PlumbingBossPro Blog — Water Heaters & Maintenance Plans

Moving Flush Customers Off Spreadsheets: CSV Import and Building Water Heater Records

Plenty of plumbing companies already have a flush plan. It just lives in a spreadsheet, a binder or the owner's head. The members are real and the visits happen, mostly. Moving that program into software sounds like a big project. It does not have to be. The clients come over in one import, and the records fill in as the year goes.

Start From What You Have

If you are planning to grow toward the whole-house plans in Beyond the Water Heater: Adding Sump Pumps, Filtration and Shut-Offs to a Plumbing Maintenance Plan, you need your existing members in one place first. Whatever you have today, whether a spreadsheet, a contact list or a stack of old invoices, is the starting point.

Clean Up the List Before Importing

A little cleanup saves a lot of fixing later. Before you import:

• One row per address. If a landlord has six houses, that is six rows with the same client name.
• Full addresses with city and postal code, so they land in the right spot.
• Phone and email for every member who has them, so reminders reach them.
• Remove duplicates. The same customer entered twice becomes two client records and two pins.
• Mark which rows are plan members, so you can tag them after import.
• Note the last flush date if you have it. You will need it to set up the schedule.

Import With CSV

PlumbingBossPro takes a CSV import of your clients and addresses. Imported addresses are placed on the map automatically, so your members show up where they actually live, ready for the Waiting List and routing.

After the import, spot-check a handful of addresses on the map. If one landed in the wrong place, fix the address on the client. Then tag your plan members, for example “Plan member,” so you can find them and count them later.

Set Each Member's Plan

With members imported, set the yearly flush on each member's house at 365 days between visits. The tricky part is timing: you want each member to come due around the anniversary of their last flush, not all at once.

Use the last flush date from your old list. Members whose last visit was close to a year ago should come due soon. Members flushed recently should not come due for months. Spreading them out this way keeps the Waiting List realistic from day one, rather than showing every member as due in the first week.

If you do not know the last flush date for some members, put them on the list in batches by area over the next few months, so the maintenance van works through them steadily.

Build Water Heater Records as You Go

Most old flush spreadsheets do not have serial numbers or install years. That is fine. You do not need to survey every house before you start. The first round of visits builds the records.

Make it the tech's job on every visit in the first year: read the rating plate and fill in the water heater on the house with type, fuel, brand, model number, serial number, size, year installed, location and access notes. Changes made on a job flow back to the house, so the record is there for next year. Add any other equipment the tech sees, like a softener or a sump pump.

By the end of the first year, every active member has a complete record, and you have a list of which members have older tanks.

Move Cards Over Gradually

If you were billing members by paper invoice or at the door, the first visit after the move is the time to get a card on file. The tech can mention it, or the office can text a link to the sign-up form. Members can also add their card in the customer app. Once the card is on file, future visits can be charged when the tech taps Complete.

Run Both for a Short Time, Then Stop

It is tempting to keep the old spreadsheet “just in case.” Keep it as a read-only backup for a month or two, but stop updating it the day you switch. Two lists drift apart quickly, and the one nobody trusts becomes a source of mistakes. Pick a date, tell the office, and from then on the Waiting List is the plan.

A Year From Now

A year after the move, the spreadsheet is a memory. Members come due on their own, the equipment is on every house, the techs see it on the job card and the invoices are paid at completion. Common pitfalls to avoid along the way are in Mistakes Plumbing Companies Make Running Maintenance Plans. For the full picture, visit the PlumbingBossPro water heater service software page.