Custom Apps for Plumbing and Electrical Contractors

Why plumbing and electrical workflows outgrow generic field apps

An electrician pulls permits, waits on inspections, and runs jobs that span days with multiple site visits. Both sell financed replacements where the close happens in the customer’s kitchen.

Generic field platforms handle the visit but not the sale, the permit or the follow up.

For the broader category, see Tepia’s custom field service management software page and the signs that off the shelf field software has stopped fitting.

Trade specific workflows Tepia builds for contractors

Tepia designs each app around the moments where a plumber or electrician either makes money or loses it. The table below lists the workflows most often requested and what the app does at each one.

Your manager adds a new tankless model or updates labor rates in the portal and every technician’s app picks it up on the next sync.

Estimates, options and financing in the customer's home

The highest value screen in a contractor app is the one the technician turns toward the homeowner. The technician adds the problem photo taken moments earlier so the customer sees what they are fixing.

Financing is integrated through your lender’s API where one exists, or through a prequalification link that returns approval status to the job. Either way, the approved amount and terms sit on the estimate so the office can see what was offered and what was chosen. Deposits and final payments run through Stripe or Square with tokenized cards, which keeps your PCI DSS scope to the payment terminal and the processor.

Tepia also tracks option selection rates by technician, which gives owners a coaching tool. If one electrician closes the middle option 60% of the time and another closes it 20% of the time, the difference is visible in the portal rather than guessed at in the Monday meeting.

Permits, inspections and the office side

Permit tracking is where electrical contractors feel the most pain with generic software, because the platform treats a permit as a note rather than a task with a deadline and a dependency. Tepia builds permits as first class records: jurisdiction, permit type, fee, application date, permit number, inspection scheduled, inspection result, and the next visit that cannot happen until the inspection passes.

The office portal, built in React, shows a permit board alongside the dispatch board, so the administrator can see which jobs are waiting on the city and which are waiting on you. Inspection failures create a reinspection task and notify the lead electrician with the inspector’s notes and photos.

If you run on ServiceTitan, Tepia can build the technician and estimate experience as a front end that writes back into it.

How Tepia approaches apps for plumbing and electrical contractors

Tepia follows a six phase process for every contractor app, and the discovery phase is where trade knowledge gets captured.

1. Discovery (typically 1 to 3 months). Tepia rides with your technicians, sits with your office administrator through a permit cycle, and reviews integrations such as QuickBooks, your financing partner and any platform you use today.
2. Design. Design questionnaire, moodboards, a style guide and detailed wireframes for the estimate presentation screen, the technician job flow and the office portal. Sample designs are reviewed with two or three of your technicians.
3. Development and Testing (typically 2 to 6 months). Alpha and Beta schedules with test plans covering functional, user acceptance and nonfunctional testing, including offline estimates and payment flows.
4. Training. Hands on sessions using user story scenarios such as presenting three options with financing to a homeowner, and handling an inspection failure.
5. Launch (about 1 month). Data migration of customers, equipment and open jobs, transition from your old system by crew, and Tepia support reps during the first weeks.

The process is documented in full at tepia.co/process. Tepia’s home improvement work for RELI Solutions, a window and door replacement app, shows the same estimate and financing pattern applied to another trade; see our work.

Frequently asked questions