Software for UK bathroom-fitters
You spent half a Saturday on the survey. You’re not letting it ghost on Wednesday.
A bathroom install is not the same business as an emergency call-out. You drove an hour each way to survey a £6,800 wet-room in Sudbury on Saturday morning. You drew it up on the iPad over Sunday afternoon. The quote PDF - a fixture list with Bristan and Grohe SKUs, the labour bands, the lead times from Bathstore, the planning note where Part G or Part H applies - went out Sunday evening. By Wednesday lunchtime there’s still no reply. By the following Friday there’s a skip outside the customer’s house and a different van. You did the work for free.
This page is for plumbers whose business is the bigger ticket. If your week is mostly emergency call-outs and ad-hoc fixes, the main plumbers page is the better fit. Bathroom-fitting is its own thing because the cadence is its own thing - a fortnight between survey and decision, four to ten weeks between deposit and handover, three to five stage payments along the way, and a customer who’s browsing Pinterest at 11pm with her husband. The build is shaped around the time between Saturday and Wednesday.
What your week actually looks like
- Half a Saturday measuring up a bathroom; the customer says she’ll “have a think over the weekend”; you sit on the quote on Sunday evening and there’s never the right moment to follow up.
- Three quotes is the modal customer shopping pattern; the cheapest is always £2,400 lower than yours and the work isn’t comparable but the customer can’t tell.
- Bathstore lead times that slip by a fortnight on the shower screen; a half-built first-fix sat waiting on a tap that didn’t ship; the customer who took a week off work for the install rings on day three.
- Part G unvented hot-water work and Part H drainage runs that need building-control notification on some jobs; the paperwork’s an after-thought.
- 50 / 25 / 25 stage payments on the bigger jobs that live in the bookkeeper’s head; the snag-list deposit that gets quietly forgotten and never invoiced.
- A customer who changed the tile spec at first-fix and now disputes the variation charge; “it was a verbal” on both sides.
- The wet-room or steam-room install that needs a CIPHE-level competence sign-off the customer wants to see before she signs the deposit.
- Five-star reviews on Checkatrade that ask the customer to remember a small wet-room install eight weeks after handover - by which point she’s onto a kitchen.
This isn’t a job-management software problem. It’s a fortnight-and-then-six-weeks problem, with a snag-list payment hiding inside it.
Example problems we could solve
1. The Wednesday-nudge that wins the install on Friday
The bathroom-fortnight moment: quoted £6,800 Sunday evening; heard nothing by Wednesday; by Friday the deposit’s gone to someone else and you’re three weekends late noticing.
Solved looks like: every quote becomes a tracked object the moment it leaves the van. The actual decision conversation in a bathroom shop is between Sunday evening and Thursday lunchtime, so the nudge ladder is loud in that window without nagging - a Tuesday-morning “any questions on the Grohe rough-in spec? I priced the Bristan as an alternative if it helps” in your voice, a Thursday “holding the install slot for the week of the 14th until Friday lunchtime”, and the moment a deposit lands the whole ladder hands off to the stage-payment engine in problem 2. The longer version lives at Quote & Chase Ladder; the bathroom-fitter version’s distinct feature is the fortnight cadence, the spec-rationale re-pitch at +7 days, and the deposit-to-stage-payment hand-off.
2. The stage-payment ladder built into the contract
The handshake-deposit moment: “Quoted the wet-room at £18k. Customer said yes on a handshake. I started the strip-out without the deposit. The shower screen lead-time shifted and the customer wouldn’t release the next stage until first-fix was already done.”
Solved looks like: stage payments as a first-class object inside the contract. Deposit (50% on signed contract + Bathstore order placed); first-fix payment (25% on rough-in plumbing complete, with photo-evidence of the soldered joints and the pressure-test reading attached); snag-list payment (25% on a signed snag-list with photos and the building-control notification where Part G or Part H applies). Each stage fires a payment link in your branded style with the snag photos and a one-tap accept. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 wording, the cancellation period, and the deposit-protection language go into the contract template once and stay there; force-majeure clauses cover the Bathstore lead-time slip without you having to argue it. The snag-list payment is the one that always goes missing because it’s small and embarrassing to chase; the engine chases it for you in your tone, not the lawyer’s.
3. The supplier-lead-time tracker that talks to the customer for you
The day-eight moment: shower screen on three-week lead from Bathstore. Slipped to five. Customer rings on day eight. Day twelve. Day fifteen. You’re fitting elsewhere; she thinks you’ve abandoned the job.
Solved looks like: the supplier order is a tracked object on the customer’s portal. Bathstore order, CP Hart order, Victorian Plumbing order, direct-from-Grohe order - each tagged to the install with the expected ship date and the carrier reference. When a supplier shifts a date, the customer gets a templated SMS in your voice on the same day - “Hi Sarah, Bathstore have pushed the screen to the week of the 18th; I’m holding your fit slot for the week after. I’ll let you know the morning of.” The operator-side: a tiny dashboard groups the week’s pending orders by supplier so a Tuesday-morning ten-minute call to Bathstore replaces fifteen scattered ones. Customer trust on a five-week install is built on knowing where her shower screen is - not on the work you’re doing on her actual pipework, which she’ll never see.
4. The variation log that prevents the snag-list argument
The disputed-£640 moment: customer changed the tile mid-install. Verbal. Said yes to the upcharge on the doorstep. At handover she didn’t remember saying yes. Disputed £640.
Solved looks like: variations as first-class records inside the install file. On site, in the WhatsApp thread the install lives in, you send a voice note - “variation: tile changed to the Mandarin Stone Bardiglio at £62/m² extra, additional labour half a day, total +£640” - the voice note transcribes onto the variation log; the customer gets a one-line summary back with a one-tap accept; the accept writes to the contract record and re-totals the stage-payment ladder. Photo-evidence of the new tile clipped against the variation. If the customer doesn’t accept, the variation is held as proposed and the conversation has a paper trail. The variation conversation usually happens on the doorstep mid-install when both parties are tired; the system catches it in the moment and turns it into something signed, in seconds.
5. The snag-handover pack and the eight-weeks-later review nudge
The forgotten-review moment: handover Friday. Customer’s delighted. You forget to ask her for the review. By the time you remember, she’s on holiday and then onto a kitchen and you never get it. Eighteen reviews to your competitor’s eighty-five.
Solved looks like: the handover is a routine, not a memory test. At handover, a snag-list-walk runs from a tablet - every fixture ticked, every photo attached, every commissioning value recorded for the unvented cylinder and the pressure test where Part G applies. The pack lands in the customer’s email and her portal at the moment you close the door. Ninety minutes later the Google + Checkatrade + Houzz review SMS goes out - “Hi Sarah, hope the new bathroom’s everything you wanted. If you’ve a minute, a quick review here helps me massively” - with a one-tap link. Eight weeks later, a softer cadence kicks off - a photo of the finished bathroom in her actual life, a cleaning-care reminder for the brassware, an offer to come back for the snag-revisit if anything’s loosened. Bathrooms are a one-bathroom-every-fifteen-years sale; the review and the referral now are what drive the next two installs.
The closest things we’ve already built
- HC Electricaldifferent trade, same install-side rhythm: surveys, quotes, scheduled installs (EV chargers, consumer-unit upgrades, full rewires), handover, review chase. The trade-chassis shape this spoke runs on. (Pull-quote and final-£ held until the permission checklist clears; see Hc Electrical.)
- mendbuddythe agent platform behind the Saturday-survey conversation and the Wednesday nudge. Trained on your fixture list, your supplier list, and your voice. See Mendbuddy.
- mendmyiservice-plus-retail under one roof; same pattern a bathroom-fitter who’s also a Bathstore-account holder uses, where the product side sits underneath the service quote. See Mendmyi.
FAQ
Will this replace Tradify / ServiceM8 for the install side?
Where they’re working, no. The bit that breaks on bathroom installs is the fortnight between quote and decision and the four-to-ten weeks between deposit and handover - neither of which generic job apps shape around. We hook into Tradify’s job entry; the nudge ladder, the stage payments, the variation log, and the handover pack run alongside.
Building Regs Part G unvented cylinders and Part H drainage - will you submit notifications for me?
No. Part G and Part H notifications go through the building control body of your choice (LABC or an approved inspector); the competent-person register is yours. We build the reminder, the photo set, and the commissioning record for the unvented cylinder so the notification week isn’t a scramble. You still sign and submit.
My customers won’t pay a 50% deposit. Can the ladder be tuned?
Yes. 30 / 40 / 30 is common; some bathroom-fitters run 25 / 25 / 25 / 25 across the four phases of a wet-room install. The ladder is a contract template; we set it once and tune it per customer where the conversation needs it.
Can the system handle a wet-room with a steam unit?
Yes. The fixture list and the lead-time tracker handle bespoke items including steam units, wet-room formers, vanity inserts, and accessible adaptations. The commissioning record extends to the steam-unit certification and the wet-room tanking sign-off.
Will the agent quote on my behalf?
No. The agent triages - qualifies the enquiry, books the survey, sends the brochure, nudges on the open quote. Quotes are yours to send and sign. The line between helpful triage and committing the firm to a number stays clearly on the human side.
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Tell us about the installs you take
What’s your average ticket, what’s the supplier mix (Bathstore, CP Hart, Victorian Plumbing, direct-from-Grohe), where the install-side admin sits today, and how many quotes a month go silent on you. Send an enquiry - we’ll come back with a sketch.