Job tracking app for plumbers

What you can track (and what you can't)

Tracking in TrackYaTradie means tracking the job: who worked on it, for how long, what went into it and whether it is making money. It is not a vehicle or GPS tracker, and there is no live map of where your plumbers are. On each job you can track:

• Hours: each plumber logs their hours per day against the job they are on, from their own phone
• Fittings and other costs: supply costs, hire and disposal, logged against the job as they are bought
• Profit: the job's costs so far against its quote or invoice, with an in-app alert when costs reach 85% of the invoice
• Paperwork: the quote, the invoice, payment stages, checklists and photos, all on the job

What it can't track: where a van is, when a plumber arrived on site, or stock levels in the van. If live location is what you need, you want a GPS or fleet tracker alongside, or instead.

What to track on every plumbing job

Plumbing work runs from a twenty-minute tap washer to a new build with rough-in and fit-off months apart. The money leaks out differently at each end, so track all of it against the job:

• Labour, travel included: the drive, the queue at the plumbing supplier and the walk back to the van are all hours you pay for
• Fittings and fixtures: every fitting, length of pipe and fixture, logged when it is bought, not from a pile of dockets at the end of the quarter
• Return visits: a second trip for a part, or a callback after the job, is a cost of the first job, so log it there
• Hire and disposal: drain cameras, jetters, excavators, skip bins and tip fees
• Fees and paperwork: permits, inspection bookings and the compliance paperwork your state requires
• After-hours work: if you pay penalty rates for emergency callouts, price them separately instead of at your day rate

What a one-hour callout really costs

The repair took an hour. Your day lost more than that. Here is a mixer tap repair costed at the plumber's true hourly cost from the tradie hourly rate calculator example: about $113 an hour once wages, super, overheads and the van are counted. The times are illustrative; yours will differ.

Price that visit as one hour of labour plus parts and it loses money before anything goes wrong. That is the job a callout fee or minimum charge does: it pays for the time a visit takes out of your day. Work yours out from your own numbers, and check it again whenever fuel, wages or the van costs change.

A worked example: a hot water system replacement

Fixed-price jobs you do often are where a template pays off. Here is a 250-litre electric hot water system swap, priced from a template and then tracked, at the same $113 an hour. Illustrative numbers again:

A week later the client rings: a fitting on the cold water inlet is weeping. It is a two-hour return visit and a $45 part. Log it against the original job and the numbers tell the truth: costs rise from $2,275 to $2,546, which is 89% of the $2,845 price, the profit-at-risk alert fires, and the profit drops from $570 to $299. Set it up as a new job with no invoice and the original keeps looking like a $570 winner.

One return visit is not a disaster. A pattern of them on the same kind of job is a price or a method you need to fix, and you only see the pattern when the visits are logged where they belong.

New builds and renos: rough-in, fit-off and progress claims

On longer jobs the money comes in stages. Set payment stages on the job as percentages of the price, for example deposit, rough-in, fit-off and completion, and claim each one as you reach it. The job shows what has been invoiced and paid next to the hours and costs so far. If a builder wants a claim on paper, the progress claim template is free, and progress claims and payment stages covers how to size each stage.

Your plumbers log their hours per day against the job they are on, from their own phones, so the labour on a rough-in is a number you can check against the quote before the fit-off starts. New accounts set up for plumbing start with three quote templates to adjust: a hot water system replacement, a blocked drain clear with jet and camera, and a toilet replacement. The prices in them are placeholders until you put your own in.

What TrackYaTradie does not do for plumbers

• No van stock or inventory tracking, and no purchase orders to suppliers.
• No dispatch board, map or GPS. The calendar assigns plumbers to jobs by the day.
• No backflow testing register or compliance certificate lodgement. Keep doing those the way your state requires, and attach copies to the job.
• No automatic overdue reminders to clients. You send a reminder from the invoice when you choose to.
• Xero only: there is no MYOB or QuickBooks sync.

If your business is mostly high-volume service calls run from an office, an app built around a dispatch board may suit you better; TrackYaTradie vs ServiceM8 sets out the differences. If you want each job's real profit while it is still running, that is what TrackYaTradie does.