Estimating automation for plumbers and electricians: follow-up, financing and unsold-estimate recovery
You quoted the repipe, or the service change, or the panel upgrade with an EV charger on it. The homeowner said they'd think about it, and nobody rang back.
What changes for your sales desk
3 things that decide this
- 01Every unsold estimate gets chased on a schedule you set, by text and by email, with the options and the price attached so the homeowner doesn't have to go looking.
- 02Financing gets offered twice on the jobs where it decides the sale: the repipe, the sewer line, the water heater, the panel upgrade and the service change.
- 03Your estimator opens a callback list each morning instead of a status filter nobody built, and the PO for a sold job gets raised the day it sells rather than the week the crew needs it.
From the quote to the sold job and the PO, and what each step writes back
These are the three stations this page owns. The hub walks the rest, from the first ring through to the renewal.
Station 01 · The options go out
- Today
- Your estimator writes the price on a pad, promises to email it tonight, and it goes out on Thursday with one number on it and no financing mentioned.
- What we automate
- Good-better-best options go out by text and email while your tech is still on site, priced off your flat-rate book, with a financing link on the jobs where it matters.
- What stays human
- Your estimator sets the price and picks the options. We only make sure they land the same day and read the same way every time.
Writes to ServiceTitanEstimate created with options and status; the text is logged on the customer.
Station 02 · The three days where the job goes cold
- Today
- That estimate sits in a status your office never filters by, and by the time anyone thinks about it the homeowner has already had two other plumbers out.
- What we automate
- Follow-ups fire off the estimate status: a text at the interval you set, a financing reminder on the big jobs, a nudge asking what changed, and a callback list on the desk each morning with the notes attached.
- What stays human
- Your estimator still makes the call and still reads the room. We just make sure the list is on the desk at 8am instead of buried three screens deep.
Writes to ServiceTitanEstimate status, follow-up notes and a task on the estimator's board.
Station 03 · Sold, and the PO nobody raised
- Today
- Trucks get restocked from memory, and the water heater or the panel gets ordered the week the crew needs it. Reconciling sold against ordered against received is a Friday afternoon with a printout.
- What we automate
- A PO raised off the sold estimate, truck stock by job type, and one view of what was sold, what was ordered, what arrived and what's still missing.
- What stays human
- Your purchasing decisions stay yours. Nobody's buying a water heater because software thought it should.
Writes to ServiceTitanPO and material notes on the job; equipment record updated.
Every station writes to your board of record, whatever it is. On Service Fusion, an older FSM, a spreadsheet or a system you had built years ago, the stations stay the same and only the write-back changes.
Four things that recover work your desk has no time to chase
Unsold-estimate follow-up on a schedule
Day one a text with the options. Day three a nudge that asks what changed. Day seven a financing reminder if the job is big enough to need one. All of it fires off the estimate status in your own system, and all of it stops the moment the homeowner replies or books.
Financing presented where it decides the sale
A repipe, a sewer line, a water heater, a service change or a panel upgrade with an EV charger on it are the jobs where a monthly number closes the deal. The link goes out with the options and once more in the follow-up, and the estimate records whether it was opened.
The electrical estimate path, priced its own way
Electrical estimating is a different job from plumbing. Service changes, panel upgrades, EV charger circuits and small commercial work get their own option sets, their own material lists off the flat-rate book, and their own permit-and-inspection notes on the estimate before it goes out.
Invoicing, POs and what actually arrived
Invoice at close-out, card retried on failure, a polite text after seven days. And on the buying side, a PO off the sold estimate with sold against ordered against received in one view, so your office spots the gap before the crew does.
Your platform's estimating is fine. The follow-up is the part nobody built.
Most contractors we talk to have decent estimating already. Options get built, prices come off a flat-rate book, and the proposal looks professional. What's missing sits in the days afterwards: no sequence, no financing re-offer, no morning list, and an unsold backlog that isn't real because nothing ever gets marked closed-lost.
So we build the follow-up rather than a new estimating tool, and we build it on top of the system you run. On Housecall Pro and Jobber, estimate and quote status are exposed through public APIs, so a status change can trigger the sequence directly. ServiceTitan needs API access through its developer program and your own tenant credentials, and we confirm exactly what your account exposes during the audit, before anyone estimates a build. Running Service Fusion, an older FSM, a spreadsheet or something you had built years ago? We write into that instead.
- 01Follow-up triggered by the estimate status you already set, not by a second list somebody has to maintain.
- 02Closed-lost discipline, so your backlog number means something and your estimator isn't chasing ghosts.
- 03Financing links from your own provider. We never put a price or a rate in front of a customer that you didn't set.
Life safety is a hard rule in the triage table, not a judgement the model makes
Before anyone writes a prompt we write the escalation table with you, and it's the first thing your dispatcher reads. A gas smell, a sparking panel, water running into a live panel or an outlet, a carbon monoxide alarm: those calls go straight to a person, and where it applies the line tells the caller what to do right now. Shut the main. Get out of the house. Don't touch the panel. Then it rings your on-call tech and stays on the line until somebody picks up.
Everything else is just as plain, and we put it in writing before the build starts. No AI on your line ever tells a caller that a system is safe, that gas has cleared or that a panel can be re-energised: that call belongs to a licensed plumber or electrician standing in front of it. Licensed work stays licensed, permits and inspections stay in your name, and the software only tracks whether they've been pulled and booked. Every call is recorded, callers are told so at the top, and texting runs on the opt-in your office already collects.
- 01Gas, sparking, water into electrics and CO alarms escalate to a human before the caller finishes the sentence.
- 02No AI declares a system safe or a panel clear. Diagnosis and sign-off stay with your licensed tech.
- 03Nothing goes out to a customer that your estimator hasn't priced. The automation sends, reminds and records; the number is always yours.
“They will treat your vision like their own and build it that way.”
Ron Klabunde · Founder, SmartREI ↗
Some of the systems we have shipped
- AuditFree. We read your open estimate list, your closed-lost rate and last month's follow-up activity.
- DiagnoseWe map the booking path into your board and sit with your dispatcher and your office manager for an afternoon.
- BuildFixed price from the diagnostic. Tested on your real calls, your real jobs and your own flat-rate book.
- RunMonitoring, a named engineer, and the first two months of maintenance free.
Best fit: five or more trucks, somebody selling replacement work, and a platform you've outgrown in places. Not a fit: a one-truck owner-operator quoting three jobs a week. You can stop after any stage; the audit report is yours either way.
Before you book
01Does this replace our estimating software?+
No. You keep pricing off your flat-rate book in the system your estimators already know. We build the layer that fires the follow-up, re-offers the financing and puts the morning callback list on the desk, and we only build a custom estimating tool where your platform genuinely can't do what you need.
02Will it text customers without us knowing?+
It sends what you approved, in the sequence you set, and every message is logged against the estimate so your office can read the thread. Texting runs on the opt-in your office already collects, with a stop word your desk can see. Nothing goes out with a price your estimator didn't set.
03Does it handle electrical estimates as well as plumbing?+
Yes, and they get their own path, because a service change is not a water heater. Panel upgrades, EV charger circuits, rewires and small commercial work get their own option sets, their own material lists and their own permit notes on the estimate. If you run both trades, the sequence and the wording change with the job type.
04What about financing?+
We present your provider's link, twice: once with the options, once in the follow-up on the jobs big enough to need it. The estimate records whether it was opened, so your estimator can see who's price-sensitive rather than guessing. We never set a rate or a payment, because that belongs to you and your provider.
05How does the PO side work?+
A sold estimate raises the PO, so the water heater or the panel gets ordered the day it sells rather than the week the crew needs it. Then your office gets one view of sold against ordered against received, and a delayed item stalls the install-ready checklist and nudges the scheduler at the same time.
06Is this the whole of what you do for plumbing and electrical contractors?+
No, it's the sales end of the chain. In front of it we build the phone layer that answers and triages the call. Behind it we build dispatch, close-out QA, job costing that has drive time and callbacks in it, and memberships that renew themselves. Our hub page walks the whole thing.
A senior engineer, not a sales rep
Abdul Basit founded Hashlogics in 2017, and the team runs from Lahore with a US LLC. Clients rate the work 5.0 on Clutch, and in 2026 it was named Best AI-Native Software House of the Year at TechNova.
Your audit call is with an engineer who has read estimate backlogs and follow-up logs like yours, and it isn't a slide deck. Bring last month's open estimates and your closed-lost rate if you have them, and we'll work from those.
- NDA before the first conversation.
- No pitch on the call. A report you could hand to another firm.
- Fixed price after the diagnostic, so the number isn't a guess.
Go deeper
- AI, automation and custom software for plumbing and electrical contractors →The whole chain, from the first ring to the renewal.
- Dispatch and field automation →What happens to a job once the estimate is sold.
- Plumbing business software and reporting →Job costing, A/R and the flat-rate book behind the price.
- Electrical contractors →Service changes, panels and EV chargers, in the electrician's words.
- How to recover unsold plumbing and electrical estimates →The follow-up sequence, day by day, and what automates.
- AI voice agents for plumbers and electricians →The call that produced the estimate in the first place.
- The ServiceTitan API: what a real integration involves →Access model, write-backs, and what breaks.
- Housecall Pro and Jobber integrations →What's native, what's Zapier, what needs a build.
- Business process automation →The service behind this page, across every industry we build for.
