Discover the Best Plumber Bill Format for Technical Support

Plumber bill format for Technical Support

morning guys um today i'm doing a little bit of a hopefully going to help help someone maybe the smaller plumbers just showing them how to maybe use a quote and invoicing all in one on excel um so we i've called it the plumber's quotes and invoice spreadsheet and it i'm going to show it to you now but the first thing we need to just discuss for a second is tips to continue you prevent curve at 19. so if you could just read there you must obviously always wear a mask in public wash your hands with soap or alcohol based sanitizer avoid touching your eyes nose and throat from eyes nose and mouth with unwashed hands avoid close contact with people who are sick cover your cough or sneeze with a flexed elbow or tissue then throw the tissue in the bin and clean and disinfect frequently used surfaces and objects right and now we get onto our my spreadsheet so when i was planning one of one of my builders said to me that he wants to know where he is all the time on the job from an amount outstanding and exactly what he's paying for so i developed the spreadsheet and i use that um with his with his guidance we use it quite a lot and uh i think that if if you're a smaller plumber this might be very useful for you and let me just go through a little bit about how we do it so what we do is obviously we would write in all our companies details contact details emails attention client to attention mrs jones whoever it is and we would put the job description plumbing in main bathroom or redo house or or build center whatever it is and then i would put everything in that we were going to do for the job so there would be pvc and ground and i'll also stipulate less than one meter deep quantity is 55 meters and there's a cost guys please don't use these costs because i've sucked them out of the sky and if you use these costs you're going to be very wrong so you guys need to actually go through it and work out what these things cost and i try and give as much detail as possible on the spreadsheet so that when it comes to doing the job your customer knows exactly what to expect and the cost and also i try and break it up one of the things that plumbers love to do is is quote per point but if you a a hans gray shower shower mixer that has three r boxes with diverters and extra showers and things like that there's no way that thing can cost you the same to as a as a low-level toilet for instance so again i've if you look at this look at this spreadsheet we've quoted everything in what we're doing so if you look here we've put hot and cold water supply two two main bathroom shower they're putting two showers in like maybe two thousand three hundred and a shower whereas the bath because it's an easier installation it's only 1800 and the basin is only 1200 round of basin and ebitda again is only 1200 because it's just a hot and cold and then we've also included things like include or supply hot and cold water from geezer to main bathroom because a lot of builders say how much are you per point but per point is not a good way to quote because things things happen and they ask you then oh you 2 000 a point please go and put a a prep bowl in the bra area which is which is 30 meters from all the other plumbing and you're going to be you're going to be pouring money down the drain to do that so we like to say we we suggest you give as much information as possible when you're quoting and that is also then easy to come back to and say well you know we we charged you 1200 round basin but we charged you 2 000 around a shower because there was more work maybe they want a shower channel for instance which is a lot more work than putting in a shower trap and those are things that as a plumber you must look at and make sure that you are allowing enough time and materials to those things because there's a there's a vast difference in what you're supplying and what you're installing or what the customers are playing and what you're installing on certain parts of the job maybe it's upstairs maybe you've got a call through a floor and if you're going to call to a floor i would have then written to call 150 mil or 150 more waste pipe and i would give them a price per core hole so that when you come to invoice we get them to be paying for everything and and making sure we get paid correctly this way also if we don't do something the price is still there they can see how much it would have cost if you wanted to do it and you'll see now when we move on to the next things how this all comes together to make it very easy for you to invoice to check that you're you're not missing anything on site and to check your customer always is aware of where they are on the project so obviously this would be your quote with your date and everything and then we also have a lot of notes and guys again the more notes you have the less hassle it is in time with people saying oh but you didn't tell me and a couple of things that i would i would seriously suggest you put in your notes are things like hand-pickable soil less than one meter deep often plumbers get caught out when they suddenly now got a drain to injure rock that they didn't know was there or they've got to go to three meters deep and that requires shoring and proper trenching because they didn't realize or because nobody could tell on site that there was a connection that was too deep or something to that effect also other things just to cover yourself and to help yourself things like give us some notice to pipes before concrete is poured a lot of a lot of people a lot of builders push you and they they finish the deck at three o'clock on thursday and that's how we point the concrete tomorrow at 8 o'clock if you put it in here yes you can be flexible but you've at least told the guy i need time to my parts make an allowance for me to my parts let's do that and yeah i mean there are a whole lot of things so you'll be able to see that we've written a couple of things there obviously one of the big ones is all work to be created to the relevant sand standard but you can see as you go through here there are a couple of notes i'm sure other plumbers will add more notes um maybe you want to fill in the relevant essay sand standard that you actually want to be looking to on some things i wouldn't over complicate it on others i would i would be very panickity about and also guys the validity of a quote 14 days or 30 days is probably as long as you want um i know at the moment the pvc prices are crazy because of people backing to get old materials and things like that so if there was a lot of pvc on this job i might write something to the fact that um subject to availability of uh materials or something like that just to say you covered but if we get the spreadsheet and you and you do it like this everything is there you've got your quantities if something changes it's simple to adjust your quantity your customer has in effect already accepted your price per meter so if the drain went from 55 to 110 meters whatever it is he's already accepted 185 so it becomes difficult for him to say oh but you're much more expensive the other that's nice about a quote like this is if something gets changed and something gets removed you haven't just given him a price of 59 000 rand for the job he now knows that if they take off a pvc guardian gunny top he's only going to save 900 although your quote is only going to change by 900 grand and it's not open for negotiation where you can turn around because if you give them a price at the end of the job or just to complete the job he can turn around and say but the gutty should be worth three thousand rounds i didn't realize you're only gonna charge me 900 foot this way everything is documented all the values are documented and it's very open and honest for the for the for the customer to see and then when we come to the invoice we've now we've now been given the go ahead on the job and the customer said go ahead and we've worked on the job a little bit and we go to invoice number one and we start with the invoice and what i like to do is i like to put percentage complete and you can go through the job with your quantities available with your homeowner and say you can see we dug the ground it's the pvc parts installed but we haven't had it inspected by the by the um building control officer and we haven't we haven't refilled the trench and maybe we haven't put rotting eyes on so we 25 complete that way you also get some money for what you've done because one of the other things is you want to be managing your cash flow all the time as a plumber so there's no point in digging a hole and and you've got a lot of a lot of your money in the ground and you're not getting any money back because you're not wanting to invoice or you can't invoice until it's complete this way you can say to the homeowner or the or the contractor but look i've got i've dug the hole and i've put the pvc pipe in so we're 25 complete and he'll say that's that's a fair deal and that takes the 25 of the value and it automatically works it out for you and then you can say well i've connected the sir at the boundary so that's 100 and then i've installed the concrete gully top well i've installed the galley but i haven't put the concrete gutter top on so i get 40 and you can go through it i've i've put in a couple of numbers here and i can say that you know we we've got the part to the vein stack but we haven't got it done so there's 50 percent and you can see that especially on the on the on the hot and cold water supply we can show them that we've we've put the pipes in the wall and the water's on so we think that we entitled to 50 of the of the value of that sanitary fitting installation because everything's done and we're waiting for the toilet to complete now and when he he puts the tiles on we can fit the toilet and we can fit the shower mixers and roses and the bath and things like that but basically 50 of the job is done and 50 or i'd like to get 50 of my money and this way you as a plumber on are not financing the job for months and months and your customer also knows where he is and as a customer you can look at and say well if my plumber disappears tomorrow i've actually only paid him for where he is i haven't paid him extra i'm not feeling uncomfortable then my plumber is going to do a runner i'm feeling comfortable this is the amount of work we've done and if you walk through the job with your with your customer and agree on these percentages it becomes very easy we haven't put the water pipe in yet because we're on a temporary supply we haven't installed the geezer and the pressure reducing valves but that's where we are on the job and then but using the percentage it calculates automatically the spreadsheet the value and that gives us the subtotal and then how much money is due after the end of the day and we also leave their balance of project outstanding so our customer knows that this whole 44 000 rand is you from what the original quote was then what happens is maybe your customer says we need some extras we want a couple of garden taps we we forgot we needed a site toilet and we need a sprinkler takeoff valve and we want to a base or replace the base in the toilet whatever it is in the guest bathroom so you add those as extras to your job and a week late or two weeks later you come along and you now added the extras in and this all comes in here and you can change the percentages but basically at the end of the day this all ties up it tells you still what the balance outstanding is it tells you what customer paid on the last invoice and know what the balance due is today and then your customer hopefully pays you then we come along and the customer says you know what i actually want you to supply the shower mixers and arms or whatever else and the toilet and again i've just used a couple of examples and those are the prices you can offer the customer and again please don't use these prices guys because if if you're buying basin mixes for these prices and shower arms and roses for these prices um you you're probably not getting them from a reputable supplier because these are made up prices but as you can see now we've got all the things that the customers ask you supply we've put the quantity and cost in and when we get to invoice three they get added in and because we've supplied them from start they're 100 and boom that gets added in and it all comes in and there's the balance again balance of project outstanding is for 39 000 bucks that's the balance it's you today and that's a total paid from invoice one invoice two and that gives you total value of job then we come along and we have extras three or extras two and again this is this is now a couple of things the the part drilled by the in the shower by the doorman um installed a washing machine and we installed a fountain for the customer those get added in and at all times you can see their records you the customer can go back and say but what what's this and you can say but here it is it was invoice one it was on your extras quote and at all times you can share the spreadsheet with your customer and your customer can see exactly where you are on the job and you as a plumber know exactly where you are on the job so that your your your your costs are transparent your customer knows exactly what he what he still has outstanding and you know when you go to do your budget for the month if i finish off that job next week there's a whole lot of money outstanding because all of those are at 50 and i know that there's a balance of 39 000 rand i'll stay on the project so when we finish in two weeks time i can expect to get 39 000 around into my business which you'll pay for my bucky or pay the salaries and i can see also whether i've made money on this job and i can learn from this job for next time and say you know what some of these things take a long time to get paid for i must increase because if you look from from invoice one until invoice three i haven't earned any more money because i put the cop apart on the wall but the um the toilet took too long and the plaster took too long so i must remember next time that maybe i must try and invoice sixty percent for for copper pipe with things on the walls or increase the value of of what i'm charging for these things because i know that i'm gonna have to wait three or four months to get paid from when i've installed the water parks whereas other things i get paid for very quickly so maybe we can make a little bit of a saving on those things and increase the cost on the other things so that you can manage your cash flow as a plumber managing cash flows as a plumber is a is a very challenging job to get it right all the time and we would like to help you by using something like the spreadsheet that all the time you know where you are with cash flow you know what budgets you can have for the end of the month and where you are on the job and again with this spreadsheet it also means you as a plumber are safe that if if you've done 50 of work and the gas doesn't want to pay you any more at least you know where you are from a lost point of view or if you need to walk away from the job you've got you've got your money and you basically covered yes maybe you don't have your profit but you covered from most of the payments and if the guy stops paying you you you everything's on the invoice so you know straight away from invoice one if he doesn't pay you we've only will not be only lost we've lost that much and again it we we spreading the risk over the two weekly draw or the monthly draw whatever it is for for the small jobs that you know where you are all the time and because you're invoicing reasonably often and reasonably accurately you as a plumber are less exposed to risk and then hopefully when we finish we add the extras in and when we get to invoice maybe invoice 4 we have all the sorry we should have put a invoice through invoice 4 there and again we'll have all the things there and we're now 100 complete on everything everything as you can see is 100 complete the maths is done for us and there's our total um the whole project came to a hundred twenty six thousand round we came to 126 000 exactly as per the contract and we've got all our payments here there was invoice one invoice two invoice through which gave us total paid for the job which they paid a 73 000 round of it so far and if you take 126 and your minus 73 000 there's the formula it gives you the 536 167 and again if we go here and this is also all got a formula we say 126 less 73 is what they've paid us and that's what's outstanding and there's a balance of the project so we know from a plumbing point of view everything we've added and put in is correct here and it's been paid for or will be paid for when we send this last bit in and as you can see at all times your customer knows exactly where he is on this job what's going on and if anything changes you can add it straight away into the extras or the sandwich columns and you and your customer everything's transparent and that's what we want to do with the with this sort of a spreadsheet and again this th this can become we we could be going up to invoice 10 or 12 here and depending on the length of the project and how big the project is you can you can work with this i can tell you that i worked with a couple of quantity surveyors on this on with this sort of a spreadsheet and they all like the fact they could see exactly where they were all the time with the percentage done and it made everybody comfortable so that's that's what our little spreadsheet does i'm i'm going to share the spreadsheet on on the website so plumbers will be able to download it but please guys as i say the more um detail and the more explanations you can do the better for your customer and these costs you need to work out yourself guys because if you use these costs on some things you might get very rich but on other things i think you might get very poor so please guys just don't don't use these costs they were for explanation only but hopefully this is going to make it a little bit easier for when you're doing a couple of jobs that you can have everything available and visible for your customer thank you