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Service

Plumber website development

For owners of plumbing and heating businesses who need a website and back office designed around how jobs really arrive, get quoted, get dispatched and get invoiced, including the emergency call that cuts across the planned day.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A plumbing and heating business runs on the phone, a van diary and a box of carbon-copy pads.

  • A customer rings about a leaking cylinder; the owner, who is under a bath at the time, takes the address on his phone and promises to call back.
  • The call-back happens at nine that night, the quote is a text message, and when the customer accepts there is nothing to show what was agreed beyond that text.
  • The job goes into a shared calendar with no travel time, so the engineer who finishes a boiler service in one town is expected at a bathroom refit twenty miles away at the same minute.

Where it gets harder

Parts are the quiet leak.

  • A pump fitted on Tuesday is paid for on the trade account but never makes it onto the invoice, because the invoice is written on Friday from memory.
  • Boiler service dates live in the heads of the customers, so the annual service work the business depends on in the quiet months arrives only when a customer remembers.
  • Certificates are hand-written and the office copy is a photograph on someone's phone.
  • When an emergency call comes in at eleven at night, the customer has no way to know whether the business is actually taking out-of-hours work tonight or what the call-out charge is.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom plumbing build normally covers the trade core first:

  • A service area defined By postcode districts or radius so the website only accepts requests you will travel to
  • A quote request form that takes photos and property details
  • Job records that move through enquired Quoted, booked, in progress, complete and invoiced
  • Scheduling per engineer with travel buffers between jobs
  • Quotes and invoices With line items and deposits that the customer approves online
  • Before-and-after photos on the job
  • A review request once the job is closed

On top of that sit the pieces that make it a plumbing system rather than a generic trade one. An emergency call-out mode shows an out-of-hours status on the website that you switch on and off, with call-out charge wording written by you. A boiler and appliance register per property records make, model, install date and last service, and drives service reminders by email or text. Annual service plans let customers pay for a yearly service and priority booking as a recurring arrangement. Parts used per job are recorded by the engineer on site and flow onto the invoice. Certificate templates carry the wording and layout you supply; the system fills the fields, numbers the document and files it against the property. Any registration or qualification shown on a certificate is entered by you as supplied and the system does not verify it.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Accounting and payroll, which stay in the software you already use, supplier ordering beyond recording what was fitted, and vehicle tracking hardware

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A heating firm with five engineers, two of them on call in rotation, wants the out-of-hours switch tied to whoever is on the rota that night, a register of around two thousand boilers with service reminders, and service plan customers booked ahead of everyone else in September. A sole trader who wants a quote form, a diary and clean invoices needs a fraction of that, and the scope document names which is being built.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a walk-through of a planned job and an emergency call-out
  • A written scope document naming each job stage and what stays outside the system
  • Design of the quote request form, the engineer day view and the certificate on a phone and a desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or hosting we manage
  • Migration of customer, property and appliance records from your spreadsheets or existing app where relevant
  • Training for the owner, the office and the engineers, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to your current diary, invoice pads or app, certificate wording and the list of engineers and vans, with one named contact.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the owner and a senior engineer; the job stages, the emergency rota and the register fields are agreed in the scope document.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the request form, the day view with travel buffers and the certificate, checked on the phones your engineers carry.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Service area, requests and jobs first; then scheduling and quotes; then the register, reminders, parts and certificates.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Your engineers run a test fortnight alongside the old diary, including one out-of-hours call-out, and tell us where it does not match the real day.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Findings from the review are corrected and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Records imported, reminders tested against numbers you control, certificate output checked against your wording, launch list signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The business runs on the new system; optional hosting and maintenance continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Card payment providers for deposits, call-out charges and invoice payment
  • SMS and email providers for job confirmations, engineer en-route messages and service reminders
  • Accounting software for invoices, payments and trade account purchases
  • Calendar feeds so engineers see their jobs on their own phone
  • Mapping and routing services for travel buffers and the day plan
  • Trade merchant account exports for parts purchased against jobs

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A five-engineer heating firm with an on-call rota and a boiler register

The situation

A heating firm was losing service plan income because reminders depended on customers remembering, and its out-of-hours work depended on the owner answering a mobile at night.

Why it is a custom build

The on-call rota driving the public website state is what makes this a custom build; off-the-shelf trade apps have a diary but no concept of who is on duty tonight.

The scope we would propose

  • A boiler register imported from the spreadsheet with a service date per appliance and reminders sent six weeks ahead
  • Service plan customers offered booking slots before the general public each autumn
  • An emergency switch on the website tied to the on-call rota, so the engineer on duty that night receives the request directly with the call-out wording the owner wrote shown to the customer first
  • Parts recorded on the engineer's phone at the property so the invoice is complete before the van leaves

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of engineers and vans, and whether an on-call rota drives the emergency mode
  • Size of the boiler and appliance register to import and the reminder rules
  • Annual service plans and the recurring payment provider involved
  • Parts recording per job and any merchant account export
  • Number and complexity of certificate templates you supply
  • Quote approval and deposit flow and the payment provider
  • Custom reporting for the owner, such as plan renewals or engineer utilisation
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Plumbing business package

Quote requests with photos, engineer day view with travel buffers, out-of-hours switch, boiler register with reminders, parts per job and certificates from your templates.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do you decide whether we need a custom build or the package?

During discovery we compare how your jobs, engineers and certificates actually work against what the plumbing business package does with configuration alone. If the package covers it, we quote for the package and say so. If your on-call rota, register size or certificate set break its assumptions, the custom route is the honest recommendation.

Can the system produce our safety and commissioning certificates?

It produces documents from templates whose wording and layout you supply, fills them from the job and appliance record, numbers them and files them against the property. Any registration numbers or qualifications shown are entered by you as supplied; the system does not verify them and we make no claim about them.

How does the emergency call-out mode work?

You decide when the business is taking out-of-hours work and what the call-out wording says. When the mode is on, the website shows that status and routes the request to the engineer on duty; when it is off, the form takes a next-available request instead. The slot options and wording are yours to configure.

Can you import our existing customers and boiler records?

Usually yes. We take your spreadsheet or app export, map properties and appliances to the register and set the next service date from the last one recorded. The scope document states what can be carried over once we have seen the data.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code and data are handed over at delivery. Hosting and maintenance are optional, agreed separately, and you can move the system elsewhere.

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