Is your plumbing business taking over your life?
You’re always on the go, working from one job to another, constantly receiving calls and texts from customers. You might even be fielding requests from your kids as they ask you to pick something up on the way home.
And that’s just the stuff you have to manage. What about the other tasks you have to keep track of? What about keeping in touch with suppliers, organizing your marketing strategy, or making sure you don’t forget a customer’s birthday? (We’ve got great ideas for that birthday gift, by the way.)
If this sounds familiar, don’t worry—you’re not alone. But you can find some help in an unlikely place: your phone! Your phone is more than an endless source of distractions—it’s also a powerful tool that can help you stay organized and up-to-date on all of your responsibilities.
Your day is busy enough without having to worry about finding the best app for plumbers out there; that’s why we’ve put together a list of our favorites. You won’t regret checking these out!
Best Apps For Plumbers
Plumbing engineers have one of the most technical and challenging jobs in the field service management industry. Their daily routine on the job site includes complex calculations, following the uniform plumbing code, plumbing systems design tables, and coming up with the most comprehensive plumbing system possible.
Fortunately for plumbers, for the past couple of years, plumbing software has developed to the point that mobile apps make their lives so much easier. By logging into an app, technicians can access all the information, data, and calculators they need to speed up task execution, avoid manual errors, and increase their productivity.
Today we will give you a list of 7 free apps, paid apps, and reference plumbing apps to help you choose the best one for your job. Let’s dive right into it.
Frontu
Frontu is a digital field service management solution that simplifies and optimizes operations. It’s one of the best-kept secrets in the plumbing business as it doesn’t really appear in listicles for the best plumbing apps. Frontu comes out as a mobile app that helps plumbing contractors do their job at a higher clip.
Here are some of the pain points addressed by Frontu:
Improve information accuracy by attaching pictures to tasks
Create detailed customer profiles that are updated in real-time
Allow your clients to register and manage tasks and improve communication
Frontu is a platform that addresses all operational challenges but it does include a special Utility add-on that is customized for the plumbing industry. The add-on allows easy meter installation, replacement, removal, sealing, and unsealing.
Plumbing Formulator
The job of a plumber is by nature technical and challenging, involving complex calculations, equations about pipe sizes, gauging water pressure, and optimizing the plumbing system. Plumbing Formulator is one of the most popular plumbing apps as it pays tribute to the international plumbing code with more than 120 standard formulas that come in handy when you open the plumbing app.
The formulas are the reference point but the app can do a lot more. Users can:
Email and print specific formulas
Frequently-used formulas are easier to access
Graphical charts illustrate major plumbing codes
Pipe Trades Pro
It’s not the most affordable app for plumbers, but it’s considered one of the best plumbing engineer apps for pipe calculations. Any pipe-related data such as plumbing charts is embedded into the app and easily accessible from your mobile device. Without the app, plumbers would have to spend a considerable amount of time researching for this information.
Pipe Trades Pro allows users to select pipe material and type, to automatically calculate the diameter, wall thickness, weight per foot, total area covered, and other key measurements.
BTU Calculator
BTU Calculator is ideal for choosing the right-sized radiator. This is how it works: You open the app and enter the room dimensions and supplement some information under the ‘Assumptions’ category such as wall and flooring type.
The app allows you to make an informed decision and choose the correct design/ power. The measurements could be in feet or meters, Celsius or Fahrenheit degrees.
EasyMeasure
Calculating distance, dimensions, and the total areas in a confined space can cause a plumber to spend a considerable amount of time to figure out. Not only will the technician spend time, but there is also no guarantee their calculations will be correct. What if we told you, that you could take a photo of the space through the app and you could immediately get the dimensions, angles, area, and distance you need.
EasyMeasure is a handy plumbing app because it uses the camera lens to calculate an object’s height, width, and area. Taking pictures with your phone on the job site is usually frowned upon but with EasyMeasure, picture-taking gains a new meaning. You can save photos and analyze findings in real-time or in the future.
Bubble Level
A bubble level is an instrument designed to show whether a surface is horizontal (level) or vertical (plumb). You probably know it as the classic level meter with a slightly curved glass tube that is half-filled with a liquid.
Instead of carrying yet another piece of equipment on the job, using this app can help you emulate the same process and get the same benefits by simply using your phone. When used properly, the bubble level app ensures you get flawlessly leveled measurements.
Pipe and Fitting
The main difference between the Pipe and Fitting app and other apps in the same category is the visualisation aspect it offers ti users. The app presents data in a visually pleasing and simple manner, helping plumbers get the information they need faster than scrolling through endless chunks of written content.
Here is some of the valuable information you will get through the app:
Pipe Dimension
Pipe Material
Pipe Strength
Pipe Clamp
Fitting Dimension
Pipe Flange Dimension
Pipe Hanger
Gasket Dimension
app for plumbers and electricians
A few months ago, Mark and Pepper Ventresca noticed ants filing into their house via the back door. “There was nothing wrong with the door, but the door frame was clearly rotted,” says Pepper.
Mark Googled “door repair” and called three or four different listings in Toronto. Only two of the companies phoned back and only one said it did repairs. “It will cost you $50 for us to come out and take a look,” he was told.
As with most dual-career couples with kids, Mark (an urban forestry supervisor) and Pepper (a teacher) had to negotiate who would man the house during the two-hour window offered by the repairman. “The reality is you usually have to take a personal day from work in order to wait for these people to come in,” says Pepper. “Even if they work evening hours, there are kids’ activities to contend with.”
To add insult to injury, when the “repairman” finally showed up, he barely glanced at the door before telling the Ventrescas it couldn’t be fixed – they’d have to replace it. The door options he offered were all geared to commercial clients – heavy duty steel doors with minimal windows. The Ventrescas declined, but still had to pay the $50. “I was really annoyed,” says Pepper.
That’s a common refrain for two-career couples, and one that Toronto startup Jiffy On Demand Home Services intends to remedy. The company just received $500,000 in seed funding from Jordan Banks, global head of vertical strategy at Facebook, and other investors.
Jiffy is a new app – basically an Uber for home services – that launched in April. Its aim: to take some of the hassle out of booking home repairs. The company hand-picks home maintenance and service people in 22 different categories including heating and cooling, furniture assembly and appliance repair using personal recommendations and online reviews.
Then it connects those people with you – the homeowner in need a quick fix. “When you sign up for a service such as moving and delivery, Jiffy notifies dozens of providers in that category,” explains Paul Arlin, co-founder of Jiffy. If someone is in your area or has a gap in their schedule, they can pick up the call.
Such on-demand services have been gaining traction in recent years, with the advent of apps like Handy Cleaning Services (home cleaning and services) and U.S.-only TaskRabbit (home tasks such as cleaning, party prep and shopping and delivery), Porch.com and Pro.com (home improvements from kitchen renos to pool installation).
The main selling points: Customers like the prospect of being connected instantly with the services they need. And providers hope for a steady flow of jobs and fast payment with minimal fuss.
Mr. Arlin dreamed up the idea for Jiffy after arranging to have two new light fixtures installed in his home. “It took just a half-hour for an electrician to do the work,” he says. And yet Mr. Arlin spent an hour-and-a-half of his own time reading reviews, calling around and fielding return phone calls. “In the end, I had no idea if it was a fair price,” he says.
It took a week to get the small job done – a fact that didn’t sit well with Mr. Arlin’s wife. “And all the while I figured there was probably an electrician, driving around the neighbourhood, who would have been happy to come by,” he says. “But there was no dispatch network, like there is for taxis.”
Jiffy was designed to fill that need. The app is currently available on iOS and works in the same way as other on-demand apps on the market. You search for a specific need, such as painting or carpentry, offering details (kitchen painted) if necessary. Then you have the option of booking your service “In a jiffy” or “later.”
Choose the immediate option and a service person will be at your house usually within three hours. You get immediate confirmation that your job has been accepted, followed by a phone call to confirm timing. If you’d rather, you can select a specific date in the future and book a window in the morning, afternoon or evening.
Mr. Arlin says he pre-vets every supplier on the platform to ensure they have at least $2-million in liability insurance, are licensed in their fields and have a good reputation. Then he pre-negotiates pricing. “They all follow our standard pricing within each category, based on the industry average,” he explains. “If you look up what an electrician charges, you’ll get all kinds of different answers. We called 30-plus companies in each category to get to our rate, so customers have peace of mind that they are getting great service for a fair price.”
Homeowners rate the service providers when the project is complete, and Jiffy guarantees the work. “So if you’re dissatisfied,” says Mr. Arlin, “you can always come to Jiffy as the third party in the situation and we’ll make sure that you’re completely satisfied with the job.”
The model works for service providers, too, says Mike Kostinuk, a service manager with one of Jiffy’s suppliers, Canada Climate Services. The Jiffy app allows Kostinuk to fill in gaps in his schedule with clients that he might not have access to otherwise. “If I’m busy, I don’t have to take the call,” he says. “And there’s no dickering with clients over price because that is negotiated in advance.”
Neither does he have to worry about invoicing and payment. Once Kostinuk finishes a call, he simply inputs the time spent and the client’s credit card gets automatically charged. Jiffy takes a “small cut” and the rest goes to the supplier. Clients get an electronic receipt.
Mr. Arlin expects his primary market will be new homeowners (like himself) who don’t already have a list of home service providers to call on. He anticipates expanding into as many as six other cities by early next year.
Appliance repair and furniture assembly are so far proving to be among the company’s most popular services, he says, with the IKEA PAX unit generating a lot of demand in the furniture assembly category.
“Everyone realizes they can’t do it themselves a quarter of the way into the job when they have to start anchoring it up against the wall with a drill,” says Mr. Arlin. “Our rate for furniture assembly is $75 an hour, but the suppliers work five times as fast as a general handyman because they have so much experience.”
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