Running the Business · Part 6
Systems: field-service software, the price book, and dispatch. What to buy, when, and what it must produce
A one-truck shop runs on a phone, a pad of contracts, and the Friday reconciliation. A three-truck shop that runs that way loses a job a week to a missed callback and a form left in the wrong truck. This lesson is the systems decision: what field-service software actually has to do for a California plumbing contractor (produce the compliant contract with the notices, gate the deposit, carry the price book, capture the signature and the photos, issue the release with the payment, and hand the bookkeeper clean data), what the price book looks like when it lives in the software, how dispatch works when there are two trucks, and the order to buy in. It is a requirements list, not a product review.
What the full lesson covers
- Buy software when the second truck starts, not before; until then the templates and the Friday reconciliation are the system.
- The non-negotiable outputs: the California home improvement and service and repair contracts with every notice, signed on the customer's screen before work; the deposit capped and progress payments tied to phases; the price book with good/better/best; photos and readings attached to the job; the release generated with each payment; the invoice and payment feeding the books.
- The price book in the software is the book from lesson 2.7, rebuilt once a year from the worksheet rates; a vendor's default price book is somebody else's costs.
- Dispatch is a board that shows which truck is where, what the next call needs, and who has the parts; the dispatcher is the person who says the service charge on the phone.
- Keep the data yours: exportable customers, jobs, and photos, so that changing vendors does not mean losing ten years of job folders.
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More lessons in Growing the Business
- 1Hiring under AB 5: the ABC test, why a 1099 helper is a lawsuit unless they hold their own license, and the construction subcontract exemption
- 2Employees: wage and hour, overtime, meal and rest periods, final-pay rules, and the workers' compensation class code
- 3Apprentices and the Division of Apprenticeship Standards: how a small shop trains its next plumber lawfully
- 4Adding classifications: when to add the B, the C-20, or a second specialty, and how the exam waiver works
- 5Systems: field-service software, the price book, and dispatch. What to buy, when, and what it must produceYou are here
- 6KPIs: average ticket, close rate, gross margin, and the three numbers that predict failure
- 7Supply-house credit at scale, the fleet, and inventory: the second truck's paperwork and the parts on it
- 8Becoming an RMO for someone else's company: the liability you are taking on, and the only version that is lawful
- 9Selling or stepping back: what a plumbing business is worth, what a buyer is actually buying, and what the license will and will not let you transfer
- 10Template: the hiring checklist (AB 5-safe), from the decision to the first day
- 11Template: the new-hire packet index
- 12Template: the monthly KPI sheet