Software for UK lettings plumbers

Two agents. Forty properties. One invoice batch a month. That’s the business. The rest is the tax on running it.

Lettings is a different plumbing business again. You signed a contract with a Suffolk letting agent six months ago - forty properties, monthly retainer, ad-hoc per-job on top - and on paper it’s the most stable cashflow you’ve ever had. In practice, the tenant at 14 Coppice Road texts you direct at 7:30pm about a leaky stopcock; the agent’s property manager emails you the same leak as a job ticket the next morning; the landlord rings you on Tuesday wanting to know why you replaced the cartridge rather than the whole mixer; and your monthly invoice batch is a Friday afternoon copy-paste exercise into Xero, one property at a time. The agent is the customer who pays you. The tenant is the customer who’s actually got a leak. The landlord is the customer whose property it is. None of them know what the other knows.

This page is for plumbers whose week is mostly maintenance retainers for letting agents. If lettings is one part of a mixed week, the main plumbers page is the better fit. Lettings is its own thing because three-way comms is the operational pattern - and the build is shaped around making the same record visible to all three.

What your week actually looks like

• Tenant at 14 Coppice Road texts you direct at 7:30pm; the agent emails the same leak the next morning as a job ticket; the landlord rings you on Tuesday wanting an explanation. None of them know what the others know.
• Forty properties across two agents; the agent’s published payment date is the 28th of the month and missing it means the next month’s payroll run drops you off; missing it twice means the contract goes to the next plumber on the agent’s panel.
• Annual Legionella ACoP L8 risk-assessment refresh on the HMO portfolio you cover for the bigger agent - twelve HMOs, each with the standard tank-and-outlet flushing record the property manager wants on file before the EHO comes round.
• A tenant who’s been waiting three days for a follow-up on a “can’t be that urgent” leaking tap that has, in fact, dripped through the floorboards and is now a ceiling claim.
• The TDS / DPS deposit-deduction dispute where the tenant says the leak was reported in September; you remember a phone call but there’s nothing on the agent’s portal because you took it on your mobile.
• A property the agent took on last week - old WC, lead supply pipe to the kitchen, electric shower unit on a £40-an-hour-flat-tariff supply - and a forty-five-minute walk-through inspection the agent wants written up by Monday.
• A new-tenancy gas-and-water-safety check window you share with the gas engineer who does the CP12 round - and a calendar conflict on three properties this month.
• Out-of-hours expectations the agent’s tenant handbook talks about and the agent doesn’t really pay for; you covering them anyway because the contract renews in November.

This isn’t a job-management software problem. It’s a three-audiences-one-record problem with a 28th-of-the-month cash cycle stapled to it.

Example problems we could solve

1. The three-way comms thread that holds the same record for tenant, agent, and landlord

The “why didn’t you tell me” moment: tenant texts you about a leak. Agent emails the same leak the next morning. Landlord rings on Tuesday. Each of them thinks they’re the only one who told you; none of them know what the others know.

Solved looks like: one ticket, three audiences, three voices. The tenant’s inbound (SMS, WhatsApp, or a tenant-side portal) creates a ticket; the agent’s helpdesk email goes to the same ticket; the landlord’s question gets answered from the same record. Each audience gets the status update they actually want - the tenant gets a tradesman-voice SMS (“booked in for Tuesday between 9 and 11, will text on the way”), the agent gets a structured portal update (“P3 leak, attended Tuesday 09:42, replaced mixer cartridge, materials £18.40, labour 35min, deduct from monthly retainer or per-job invoice - your choice”), the landlord gets a Tuesday-evening digest with the photo-evidence and the next-action recommendation. The “why didn’t you tell me” loop is the source of half the agent-and-landlord friction, and the friction is what breaks contract renewals in November. The system makes all three audiences look at the same record while reading it in their own voice.

2. The monthly batch invoice + agent portal that gets paid on the 28th

The Friday-afternoon-copy-paste moment: Friday afternoon, copy-paste forty property lines into Xero for one agent’s batch; bookkeeper queries one line; the whole batch is held; you don’t get paid on the 28th and the next month’s payroll run drops you off the panel.

Solved looks like: invoices that go out as a single per-agent batch on the 1st with the cost-coding the bookkeeper recognises, the per-property breakdown the property manager expects, the per-property risk-assessment refresh dates surfaced in the agent portal alongside the cost lines, and a one-line query workflow that resolves the “this line doesn’t look right” moment as a five-minute self-service exchange instead of a Tuesday morning lost on the phone. The chase clock starts from the agent’s stated payment date, not the invoice date - day 14 after their payment date is the first chase; day 30 escalates with the statutory-interest line. The longer version lives at Invoice & Dunning Ladder; the lettings-plumber version’s distinct feature is the monthly batch consolidation with risk-assessment dates surfaced alongside cost lines.

3. The HMO Legionella ACoP L8 round, evidenced to the EHO’s expectations

The EHO-came-round moment: twelve HMOs across the bigger agent. Annual L8 risk-assessment refresh, six-monthly tank-and-outlet flushing record, sentinel-outlet temperatures. The EHO came round in March and wanted the evidence pack. You had the data; you didn’t have the pack.

Solved looks like: the L8 cadence per HMO as a tracked round. Per property: the risk-assessment date and reviewer (the competent person - usually you), the six-monthly flushing record with photo evidence of the storage tank lid and the sentinel labels, the calorifier and outlet temperatures with the photo of the digital thermometer reading, the in-scope outlets sampled where bacteriological testing is in scope. The agent-side portal exposes the current compliance state per HMO - “compliant”, “review due in 30 days”, “remediation in progress” - so the property manager can answer the landlord’s question without ringing you. EHO audit pack assembles on demand. The HMO L8 cadence is the duty-holder’s (the landlord’s) responsibility under ACoP L8, but the agent is the operational interface and you’re the competent person they delegate to - the evidence pack is what protects all three.

4. The tenant-facing scheduling that respects the agent’s after-hours line

The 22:15-tenant-text moment: tenant texts at 22:15 - the agent’s handbook says emergencies only out of hours, but the tenant thinks her dripping tap is an emergency. The agent’s emergency-categories (uncontained leak, no hot water in winter with vulnerable occupant, drainage failure with sewage backup) have to run as the triage layer - so the “what counts as an emergency” conversation has a consistent, evidenced answer that protects the agent’s renewal conversation with the landlord.

Solved looks like: the tenant-side inbound goes through the trained agent first. “Dripping tap” gets a same-evening templated reply and a Monday-morning slot booked, with the agent’s tenant-handbook wording quoted back politely. “Water pouring through the ceiling” meets the agent’s emergency-category list, escalates to you in under sixty seconds with the postcode, the property reference, and the photo the tenant just sent. The audit trail of who called out-of-hours for what, by emergency-category, becomes part of the agent’s monthly report - useful when the agent is having the “can we add an out-of-hours line item to the retainer” conversation with the landlord. The longer version lives at Trainable Inbound AI Agent; the lettings-plumber version’s distinct feature is the per-agent emergency-category policy and the out-of-hours audit trail.

5. The property handover walk-through pack the agent uses for marketing

The “iPad-and-WhatsApp” moment: agent takes on a new property. Wants a forty-five-minute plumbing walk-through with photos: stopcock location, supply pipe material, hot-water type, WC age, shower type, kitchen mixer, isolation valves. Written up on Monday. By the time you’ve done it, half the photos are in WhatsApp and the rest are on the iPad.

Solved looks like: a structured walk-through capture flow shaped to the lettings-industry property-condition standard. On the iPad, the engineer steps through the rooms - stopcock location and condition (photo, GPS-tagged), supply pipe material (lead / copper / plastic - material flagged, photo), hot-water type (combi / gravity-fed / unvented cylinder - model + age noted, photo), bathrooms (WC, basin, bath/shower, age band, condition rating), kitchen (mixer, isolation valves, dishwasher connection, washing-machine connection), heating system (boiler model + flue type for the gas engineer’s CP12 round). The walk-through PDF lands in the agent’s hands by 5pm of the same day, branded to the agent’s marketing template where they have one, with the “recommended remediation before letting” shortlist for the landlord. The take-on walk-through is the first impression of you as the plumber and the first piece of marketing material the agent uses to list the property - the speed and polish of the pack is what wins the next property on the agent’s book.

The closest things we’ve already built

• HC Electricaldomestic-and-EICR sparky in the same Suffolk catchment. The EICR-and-letting-agent flow on the electrical side is the closest mirror of the plumbing-side lettings batch invoicing - same agent-portal pattern, same day-31 statutory-interest line, same monthly cash cycle. (Pull-quote held behind the permission checklist; see Hc Electrical.)
• mendbuddythe agent platform behind the tenant-side comms triage and the agent-portal updates. Voice + SMS + WhatsApp + web chat, three different audiences, one record. See Mendbuddy.
• pharmaceutical-analytics.comanalytics dashboard for an analytics consultancy. The agent-side portal - current compliance per HMO, current job state per property, current invoice state per batch - is the same shape. See Pharmaceutical Analytics.

FAQ

Up to the hub

← UK plumbers (main page) · Bathroom-fitter → · Commercial → · Leak detection / trace-and-access → · Landlord CP12 (gas engineers sibling) → · Lettings agents (vertical) →

Tell us about the lettings side

What agents you cover, what property count, what mix (HMOs, standard ASTs, social), where the three-way comms is breaking, what payment date the agent publishes and how often you hit it. Send an enquiry - we’ll come back with a sketch.