mmitech
Hero image for UK plumbers

Software for UK plumbers

You can’t answer the phone with both hands under a sink. We can.

You’re flat on your back under a kitchen unit, sealing a soil pipe, both hands wet, one shoulder soaked. The phone in the van is ringing. By the time you’re out from under there it’s stopped - and the customer with the flooded utility room has worked her way down a list of three plumbers and got the one who picked up. You did a £4,200 commercial job for a restaurant in May; it’s August and you’re still chasing it. You quoted a wet-room in Sudbury on Saturday - full survey, full drawing - and two weeks later a different van’s outside the house. You did your Sunday emergency paid £180 cash on the doorstep, and on Tuesday evening you’re at the kitchen table typing the same letting-agent invoice into Xero you typed last month, and the month before.

We make custom software for plumbers. Small apps and automations that sit on top of what already works for you - Tradify, ServiceM8, Commusoft, Powered Now, paper-and-WhatsApp, whatever you run - and quietly do the bits that waste your Sunday evening. Not another app to learn on a 5-inch screen with one hand. Tell us what’s slowing you down and we’ll come back with a sketch of how to fix it.

What you spend your week on that you shouldn’t have to

These aren’t problems for a generic CRM. They’re the bit between job done and paid, signed off, on the books, booked back in a year - sized for a one-van plumber who can’t type in the rain. That’s the bit we can take off your plate.

A UK plumber's week - under a sink, the van, a wet utility-room floor

Example problems we could solve

Six things we hear most often from plumbers - with what the solved version looks like in your week. Every job is sized to your business: a solo single-van plumber probably needs the first two; a five-van firm running lettings, commercial and bathroom installs might want all six. None of it means binning what already works.

1. The under-a-sink line that triages floods from quotes

The lost-emergency moment: phone rings four times while you’re on your back with a basin spanner in one hand and water pooling on the floor. By the time you’re out from under there, the caller with the flooded ceiling has rung the next plumber on Google. Most missed calls in this trade are emergencies, and they go to whoever picks up first.

Solved looks like: an answer-on-your-behalf line that picks up while you’re on the tools - across calls, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and the chat box on your website - in your voice, trained on your out-of-hours policy and your last-sent quote PDF. Crucially for plumbing, photo and video on inbound are first-class: a customer can send a leak video and the system reads it well enough to tell a dripping radiator valve apart from a soil-pipe failure on the first floor. “My toilet won’t stop running” gets booked in for Tuesday; “there’s water coming through my downstairs ceiling” rings your phone in under sixty seconds with the postcode already captured. The longer version lives at Trainable Inbound AI Agent; the plumber setup is tuned for flood-vs-quote-vs-info triage with video on the inbound.

2. The WhatsApp thread that is the job record

The lost-thread moment: customer sends a leak video on WhatsApp; you quote on WhatsApp; she confirms the slot on WhatsApp; nothing’s in your software because nothing speaks WhatsApp natively. You change phones in November and the entire job history is gone.

Solved looks like: the WhatsApp Business thread is the job record. A video the customer drops in attaches to a new ticket in the back end with her number as the key. You reply with a voice note from the van - “that’s a worn cartridge, £140 to replace, can come Wednesday” - and the voice note transcribes onto the ticket so you don’t type. Her one-tap yes writes the booking to your calendar and fires the Wednesday-9am en-route SMS off the calendar status flip. Photos in the thread tag themselves against the ticket; the invoice generates from the same ticket on completion and the payment link drops back into the same thread she started in. You never touch the laptop, never type in the van, and the customer pays in the thread she started in.

3. Quote out, nudge, win - the loop that runs while you’re on the tools

The Saturday-survey moment: half a Saturday measuring up a £6,800 wet-room; quote PDF goes out Sunday evening; by Wednesday lunchtime there’s nothing back; by Friday a different van is on the drive. You did the survey for free.

Solved looks like: every quote becomes a tracked object the moment it leaves the van. The nudge ladder runs on the customer’s preferred channel in your voice, not a sales voice - and it reads urgency off the original enquiry, so a leak-detection quote nudges in hours and a bathroom quote nudges over a fortnight. “Are we doing this or shall I park it” lands on the morning the customer was actually going to decide, not three weeks too late. The longer version lives at Quote & Chase Ladder; the bathroom-installer-shaped version with stage payments lives on the bathroom-fitter spoke.

4. Booking, on-the-way SMS, and the review chase

The Wickes-receipt moment: told her Tuesday morning, wrote it on a Wickes receipt, receipt’s in the washing machine; by half eleven she’s leaving a one-star review while the leak’s still going. The wet-hands domestic call-out has the highest ETA-anxiety in the trades - the customer is in the house, the floor is wet, and “on my way” needs to be sent without you remembering to send it.

Solved looks like: booking → reminder the night before → en-route SMS that fires automatically off your calendar flipping to travelling → finished-work SMS with the photo-evidence attached → ninety-minute review prompt with one-tap links to Google, Checkatrade and Trustist. Negative sentiment routes back to you privately before it lands as a public review; positive sentiment goes straight out. The longer version lives at Booking & Review Loop.

5. Three cash cycles on one engine

The whiplash moment: Sunday emergency paid £180 cash on the doorstep. Restaurant install from May still chasing in August. Letting-agent batch invoice stuck in the agent’s bookkeeper’s queue every month. Three cash cycles, one Xero, one phone, one you - and no way to tell from the bank balance which one is bleeding.

Solved looks like: invoices that go out on completion with the customer-type already tagged. Domestic gets a 14-day cadence and a card link in the first email. Letting-agent batch invoices land on the 1st with the per-property breakdown the agent’s bookkeeper expects, and a day-31 statutory-interest line citing the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 - politely, automatically, without you having to feel awkward about asking. Commercial sub-contracts run CIS reverse-charge worded the way the builder’s bookkeeper recognises, with retention deducted at practical completion and tracked through to the 12-month release. The longer version lives at Invoice & Dunning Ladder; the depth on each sub-audience lives on the lettings, commercial, and leak-detection spokes.

6. The service-plan engine that keeps the water softener (and the customer) on contract

The forgotten-renewal moment: water-softener customer was supposed to renew her service plan in March. You forgot, she forgot, the salt-drum delivery never restarted, and the install you spec’d in 2022 is now a complaint about “that softener your lot fitted”.

Solved looks like: every plan-fitted asset tagged with its renewal cadence - annual softener service, six-monthly drainage descale on the commercial book, biennial commercial water-treatment, plus the salt-drum delivery on its own recurrence. Eleven months out the customer gets the “your annual service is due - reply YES to book” SMS in your voice, the direct debit re-anchors if it lapsed, and the renewal lands in your diary without anyone typing. Most plumbers leave service-plan recurring revenue on the table because it loses to the next emergency; the engine only needs you on the awkward renewals. The longer version lives at Recurring Service Recall.

A flood-call moment - phone vibrating on the van seat while the plumber's hands are on a stopcock

The closest things we’ve already built

If your week’s narrower than the whole of the above

Four sub-audiences whose week looks different enough that they have their own pages:

Adjacent trades

FAQ

Do I have to bin Tradify / ServiceM8 / Powered Now / Commusoft?

No. We sit on top of what works for you and replace the bit that doesn’t - usually the missed-call recovery, the WhatsApp thread, the letting-agent batch invoicing, the service-plan engine. If your diary and job entry are fine in Tradify, we hook into the export and start from there. Commusoft is built for 20+ engineer firms; if you’re a 2-van outfit paying for it because something needs to do the job, the bespoke route usually comes out cheaper and a better fit.

Will you register me with WaterSafe / WIAPS?

No. WaterSafe accreditation is yours - you sit the competence assessment, you sit the renewal. We build the reminder and the audit-pack assembly so the renewal week isn’t a scramble. Same posture on WRAS-approved fittings audits for commercial commissioners - we build the evidence record; you sign it.

Can you handle Legionella ACoP L8 risk assessments on HMOs and commercial water systems?

We build the templated risk-assessment flow - the form, the on-site photo capture, the PDF, the customer copy, the annual recall - but the risk assessment itself is yours to sign as the competent person. ACoP L8 keeps the responsibility with the duty-holder; the software keeps the cadence on the rails. The HMO-side detail lives on the lettings spoke; the commercial-FM version is on the commercial spoke.

My business is plumbing-and-gas. Should I be reading the gas-engineers page instead?

Both. If gas is the bigger half of your week - CP12 round, boiler installs, heat-pump work - the gas-engineers hub is your primary page. If gas is the smaller half, this is the primary page and we’d pull the gas-side flows (CP12 calendar, Gas Safe Register reminders) in as add-ons against the plumbing chassis.

What does it cost?

Every job is sized to your business - depends on what you’ve got already, what’s getting replaced, and what’s getting added. We talk it through, agree the scope and the price in writing, then build. Send an enquiry and we’ll come back with a sketch. See pricing for how we work.

How long until something’s live?

Most plumber builds we’ve sketched go from scope conversation to a working version you can run a real Sunday-night emergency through in a few weeks, then a couple more weeks of running live work through it before go-live. Exact cadence depends on what’s being replaced.

Will you do my Google review chasing for me?

Not as the recurring deliverable. We build the trigger - ninety minutes after the job is signed off, the SMS goes out with the one-tap link - and the trigger runs forever once it’s built. We’re not your reputation agency; we’re the studio that wired the trigger.

I’m a one-van plumber - is this overkill?

The whole point of custom is that it’s the size of your business. A one-van outfit might just be problem 1 (the under-a-sink line) and problem 2 (the WhatsApp thread). A five-van firm running lettings, commercial and bathroom installs might be all six plus the spoke material. We size it to what’s actually hurting.

Saturday survey written up - but the quote is sending itself

Tell us what your week looks like

Send an enquiry - what’s your van count, what mix (emergency, bathroom, lettings, commercial, leak-detection, drainage, water treatment), what’s already on your phone, where the Sunday-evening admin sits. We’ll come back with a sketch of what we’d build and what it would cost. No calendar, no demo to sit through. Email reply, scoped sketch, you decide.

Tell us what your week looks like

Send an enquiry - what you do, what's slowing you down, what you've already tried. We'll come back with a sketch of what we'd build and what it would cost. No calendar, no demo to sit through.

No calendar widgets. Email reply, scoped sketch.

Tell us what's slowing the business down

Email reply, scoped sketch, you decide. No calendar widgets, no demo to sit through.

No calendar widgets. Email reply, scoped sketch.