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For plumbers and heating engineers
Every missed call is a job someone else got.
Two hands, one phone, and a day that never runs the way the diary said it would.
A plumbing day is not really a diary. It is a rough plan that survives until the first phone call. You set out with four jobs booked and a merchant run at the end, and by half past nine you have a leak under a kitchen unit that is going to take three hours instead of one, a landlord asking when you are coming, and a boiler that will not fire in a flat two miles away. The work itself is rarely the problem. The problem is that everything else in the business wants your attention at exactly the moment both hands are busy and the water is off.
That is where the money quietly goes. Not on big mistakes, but on the small ones that repeat every single day. A call that goes to voicemail while you are lying under a bath. A price you promised to send over and did not get to until Thursday. A part you were sure was in the van. An invoice raised three weeks late because the paperwork night never quite happened. None of those feel like a loss on the day. Added up across a year they are usually the difference between a busy firm and a profitable one.
What actually helps is not a big system that you have to feed. It is a handful of small things that carry on working while you are on your knees with a basin wrench: the phone answering itself politely, the price going out before you leave the drive, the photos and certificates landing in the right place without being sorted later, and the invoice chasing itself so you never have to make that awkward call.
Sound familiar?
- The phone rings while you are under a sink, it goes to voicemail, and they ring the next name on the list
- Quotes written up at 9pm because there was no time during the day
- Certificates and job photos scattered across your camera roll
- Chasing invoices you would rather not have to chase
What we do about it
- Missed calls trigger an instant text asking what they need and where
- Quotes built on your phone between jobs from your own price list
- Photos and certificates filed against the job automatically
- Invoices chase themselves until they are paid
A day that probably looks like yours
Nothing here is a disaster. That is rather the point: this is an ordinary day, and the cost is spread so thinly that nobody ever adds it up.
- 07:10First call of the day lands before you have got the van doors open.You take it standing in the road and write the address on the back of your hand.
- 08:55The phone rings while you are under a sink with the water off and both hands full.It goes to voicemail, and that job goes to whoever answers first.
- 11:20A trip to the merchant for a fitting you were sure was in the van.An hour of paid time spent driving and queueing, and the next customer waits.
- 14:05While you are there, the customer asks what a full bathroom would cost.You say you will send something over. It sits in your head for four days.
- 16:40Two people ring to ask what time you are coming.You lose fifteen minutes and arrive at the last job of the day flustered.
- 21:15Quotes, invoices and certificates at the kitchen table.Two get written and three do not, and the three are the ones nobody chases.
The phone is the business, and it rings at the worst moment
For most plumbing firms the phone is the whole sales operation. There is no pipeline and no sales team. There is a person with a problem, a wet floor and a list of three numbers, and they will ring down that list until somebody picks up. If you are the second name and the first one answered, you never even know the enquiry existed. That is the quietest and most expensive leak in the trade.
Voicemail does not fix it, because almost nobody in a hurry leaves one. What tends to work is much simpler: when a call is missed, an automatic text goes out within seconds saying who you are, that you are on a job with your hands full, and asking for the postcode and a line about the problem. People reply to that. They will type while they would not wait. You come out from under the sink to a message you can price rather than a missed call you cannot recover.
The same thinking covers evenings and weekends. Out of hours, calls can ring a real person on a rota, go to a call answering service that takes the details in your name, or route to a message that tells the caller exactly when you will be back and offers a booking link. What matters is that nobody who wanted to give you money ever hears a dead line.
Quoting on site, while the customer is still standing next to you
The best moment to price a job is the moment you are looking at it. The customer trusts you, they can see the problem, and nobody else has been round yet. The worst moment is four days later at a kitchen table, when you are tired, the details have gone soft in your memory and they have already had two other prices through the door.
A quote builder with your own labour rates and your own common materials turns a twenty minute evening job into a two minute one on the doorstep. You pick the job type, adjust the parts, add a photo of the actual pipework, and it goes out as a tidy priced document with your logo on it before you have driven away. The customer accepts it on their phone, and the acceptance is recorded, so there is no argument later about what was and was not included.
It also lets the quote chase itself. If nothing has come back after a few days, a polite reminder goes out asking whether they have any questions. That single message wins work that would otherwise simply have gone cold, and it costs you nothing to send because you did not have to remember to send it.
Certificates, photos and the paperwork that protects you later
Gas safety records, unvented certificates, commissioning sheets, before and after photos of the state of a boiler cupboard. All of it exists for the day something goes wrong, or the day a landlord, an insurer or a new owner asks you to prove what you did. In practice most of it lives in a camera roll, mixed in with pictures of the dog and a screenshot of a parking sign.
Filing it against the job as you go is a small change with a large effect. You take the photo from inside the job record rather than from the camera app, so it is already attached to the address. The certificate is built from what you entered on site, once, rather than typed up again in the evening. When the call comes in two years later asking what you fitted at that address, you search the postcode and it is all there in seconds, including who was on site and what parts went in.
That history has a commercial use too, not just a defensive one. Knowing that you serviced a boiler eleven months ago is what lets a reminder go out at twelve months. Recurring work you already earned is the cheapest work you will ever win, and most small firms lose it purely because nobody remembered.
Getting paid without the awkward phone call
Plumbers are usually far better at the work than at asking for money for it. Invoices go out late because the paperwork happens at night, and once they are late they feel awkward to chase, so they get chased even later. Meanwhile the merchant account still wants paying on time.
Raising the invoice on site, before you drive off, changes the whole rhythm. The customer gets it while the job is fresh and the relief is still in the room, with a card link on it so they can pay there and then. If they do not, gentle reminders go out on a schedule you set, in your words, until it is settled. Nobody has to make the phone call.
It should also land in the accounts package you already use rather than being typed twice. If you are on Xero, QuickBooks or Sage, the job, the invoice and the payment push straight across, so your bookkeeper stops asking you for the same information you already entered once. If you would rather hand the whole task over, bookkeeping support picks it up from there.
Real examples
Illustrative cases drawn from the kind of work we do. Tap one to see what happened and what could have been done. We do not name clients without their permission.
The Tuesday morning boiler call
The case
A landlord rings at half past eight because a let flat has no heating and the tenant is not happy. The engineer is flat on his back under a bath with the water off, so it goes to voicemail. He hears it at one o'clock, rings back, and the landlord has already booked somebody else. That firm does a decent job, so the landlord keeps using them for the other nine properties too.
What could have been done
A missed call text back going out within seconds, saying who you are, that you are on a job with both hands full, and asking for the postcode and the problem. Landlords will type a reply while they will not sit through a voicemail beep. The enquiry survives the two hours you cannot answer, and one flat does not quietly take nine others with it.
The bathroom quote that never went out
The case
A customer with a leaking basin asks, while the engineer is there, what a full bathroom refit would cost. He says he will work it out and send it over. That evening there are three invoices to raise and a certificate to write up. The quote gets pushed to the weekend, then to the following week. By the time it goes out the customer has had two prices from firms who sent theirs the same day, and one of them has already started.
What could have been done
Pricing it on the doorstep from a quote builder holding your own rates and your usual materials, with a photo of the actual room attached. It goes out before you leave the street, while you are the only person who has been round. If it is not answered in a few days, a polite reminder sends itself.
The certificate nobody could find
The case
Two years after an unvented cylinder install, a solicitor acting in the sale of the house asks for the paperwork. The firm knows it did the work but cannot prove it quickly. The certificate is somewhere in an old email, the photos are on a phone that was replaced, and a day and a half disappears into looking for it while the customer gets increasingly worried.
What could have been done
Certificates generated from what was entered on site and filed against the property, with the job photos attached to the same record. Searching the postcode brings back the whole history in seconds and it can be sent straight to the solicitor. The same record is what triggers the service reminder that brings the customer back in the first place.
What plumbers and heating engineers usually ask us for
VoIP and cloud telephony
Business phone systems that follow your team anywhere. Number porting, call routing, voicemail to email, and call recording where you need it.
£18 to £35/user/month
Call answering and reception
Your calls answered in your company name, triaged, and passed on properly. Nothing goes to voicemail.
£300 to £800/month
Custom CRM and business systems
The system you actually need rather than the one you can rent. Built around your process, integrated with what you already use.
£20,000 to £40,000
Website design and build
Fast, accessible sites that load in under two seconds and read well on a phone. Built to be edited by you, not held hostage by us.
£4,000 to £8,000
Local SEO and Google Business
Get found by the people down the road who are ready to buy. We fix your Google Business Profile, get your Name, Address and Phone matching everywhere, and win the map pack that sits above the normal results.
£500 to £1,200/month
Common questions
What does this actually cost for a firm with two or three vans?
Most plumbing firms start with the phone and the website rather than a big system. Cloud telephony is published at £18 to £35 per user each month, call answering at £300 to £800 a month, and a website design and build at £4,000 to £8,000. A fully custom system is published at £20,000 to £40,000 and is honestly not where most trades should start. We would rather fix the missed calls first and see what that changes.
How long before it is doing anything useful?
Moving phones and switching on missed call text back is usually a matter of days rather than weeks, and it is the change most firms feel first. A website tends to take longer because the writing and the photography are the slow parts, not the build. We would rather stage it so something is working for you early than disappear for two months and come back with everything at once.
Do I own it, or am I renting it from you?
You own it. The domain, the website and the data are in your name, and your phone numbers stay yours and can be ported away if you ever want to leave. Where we build something bespoke, the code is handed over. We would rather you stayed because the work is good than because leaving is painful.
Will it work with Xero or QuickBooks, or am I typing everything twice?
It should push straight into whichever accounts package you already use, so jobs and invoices are not retyped. If you are on Sage or something older we will check the connection honestly before you commit rather than promise it and find out later. If nothing sensible connects, we will say so.
What if I am not technical at all?
Most of the people we set this up for are not, and that is fine. If a thing needs a manual, it is the wrong thing for a van. The parts you touch daily should be a text you can read at a customer's front door and a quote you build in a couple of taps, and we will sit with you until it is second nature rather than emailing you a login and wishing you luck.
Not quite your trade?
ElectriciansSalons and barbersGarages and MOT centresAccountants and bookkeepersContact centres and sales teamsBuilders and construction firmsJoiners and carpentersLandscapers and grounds maintenanceCleaning and facilities companiesDental practices and clinicsCafes, restaurants and takeawaysEstate and letting agentsCare homes and home care providers
Admin Rescue for plumbers and heating engineers
A job management system built around how you actually work. Missed calls text back automatically, quotes go out in minutes, and everything lands in your accounts software without you retyping it.
from £2,400 setup then £150/month