ProContact for plumbers and heating engineers

Your trade has something few others do: part of your turnover is predictable a year ahead. The boilers you service this year will need servicing next year. Someone just has to remember — and if it is not you, it will be a competitor.

Two activities, no more to start with

Under Activities, create:

1. Callouts — the leak, the breakdown, the emergency.
2. Servicing — the periodic, planned, recurring visit.

Add Installation / renovation as a third when you move to the Pro plan. These three have different lead times and different margins, and you will want to know which one actually feeds you.

The service reminder — the one thing to take from this page

In most regions, periodic boiler servicing is covered by regulation — check the exact rule that applies where you work, and to which appliances.

What matters here is simpler: the day you finish a service, set the reminder for the next one.

From the appointment you have just closed:

• reminder on the due date;
• frequency Once (or Monthly if you prefer a run-up alert);
• recipient Both — you and the client.

The client gets the message at the same moment you do. You have nothing to sell: you are flagging a deadline that concerns them, and you are the one they call. The renewal rate bears no resemblance to cold prospecting.

Do this for a year and you will have built an order book that fills itself.

See reminders.

A callout is a way in, not an ending

A leak at 10pm cannot be planned for. But it produces something valuable: a client who owes you one, in a property whose plumbing you now know.

Before you leave, in under a minute:

1. create the contact record — name, mobile, address of the job;
2. note what you saw: make and age of the boiler, condition of the system, what is going to fail next;
3. set a reminder at day 30, recipient User.

That day-30 reminder is the message that turns a callout into a servicing contract. "Hello, I came out last month about the leak — your boiler is twelve years old, shall we book the service in?"

Job address is not billing address

The owner lives elsewhere. The agency pays. The tenant opens the door.

A contact record takes several addresses, one marked main, and several phone numbers. Fill in both, with a clear label. It saves you the "I'm outside your house" call at the wrong door.

See managing your contacts.

A bathroom is a long quote and a short memory

A renovation gets decided over several visits, with choices made standing up in the room: where the unit goes, which brand of taps, who supplies the tiles.

After each visit, write a note on the appointment and tick shared with client. It appears in their portal, dated.

And let the client write back: from their portal they can add their own notes — the references they picked, their scheduling constraints, the photo of the model they want. That is a pile of email threads you will not have to reconstruct.

See notes and the client portal.

In short

Ready to start? See the 10-minute setup.

This guide builds on ProContact for tradespeople, which covers the four problems every trade shares.