Plumbing Invoice Apps: 7 Options to Consider (And How to Choose the Right One for You)

Plumbing Contractor Software vs. Standalone Invoicing Solutions

Before we get into some of the potential downsides of invoicing point solutions, let’s take a look at some of the pros. 

Pros of Standalone Plumbing Invoicing Apps 

Perhaps the greatest advantage standalone invoicing software solutions offer to plumbing contractors is that they eliminate the need to generate invoices the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper. Needless to say, the latter has myriad potentially costly drawbacks — lost forms, illegible handwriting, math mistakes, organizational headaches, delayed payments, and much more.

Standalone plumbing invoicing apps also offer some other potential benefits:  

• Often lower sticker prices than comprehensive FSMs

• Easy tracking of outstanding invoices

• On-the-go digital signatures

• In some cases, estimating feature tie-ins

Cons of Invoicing-Only Software

In general, standalone invoicing apps are disconnected from the other elements of a plumbing service. For example, they don’t work seamlessly with the other tools contractors need to run their business, such as dispatching and scheduling software or payroll and timesheet tools.   

When plumbers create an invoice with this kind of software, they frequently have to manually transfer information from estimates and work orders, drawing data from different documents, spreadsheets, files, software platforms, and/or mobile apps.    

They end up spending a ton of time repeatedly entering the same information into different interfaces, introducing an opportunity with each transfer for human error: typos, math mistakes, and forgetfulness.  

Invoices containing errors — even small ones — can easily result in major problems, notably underpayment and harm to customer relationships. In combination, over time, these factors can add up to sharply reduced income.

At the same time, the sort of advanced, modern mobile capabilities and API associated with some of the more cutting edge FSMs tend to be missing from point solutions for plumbing invoicing apps, which sometimes feature rather old school-looking interfaces. 

Although standalone invoicing software can often appear to be relatively inexpensive, where ROI is concerned, it’s important to consider the big picture. Lacking customer relationship management (CRM) tools, and functionality that’s vital to efficiently generating clean, accurate invoices — such as work order management, inventory management, and pricebook integration — invoicing-only software is often a lot more costly than it appears at surface level. 

In the next section of this article, we’ll take a deep dive into how ServiceTitan’s plumbing invoicing features work. In doing so, we’ll illustrate the stark contrast between standalone solutions and top-of-the-line FSMs such as ServiceTitan, which consolidate all of a plumbing company’s essential operations into one platform.   

We’ll look at how ServiceTitan helps contractors save time and eliminate mistakes by allowing them to seamlessly integrate invoicing with:

• Call booking

• Scheduling and dispatching

• Estimates and proposals 

• Payments and financing

How ServiceTitan Integrates Invoicing with All of Plumbing Companies’ Most Important Functions

Our software facilitates connectivity between all of the core elements of a service business beginning the moment a call comes into the shop. 

Call Booking

Before a customer service rep even picks up the phone, ServiceTitan provides the name and location of the caller, along with salient details about their property: address, age, square-footage — even the type of electrical, plumbing, or HVAC system they have at their home.

If the caller is an existing customer, the CSR might also be able to see whether they are due for a maintenance call or system replacement. 

Having data like this at their fingertips makes it easy for CSRs to book calls quickly, accurately, and with maximum attention to improving customer relationships. ServiceTitan call booking helps ensure that all of the necessary info is collected and preserved, with a high level of detail, with a user-friendly workflow of dropdown menus for easy navigation. 

Dispatching and Scheduling

To organize booked calls, many ServiceTitan users like to use our color-coded tagging system, which allows contractors to sort future jobs by their specifics: estimated time to complete, tools needed, expertise required, and the like. These features help make sure that service techs show up for their assignments with everything they need to do their best work, and that they’ve been given the right amount of time to do it.   

It also helps to ensure that the right tech gets assigned to the right task every time, and that the dispatcher routing them sends them on the most efficient path. 

To account for unforeseen circumstances, our plumbing app also gives dispatchers an up-to-the-minute view of where each tech is in their job cycle, allowing them to make fluid, real-time adjustments and reassignments over the course of the workday to cope with emergent business needs, customer requests, and urgent events.    

Refining the scheduling process further, ServiceTitan’s Alert features can be used to remind homeowners of appointments and provide precise, accurate ETAs. Many of our users find that this helps to reduce no-show appointments and keeps customers from becoming frustrated — and therefore less inclined to sign off on a big-ticket project — by long wait times. In this way, ServiceTitan’s notifications also serve as a customer relationship management tool. 

Before they reach a job site, field service technicians get a plethora of details about the property via our Dispatch features, including service history and existing service requests. And techs can drill down further by listening to recordings of calls between the homeowner and their company’s CSRs.   

Call recordings are also a great way for owners and managers to monitor their dispatchers to verify that they’re following customer support scripts and guidelines, as well as to confirm any facts in dispute if a customer complains that they were charged more than they’d been told they would be, for example, or claims that they were otherwise misled by a CSR.

Estimates and Proposals

For plumbers, being able to efficiently create and deliver accurate, attractive, option-based Good Better Best proposals — and reliably follow up to boost close rates — is critical. To facilitate this, ServiceTitan furnishes a fully customizable, template-based workflow, which doubles as a job and customer information intake tool. (Upon entry, data is immediately accessible to all company employees.) 

Because all of a service business’s core functions are seamlessly interlinked on our platform, ServiceTitan’s plumbing estimate and proposal features also provide for a streamlined invoicing and payment process. 

We’ll get into those details momentarily. But it’s worth pausing for a moment to flag a few crucial ServiceTitan features that ensure contractors get the absolute most out of their proposal and estimate process:       

• Mobile: Users can access real-time info to generate sales presentations via iPhone, Android, iPad, and other iOS devices. (All ServiceTitan features are also available via desktop.)

• Pricebook: With a basic ServiceTitan subscription, plumbing contractors can upload or build fully customizable pricebooks. These are linked directly to our estimating app, so when contractors build proposals, they can use the tasks, parts, and equipment pricing that will actually go into the job in question. Plumbing businesses that opt for Pricebook Pro can connect their pricebooks directly to their favorite equipment vendor catalogs, allowing them to automate pricing updates for maximum efficiency.

• Follow-up: Those alerts we mentioned earlier can also be deployed to ping employees — and even owners — to follow up on unsold proposals. And with MarketingPro, a suite of advanced features, business owners and managers can target highly specific customer demographics with tailored emails, texts, and/or postcards. 

Once basic customer information has been entered, to complete an estimate template, ServiceTitan users simply add product and service descriptions, dropping in appropriate pricebook items and packages; to educate homeowners about the need for repair and/or replacement. To give customers a visual of what their product choices are, many of our users also like to attach photos and videos to their estimates.    

Since a Good Better Best approach to sales presentations — offering three options or more to customers for (virtually) every project — generally produces the highest average ticket prices and close rates, that’s what most of the contractors who subscribe to ServiceTitan use with residential customers.   

As such, our software is specifically designed to optimize Good Better Best presentations. We refer to each option in a presentation as an “estimate.” For us, a “proposal” represents the whole menu of options.      

After plumbing contractors have finalized their estimate templates — the frameworks for the options they’ll give homeowners — they’re ready to present their menu of options, that is, the proposal.  

Putting together a proposal is a cinch — a process that takes just a few minutes, requiring only that ServiceTitan users drag and drop the estimates most appropriate for the job at hand. Proposals can include as many estimates, across whatever range of prices, as contractors choose. 

Proposals generated in the field via mobile app are available to share immediately with customers while techs are on site. Alternatively, they can be emailed or printed and delivered by hand or mail.

Particulars regarding scope of work, deal terms, equipment, and more are available for customer review in proposals like the one shown above.

Customers can e-sign in real-time and work with their tech to look into scheduling the work right away. And as we’ll see a little later in this article, arranging financing for jobs big and small is a snap, too. 

Invoicing

Since ServiceTitan integrates and streamlines all of the core elements of a plumbing business, by the time contractors are ready to put together an invoice, there’s actually very little work left for them to do. 

Our platform uses the parts, hourly rates, and other important details that appear in the plumbing quote to populate work orders and invoices automatically, ensuring that homeowners don’t experience any unpleasant surprises when their bill arrives. 

In the event that techs have added new, essential tasks, materials, and/or equipment to a project over the course of the job, those will appear automatically in the invoice, too. 

The result is a clean, professional document reflecting the balance due and all other pertinent essentials. A summary provides a detailed narrative of the work performed and the expected outcome, decreasing the chance that questions and disagreements will arise later.  

Like ServiceTitan proposals, invoices can be sent by email (with a prompt to have customers pay online), e-signed via mobile device, or delivered by hand or snail mail. Depending on the situation, contractors can send an invoice to a homeowner, landlord, property manager, tenant, or all of the above.     

To give customers an even clearer sense of the value of their work, plumbing contractors can use ServiceTitan to attach before-and-after photos and video of job sites to their invoices. This feature can be especially helpful on commercial jobs, for which the owner is often not present, reducing denials and improving the chances of prompt payment.    

A customer-facing version of the invoice prompts the property owner to provide signatures both for work authorization and work completion. 

Payments and Financing

ServiceTitan makes it easier than ever to collect on plumbing jobs. Property owners can settle their balances via ServiceTitan’s customer portal, where they can enter and save credit card payment details, or via our mobile app, while techs are still on the job site. (Of course, there’s nothing to stop our users from accepting payments the old-fashioned way, via cash or check.)

And as money comes in, keeping track of it is made simple with our seamless QuickBooks integration. 

We make actually closing the deal easier, too, by making financing near-instantaneously available. With just a few clicks, customers can apply and get approved for funds by one of our financing partners, reducing cost-consideration barriers that can often reduce overall revenue. 

Note: To browse a broader list of plumbing apps, check out our article on 15 essential plumbing apps for contractors.

Which Plumbing Invoice Solution Is Best for You?

Standalone plumbing invoicing apps can often appear at surface level to be a cost-effective solution. But in reality, these solutions separate invoicing from the other, directly related business processes and tools that plumbing companies rely on to do their best work. This tends to result in workflow inefficiencies, a variety of human errors, and, ultimately, constrained growth and revenue.    

That’s why, when we set out to design our plumbing software, we took a comprehensive approach, centralizing all of the tools and functionality — including invoicing — that a service business needs on a single, cutting edge software platform. 

In practice, for plumbing business owners, using ServiceTitan means they can spend less time correcting mistakes and putting out fires and focus their attention on taking advantage of our streamlined workflows and business efficiencies to beat out competitors and grow revenue.   

Want to see how ServiceTitan works to streamline your plumbing business operations? Schedule a call to get a free, live, one-on-one walk through of the features we describe throughout this article.

Other Plumbing Invoice Apps

Joist

Joist is an app that specializes in estimating, invoicing, and payments for contractors. Their product, like ServiceTitan, has a mobile app for facilitating these business functions in the field or office. And they also offer a QuickBooks integration to sync activity with your accounting. However, Joist is still a relative point solution, lacking tools for other key business activities such as scheduling and dispatching, managing maintenance agreements, reporting, or marketing. 

JobFLEX

Like Joist, JobFLEX is an estimating and invoicing point solution for contractors. They offer similar features such as mobile functionality and the ability to create estimates and invoices, however JobFLEX doesn’t appear to offer payment functionality. And like Joist, they don’t offer features or the ability to seamlessly integrate with the other core tools you use to run your business. 

HouseCall Pro

Housecall Pro is a holistic FSM solution for home service businesses. Similar to ServiceTitan, they offer a wide range of features outside of invoicing, such as scheduling and dispatching, estimates, QuickBooks integration, and more.

We’ve written a detailed comparison of our two products, which you can find here: Housecall Pro vs. ServiceTitan.

Jobber

Jobber is a field service scheduling software that also offers a wide range of other features for running a field service business. Like ServiceTitan, they offer functionality for estimating, quotes, scheduling, invoicing, and more. 

We’ve written a detailed comparison of our two products which you can find here: Jobber vs. ServiceTitan. 

Service Fusion

Service Fusion describes itself as an “All-In-One Field Service Management Software.” Like ServiceTitan, they offer a wide range of features including estimates, invoices, customer management, scheduling and dispatching, and more. 

We’ve written a detailed comparison of our two products, which you can find here: Service Fusion vs. ServiceTitan.

FieldEdge

FieldEdge is a field service management software and field service app for service businesses. They offer a wide range of features like ServiceTitan, including functionality for things like quotes and invoicing, scheduling and dispatching, service agreements, and more. 

We’ve written a detailed comparison of our two products, which you can find here: FieldEdge vs. ServiceTitan.