PlumbingBossPro Blog — Tech App

The Plumber's Day in Route Order: Working the Call List Top to Bottom

A plumber's day goes better when they do not have to think about what comes next. Finish the faucet, look at the phone, see the next address, drive. When the order is in someone's head or scattered across a few texts from dispatch, plumbers backtrack across town, show up at the wrong house first, and call the office between every stop to ask where to go. The PlumbingBossPro tech app shows each plumber their calls in route order, top to bottom.

Where the Order Comes From

The plumber has to be signed in first, which is covered in Company Login Plus a Personal PIN: How Plumbers Sign In to the Tech App. Once they are, the list they see is built in the office.

On the dispatch board, the office assigns jobs to a van and a day. Some of those are service calls booked that morning. Some came from approved estimates. Some are recurring visits, like a yearly water heater flush or a restaurant's grease-line jetting, that came due on the Waiting List. Once the jobs are on a van, the office sets the order, either by hand or with auto-routing.

Auto-Route From the Shop

Auto-routing orders a van's jobs from the shop outward. Closest First starts near the shop and works out, which suits a day where the plumber wants to knock out quick calls early. Furthest First drives to the far end of the route first and works back toward the shop, which suits a day that should end close to home.

Auto-routing is a starting point, not a rule. A customer who can only be home before 10am goes to the top. A water heater replacement that will take most of the afternoon goes last so it does not push every other call late. The office drags jobs into place and the phone shows the new order.

One Van, One List

Each plumber sees only the calls on their own van. A common two-van setup puts one van on repairs and drains and the other on water heaters and maintenance. The drain tech sees clogs, leaks and toilets. The water heater tech sees flushes, inspections and the replacement scheduled for the afternoon. Neither has to scroll past the other's day.

That separation also makes the board easier to read in the office. Each column is a van, each van is a plumber, and the order on the board matches the order on that plumber's phone.

When Dispatch Moves a Job

Plumbing days change. An emergency call comes in for a burst supply line, a customer cancels, a drain job runs long because the line needs a camera. When the office moves a job on the dispatch board, the plumber's list follows. The plumber does not need a text that says “skip the Johnson call, go to Maple first” and then another text an hour later reversing it.

A short heads-up is still good manners when the order changes in the middle of a day. But the authority on what comes next is the list on the phone, not a thread of messages.

Working the List

Working top to bottom looks like this:

• Open the next card and read the address, the equipment and the past notes.
• Tap the navigation button for directions. The on-the-way text goes out automatically to customers who want it.
• Tap Start on arrival. The arrived text goes out.
• Do the work, take the photos, fill the checklist if it is a maintenance visit.
• Tap Complete, or Skip with a note if the job could not be done.
• Scroll to the next card and repeat.

The navigation step is covered next in One-Tap Navigation: From the Plumber App Job Card to the Next Driveway, and the three buttons get their own guide in Start, Skip, Complete: The Three Buttons That Run a Plumber's Day.

What the Customer Sees

Route order is not only for the plumber. In the customer app, customers can see the day's route on a live map and their place in it, like “You're stop 12 of 20 — the crew is 5 stops away.” For a plumbing company with fewer stops per day the numbers are smaller, but the effect is the same: the homeowner knows roughly when to expect the van and can be home to open the door.

That is only possible because the order on the phone is the real order. When the plan lives in someone's head, nobody can tell the customer anything useful.

Back to the Whole App

Route order is the backbone of the plumber's day. Everything else on the phone, from equipment cards to payment at completion, hangs off it. For the full picture, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumber app page.