How to Set Up Deelo for Your Plumbing Business (10-Minute Guide)

Deelo is built so a plumbing shop with no IT staff can run real operations — dispatched jobs, on-site invoicing, automated review requests — within a single afternoon. This guide walks the 10-minute setup wizard plus the next 50-60 minutes of configuration that turns the output into a workflow your techs use the next morning.

By the end you'll have: service catalog imported, pricing book live, customer records with plumbing-specific custom fields, four automation templates running (job-complete review SMS, water heater inspection reminders, overdue invoice reminders, dispatch confirmations), and your first technician trained on the mobile app.

Most plumbing shops with 1-10 trucks run on: a paper schedule, QuickBooks for invoicing, a handful of records in QuickBooks, a generic CRM the owner never finished setting up, and a group text thread for the techs. Jobs come in, somebody writes them down, somebody texts the closest tech, the tech does the work, somebody emails the invoice from QuickBooks two days later.

Common breakdowns: the paper schedule gets misplaced, customers get double-booked, a $1,400 water heater install never gets invoiced, a homeowner who needed a recall is forgotten and goes to a competitor.

The goal isn't to replace what's working with something fancier. It's to operationalize what's currently held together by one person's memory. Shops typically see 10-20% revenue lift in the first 90 days from invoicing every job and recovering missed recurring customers.

On first login, select "Plumbing" as your business type. The wizard asks six questions:

1. Business name and time zone 2. Service area — zip codes or radius 3. Number of trucks — sets up tech records with placeholder names 4. Primary service mix — residential, commercial, new construction, or blend 5. Pricing model — flat-rate, T&M, or hybrid 6. Existing tools to import from — QuickBooks, Jobber, Housecall Pro, or none

The wizard takes about 10 minutes. When it finishes: 60-80 plumbing line items pre-loaded, pricing book with industry defaults, your first tech record, customer fields for plumbing, four automation templates installed but not activated, mobile app ready to download.

The next 50 minutes turns this shell into something that matches how your shop actually runs.

Plumbing customer records need fields a generic CRM doesn't have. Review and tune in CRM > Settings > Custom Fields. Defaults installed:

- Property type: Single-family, townhouse, condo, multi-family, commercial - Water heater type: Gas tank, electric tank, tankless gas, tankless electric, heat pump - Water heater install date and capacity (30, 40, 50, 75, 80 gal or tankless flow rate) - Last drain cleaning date - Sewer line material: PVC, cast iron, clay, Orangeburg, copper, unknown - Sewer line age: Year (older clay/Orangeburg drives recall workflows) - Water main material: Copper, PEX, galvanized, polybutylene, unknown - Septic vs city sewer: Boolean - Backflow preventer present: Boolean - Maintenance plan: None, basic annual, premium quarterly

Hide any that don't apply. Add custom ones for your service area (flood-zone, well-water, lead-pipe). Fields imported from QuickBooks customers will be blank initially and filled in by the tech on the mobile app during the first visit.

The wizard installs industry defaults. Your labor rate, parts markup, and local market all matter. Spend 20-30 minutes editing before going live. Service Catalog > Pricing Book has 8 categories:

1. Diagnostic and service calls — $69-149 trip charge 2. Drain cleaning — kitchen, bathroom, main line, hydro-jetting 3. Water heater service — flush, anode, T&P valve, thermostat 4. Water heater installation — by capacity and fuel type 5. Fixture installation — toilet, faucet, sink, garbage disposal, hose bib 6. Repipe and large jobs — partial repipe, whole-home, sewer line 7. Emergency and after-hours — surcharge percentages 8. Maintenance plans — recurring service pricing

For each line item, edit three things: price, labor hours estimate, flat-rate vs T&M flag.

Shortcut: don't perfectly price all 80 items the first sitting. Get the top 20 right — they cover 80%+ of jobs. Tune the long tail over 30-60 days.

The wizard installed four automations but didn't activate them. Open Automation > Templates > Plumbing.

Template 1: Job-Complete Google Review SMS — Fires when a tech marks a job complete. Paste your Google Place ID, customize the message body, set the trigger window (default 5 minutes).

Template 2: Water Heater Inspection Reminder — Fires 11 months after a water heater install. Email + SMS offering annual inspection and flush. Recovers 15-25% of installed water heaters as paid annual service.

Template 3: Overdue Invoice Reminder — Day 7 (email), day 14 (email + SMS), day 30 (escalates to office phone call).

Template 4: Same-Day Dispatch Confirmation — Fires when a job is dispatched. SMS with tech's name, photo, ETA window, tracking link.

Activate all four. Templates 1, 3, and 4 produce results within the first week; template 2 ramps over 90 days as customers hit their 11-month anniversary.

Pick one tech as the pilot — your most patient, tech-comfortable technician. The crew comes after this tech runs the workflow for 2-3 days.

Walk them through:

1. App download and login — SMS invite with app store link and one-time login code 2. Today's schedule — jobs in dispatch order with addresses, customer, type, notes 3. Job detail — customer history, property notes, pricing book line items, parts, photos 4. On-site — tap "On Site"; before photos; complete work; after photos; review line items; generate invoice; signature; capture payment; tap "Complete" 5. Marking complete — triggers the review SMS and invoice email

Sit with the pilot tech after day 1 for 30 minutes. Common friction points: pricing didn't match a job, a custom field was missing, photo upload was slow on poor cell service.

Fix the friction, then onboard the crew. A crew of 5 onboards in one team breakfast; everyone using the app by lunch.

Connect QuickBooks if that's your accounting platform. Settings > Integrations > QuickBooks Online > authorize. Sync directions:

- Customers: Two-way (default). Either system, both within 5 minutes. - Invoices: Deelo to QuickBooks (default). Payments collected in Deelo post automatically. - Items: One-time import, or skip if you built the pricing book in step 3.

Keep the paper schedule for one more week as a safety net. Most shops are off paper by day 10 and fully on Deelo for invoicing by day 14.

At day 30, pull the Reports dashboard: jobs completed, revenue invoiced, average ticket, on-time invoicing rate, review velocity. Shops following this guide typically see 100% invoicing rate (vs. 80-90% pre-system), 3-5x review velocity, and 12-18% revenue lift in months 2-3 from recovered recurring service.

Deelo's plumbing wizard is built around the workflow of a plumbing shop, not a generic field-service template. The pricing book ships with 60-80 line items by category. Customer fields are plumbing-specific. The four automation templates were built from observed workflows in real plumbing shops.

Deelo is one platform — Field Service, CRM, Invoicing, Automation, Reports, Inventory — all at $19/seat/month. A 4-person shop pays $76/month for the whole stack. No "upgrade to the marketing module," no "add inventory for $40 more."

For shops migrating from QuickBooks-and-paper, Jobber, or Housecall Pro, the import path is built. Customers, invoices, and historical data come over without manual re-entry. Plan a half-day with migration tooling and you'll be live the next morning.