PlumbingBossPro Blog — Running a Plumbing Business

The Weekly Reports Every Plumbing Business Owner Should Watch

Most plumbing owners know how busy they are. Fewer know how they are doing. A week can feel slammed and still leave the business behind, because work went unbilled, invoices went unpaid or the maintenance list quietly fell overdue. A short weekly look at the right numbers catches those problems while they are still small.

Why Weekly

Keeping customers, covered in The Customer App as a Retention Tool for a Plumbing Business, is one side of a healthy business. Knowing your numbers is the other.

Monthly is too slow. By the time you notice a problem at the end of the month, it has been happening for weeks. Daily is too much for an owner who is also in a van. Weekly is the right rhythm: often enough to catch problems, rare enough to actually do it. Pick a day, usually Friday afternoon or Monday morning, and make it a habit.

You do not need a spreadsheet for this. The reports in PlumbingBossPro, the dispatch board and the Waiting List show most of it. The point is to look at the same few things every week.

Work Done

• Jobs completed, by van. Is each van doing a full day? Is one consistently light?
• Jobs skipped, and why. Skips come with the tech's note. A pattern of “no one home” may mean reminders are not reaching customers. A pattern of “wrong part” may mean the van is not stocked right.
• Callbacks. Jobs that had to be redone. Every callback is a free job. Track who and why.

Money Billed

• Invoices created this week. Does it match the jobs completed? If ten jobs were done and eight invoices went out, find the other two.
• What each kind of work brought in. Are service calls turning into repairs when they should? Are drain jobs priced right?
• Line items on service calls. A service call that only billed the call itself, when the notes describe a repair, is the most common leak in a plumbing company.

That last one gets its own article: Stopping Unbilled Service Calls in a Plumbing Business.

Money Collected

• Payments received. Cash in the bank, not just invoices out.
• Declined cards. Every one needs a follow-up this week, not next month.
• Past-due invoices. Sorted by how long they have been unpaid. The older an invoice gets, the less likely it is to be paid.
• Monthly statements. For property managers and restaurants, are last month's statements paid?

Card on file, auto-charge on completion and past-due follow-up do most of the work, but someone still needs to look at the exceptions.

Work Coming

• Open estimates. Which water heater and repair quotes are still waiting on approval? Estimate follow-up emails help, but a personal text or call often closes the job.
• The Waiting List. How many recurring visits are due now or overdue past the seven-day grace? A growing overdue list means maintenance customers are waiting too long.
• Next week's schedule. Is it full? If not, fill it from the Waiting List and open estimates.
• New requests and sign-ups. Anything in Form Responses from the website that has not been handled.

Customers

• New customers this week. And where they came from, if you track it with a tag or custom field.
• Ratings from the customer app. Any low ratings need a call.
• New recurring sign-ups. Are plumbers offering yearly flush plans? Are customers saying yes?

Turn Numbers Into Actions

A report only helps if it leads to something. End every weekly review with a short list:

• Call these declined cards.
• Follow up on these three estimates.
• Book these overdue flushes into next week.
• Talk to this plumber about missing line items.
• Call the customer who left a low rating.

Then do them. Over a few months, the weekly review becomes the most valuable hour of the owner's week. The rest of that week is laid out in The Plumbing Business Owner's Weekly Routine.

Share the Right Numbers With the Crew

Some of these numbers belong to the whole team. Plumbers care about callbacks, skipped jobs and customer ratings, because those are about their work. Share them plainly and without blame. When the crew sees that complete line items and good notes show up in the weekly review, those habits get stronger on their own. Keep the money totals between you and whoever handles billing.

Keep It Simple

Do not try to track everything. A dozen numbers you look at every week beat a hundred you look at once. Start with work done, money billed, money collected, work coming and customer feedback. Add more only when you have a reason. For more on running a plumbing company by the numbers, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing business software page.