10 Plumber Invoicing Tips to Follow in 2023 [+Free Template]

1. Email Plumbing Invoice Forms Directly to the Customer

The best way for plumbers to get paid quickly and effortlessly is by generating an electronic plumbing-repair invoice before even leaving the job site. 

Immediately emailing the invoice reduces room for error later and allows your techs to personalize customer service by clearly and completely explaining the work completed and how much the customer owes. 

A personal touch might even gain you a repeat customer for life.

Plumbing companies use ServiceTitan to make it easier for techs to email plumbing invoice forms to customers immediately after they finish a job. 

Take, for example, our client Weld Power.

Previously, techs had to download the form from a separate application, fill it out, and re-upload it to Weld’s cloud platform. Then the front-office team got access to it.

Aside from the inefficiencies that introduces to their invoicing process, the software kept crashing, leading to a loss of data, which forced techs to refill the forms.

Tim Geary, president of Weld, says, “It took so long for us to close out invoices because we were waiting on forms. You couldn’t even close out a dispatch until that form came in.”

With ServiceTitan’s plumbing invoice app, techs fill out the forms from the field. Then it’s automatically uploaded to the cloud in real time, where the front office can gain access. No need for downloads, re-uploads, or form refills.

“Now that it's just automatic, that's a huge [cost] saving for the service department,” says Chris Galligan, controller at Weld.

This streamlined workflow ensures that the front office sends the invoice to the customer once a tech finishes the job, reducing late payments.

2. Don’t Email or Text Customers Without Asking First

While emails and texts seem to be the preferred method of communicating with customers in today’s digital world, your company’s customer service representatives (CSRs) and plumbers need to ask for permission. 

Would the customer like to receive appointment reminders via a text alert to let them know exactly when their plumbing tech is scheduled to arrive? When the job is complete, the plumber can email them a link, and they can instantly pay open invoices online.

3. Give Your Techs an Easy-to-Use Plumbing Invoice Template

It’s inefficient for techs to make back-and-forth trips to the office to validate an invoice before handing it out to customers. Nor is it productive to take away time they should be spending on jobs.

There’s a better alternative: plumbing invoice templates.

With ServiceTitan's Plumbing Invoice template, techs can simply fill in the details, as the necessary fields are already named—invoice number, business name, date, phone number, and so on.

This makes it simpler for techs to create and give professional plumbing invoices to customers.

Other benefits of using these templates are:

1. Fewer mistakes such as misplaced items and duplicate billing.

2. Makes it easy for employees to spot errors since all details are in the same place.

3. Fosters consistency in invoice layout and design, helping to entrench your brand in customers’ minds.

4. Saves time.

5. Makes it easy for techs to process payments on-site, improving cash flow

4. Make Plumbing Invoices Processing Easy in the Field

Consistency breeds accuracy, so train all your plumbing techs to complete invoices the same way by outlining the specific details you want to be included. 

Explain what types of information you want to be recorded on every invoice, and make it easy by using a mobile app that lets your techs simply click through the various options. You can even create a laminated cheat sheet for them to reference in the field, but tell them to leave the pen and paper back in the office.

With ServiceTitan’s Plumbing Software, your techs can use their phones or tablets to photograph checks or credit cards physically in the field and post payments automatically. This means fewer trips to the bank and no more lost checks.

Additionally, with the help of ServiceTitan’s mobile app, techs no longer go in blind.

That's because they can access every piece of information the CSR collected during the booking process from their mobile phones. Plus they can listen to the call recording.

This way, techs have the correct information about the customer. Additionally, techs can view their customer history, previous invoices, and property details to spot upsell opportunities.

Once an upsell opportunity is spotted, plumbing techs can quickly build detailed estimates from their mobile devices while in the field to sell the opportunity to customers.

This helps convert more customers, helping to grow your plumbing business.

5. Keep Customer Details on File

Customers like it when you remember their name, their recent service history, and how they prefer to pay. Plus, knowing all of those details helps to personalize the plumbing service experience, whether it’s a routine call or a plumbing emergency.

A home services app keeps organized maintenance records, history, and contact information at your fingertips for every customer.

For example, ServiceTitan saves all customer information to the cloud. Every employee can access it whenever they’re filing out invoices.

This ensures that no customer data goes missing and that there’s a single source of truth about every customer. So, employees are less likely to fill out invoices with wrong addresses, the wrong preferred payment channels, or misspell a customer's name.

6. Don’t Send Your Plumbing Invoice to the Wrong Client

Too many clients and not enough techs? It’s a problem for many plumbing contractors trying to meet high customer demand, in light of the trade-worker shortage. 

 If your CSR sends a plumbing work order invoice to the wrong client, how are you ever going to get paid?

Keep your company’s client list from quickly spiraling out of control by organizing it with a software solution, eliminating human error from the equation.

7. Follow Up on Unpaid Plumbing Work Invoices

Everyone likes to get paid for a job well done, including plumbers. 

Tracking down unpaid invoices every month is no one’s favorite job, so lighten the load on your office staff by automating the process with digital invoicing. 

By automatically notifying the customer by text or email about their amount due and making it easy to collect payments, you’ll likely improve operational efficiency and your bottom line.

8. Provide Multiple Payment Methods

Most successful home services companies accept payment in any form. It’s a trend in the plumbing industry. 

Also, the easier it is for the customer, the better.

Some customers only want to pay by check, while others prefer to use a credit card for larger plumbing jobs. You can accommodate both by using a mobile home services app that allows your workers to collect payments via credit cards, checks, and cash, and process invoices while in the field. 

With ServiceTitan's Payments Feature, field plumbing technicians can collect payments on-site by either taking pictures of checks and credit cards using their mobile device, or giving the customer a link to a personalized payment portal.

Having multiple payment options ensures customers pay at their convenience, reducing cases of delayed payments and unpaid invoices, which you have to chase at the end of the month.

Additionally, back-office staff no longer need to collect checks from techs and rush to the bank.

That's because ServiceTitan automatically deposits every payment it processes into your account within 24 hours at most.

This saves time, which employees can use on something more productive.

For Matt LaMartina, president of Tony LaMartina Plumbing, ServiceTitan's Payments Feature has helped cut down the expense of hiring accountants.

And that's thanks to ServiceTitan's QuickBooks integration.

“When we came on to ServiceTitan, it was like, ‘I can pay for a significant amount of ServiceTitan by scaling back my professional fees because of all of these things’,” he says.

With ServiceTitan's QuickBooks integration, every transaction processed in the field is instantly exported to your QuickBooks.

This ensures every financial transaction is accurate, current, and accounted for.

9. Keep Track of Invoices, Service Contracts, and Maintenance Agreements

As your business grows, so do the number of clients and records documenting their home plumbing systems and services. 

To grow your list of repeat customers, it’s important to keep a well-organized filing system using a plumbing management app, so CSRs and plumbing techs can easily access a customer’s latest invoice, a past service contract, or an ongoing maintenance agreement. It’s the kind of personalized shopping experience customers have come to expect.

10. Offer a Service Contract or Maintenance Agreement as Part of Your Plumbing Invoice

With the right visual presentation offered to the customer on a digital marketing platform such as ServiceTitan, your techs can easily offer good-better-and-best options in a professional format when creating a customer’s invoice. 

It’s also a good time to sell the value of a service contract or maintenance agreement for future work. Homeowners tend to remember plumbers who are helpful and can educate them about their home plumbing systems.

With ServiceTitan's Service Agreement software, plumbing companies can create memberships in minutes.

They can add discounts and schedule recurring appointments with a few simple clicks…

…and add additional items, extra costs for materials, and options for maintenance upgrades to accommodate any needs the customer might have.

Plumbing Invoice Software Helps Businesses Grow

Travis Ringe, co-owner of ProSkill Services in Arizona, says he stopped letting cash go down the drain six years ago after switching from paper invoices and a rudimentary server-based scheduling system to ServiceTitan, a mobile cloud-based software platform with electronic invoicing.

“We started saving time,” he says. “The guys weren’t writing invoices anymore, just clicking on the item. We didn’t have to worry as much about invoices getting turned in, which was helpful because some of the guys didn’t come into the shop every day and they’d end up losing invoices.” 

ProSkill started as a one-truck plumbing company in 2009, expanded into HVAC services in 2012, and later added water treatment and electrical services. The company now operates with more than 50 trucks and brings in more than $14 million in annual revenue. 

“I loaded in the scope of work for new systems and our unit matchups so I could actually get pricing on site for new systems,” Ringe says. “Our close rate went way up when I started doing that. We also started tracking revenue, purchase orders, and job costs. That enabled us to see where we were making or losing money.”

Now Over to You

When it comes to growing any plumbing business, invoicing is a crucial thing to pay attention to. 

Because when customers pay invoices early, your business's cash flow benefits. And invoices help you track sales and keep records.

Hence, it’s vital to automate the entire process with ServiceTitan plumbing software. This limits errors and boosts your invoicing efficiency.

ServiceTitan is an all-in-one software solution that helps home service businesses automate and streamline their business processes like invoicing, which translates into higher productivity, revenue, and cost savings.