhere. On the other side of things, spending too much money on unnecessary inventory is terrible for cash flow. Good plumber inventory software can help you avoid both of these common inventory mishaps.
By linking your inventory to quotes, work orders, and invoices, your automated software provides an extremely high level of control over your stock. You can automatically have stock removed from the inventory location when used and set automatic reorders of stock when the level reaches a preset minimum level. You can also track all inventory automatically.
Profitable Preventative Maintenance Agreements
The bread and butter of many plumber businesses are the ongoing preventative maintenance agreements with their largest clients. The recurring work these clients provide is a reliable stream of revenue that makes managing and predicting cash flow far easier. Nothing hurts more than accidentally letting a contract lapse or disappointing a long-standing client with scheduling mistakes and losing them to a competitor.
The better your system for managing preventative maintenance agreements, the stronger your business will be. Good process software helps you manage and grow these renewing contracts with automated scheduled service reminders that can include maintenance checklists. You also have contract reminders for job sites and equipment and automatic recurring work order generation, all of which frees up your time and resources to focus on bringing in new contracts.
More Efficient Online Marketing
Another key piece of the plumber business puzzle is finding new clients with effective marketing. With an online marketplace feature, your software can bolster your online presence and bring in a steadier flow of high-quality leads. Time-consuming marketing tasks such as search engine optimization, social media management, and properly utilizing positive online reviews all become easier with the right guidance and productivity systems.
You can gain valuable insights into how to improve your company's website and interface to appeal better to search engines and leads alike. Various social media platforms, including your Google My Business page, can all be managed more efficiently from one dashboard. Good reviews gained from your clients can be distributed far and wide by an automated review-sharing system. With effective streamlining software, you gain far more bang for each marketing buck you spend.
Look for All-in-One Plumber Business Software
A core tenet of streamlining in business is to minimize and centralize the tools you use rather than complicate things with multiple solutions. For this reason, it's advisable to look for all of the streamlining benefits outlined here from one software provider, such as ServiceBox.
Start cutting costs and saving money today with ServiceBox, a software solution designed to streamline plumber businesses of all sizes. You can see how ServiceBox works for your business with a free demo.
