Plumbing company operations audit The sewer estimate got one call. Then nothing. We find where the money leaks.

Missed calls matter, and the Review counts them. But some of the largest open dollars can already be inside the building: a tech-generated lead, priced with good-better-best options, from a homeowner who let the truck in. The drain clear is the door; the camera finding is the ticket.

A plumbing estimate may be written mid-service-call by a tech already due at the next address. Unless the process names a follow-up owner, nobody may be assigned the call a week later.

So “unsold” in the software means undecided, not lost, and undecided needs a date and a name. The day-2, day-7 and day-14 cadence written up for HVAC estimates (linked below) transfers to sewer and repipe estimates almost line for line. What plumbing adds is the owner question: a week later, the tech who wrote the estimate may be on another call, so the follow-up needs a name that is not the tech’s.

Pull every estimate from the last 90 days that is still open: the Follow Up screen in ServiceTitan, estimates sent and not approved in Housecall Pro, quotes awaiting response in Jobber, or the paper copies. Keep the sewer, repipe, water-heater and slab-leak estimates and ask two questions of each: is there a follow-up date, and is there a recorded outcome with a reason?

A blank does not prove nobody called. It means any follow-up happened from memory and left no trace, so the rate at which estimates quietly die cannot be counted. That invisibility is the finding.

• One rule at the kitchen table: the job is not closed until the estimate carries a follow-up date, in a field the software already has or on the paper copy.

• Every Monday, one named person already on staff, the service manager or the office manager, works the open list and gives each estimate an owner and a date.

• No estimate ends in silence: each one closes as won, lost (to whom, if known) or declined, with a reason.

A name, not a hire, and no new software. After four Mondays there is a count that did not exist before.

The estimate assumes a footage; the trench decides it. When the extra twenty feet or the restoration is agreed verbally to keep the crew moving, the signed estimate and the final invoice drift apart, and no change order shows the difference. Permit fees paid on the company card are a countable line: the card statement against the invoice, job by job.

“Completed” and “invoiced” are two different days on a sewer job waiting for the city inspection, and on any property-manager work order that needs its PO number, the not-to-exceed amount and photos before the portal accepts it. Truck stock used on site and never added to the ticket leaves as margin in the van.

Then the margin. A 30-day drain guarantee turns a re-clear into a free truck roll that still carries a plumber’s wage: the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters at $30.67 an hour in May 2025, before the truck, the fuel and the paying call the slot could have held. When re-clears are not charged to the first visit and the pricebook trails supply-house costs, the monthly average hides which work earns.

In the Census Bureau’s business counts, plumbing shares one industry code with heating and air conditioning: 107,004 employer firms for 2022, and 39,283 of them with enterprise receipts of $1 million or more. The Review is written for the plumbing companies inside that second number: multi-truck service and drain-and-sewer shops, often with an excavation crew and a few property-manager accounts. For a company already in a coaching program such as Nexstar, CertainPath or Breakthrough Academy, the Review is a different job: the program teaches an operating system over time, and the two-week count shows where in this company’s own records the coaching should land first.

Tools come after the numbers, and only where a leak justifies them. A person still decides every price and every message.

• A follow-up date and owner on every repipe, sewer or water-heater estimate the day it is presented

• A photo-and-price step for extra work found under the slab or behind the wall, approved by the customer before the crew continues

• A closeout trigger that sends the invoice when the job is marked complete, not when the paperwork catches up

• AI-assisted call summaries into the booking record and draft follow-up texts, reviewed by dispatch before they go out

We do not promise a result. These are the measures the findings are written in, so the shop can track them after the Review.

• Big-ticket estimates with a follow-up date, and the close rate on them

• Extra work priced and approved before it was done, as a share of all field changes

• Days from job completion to invoice

• Calls unanswered at peak and called back the same day

• Drain and sewer jobs that ended in a camera finding with no quote sent

• The Census Bureau counted 107,004 employer firms in plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contracting (NAICS 238220) for 2022; 39,283 of them had enterprise receipts of $1 million or more. The industry code does not separate plumbing from HVAC.

  Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses 2022, receipts-size table (us_6digitnaics_rcptsize_2022.xlsx)

• The median wage for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters was $30.67 per hour ($63,800 a year) in May 2025; at plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors the median was $63,010 a year.

  Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters, 2025

• Most plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters work full time, including nights and weekends, and they are often on call to handle emergencies.

  Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters, 2025