Plumbers, Home Service Pros Turn To Apps for Help Growing Business

Throughout the pandemic, business survival — especially small business survival — has increasingly depended on how well businesses have been able to manage the great digital shift.

The pivot toward running back-office operations and taking payments online has not been universal.

More than other verticals, home services — think plumbing repair or lawn services, for example — are still holdouts, relying on paper checks or even cash payments.

In the latest “Next Three Years” installment, Jobber Director of FinTech Laura Collinson told Karen Webster that these smallest of small firms are finding increasing value in managing their workflows and cash flows through digital apps.

The pain points are fully evident, said Collinson, as inefficiencies continue to hit contractors’ bottom lines.

“It takes a lot of time just to keep track” of scheduling, workflows, invoices and payments, she said. While we’ve been paying a large swath of service industries, from restaurants to fitness studios, with cards (and contactless options) for years, home services firms have been relatively slow to adapt, having to rely on a range of apps and software programs to tackle the complexities of running a business piecemeal.

But consumers’ shifting expectations are giving such small businesses the impetus to modernize, Collinson said.

A rapidly growing number of younger, more digitally savvy homeowners want to interact with their electricians, plumbers and even dog walkers across digital channels. And while customers may have been focused on only doing essential repairs during the initial throes of the pandemic, demand for other services like residential cleaning has started to accelerate.

“Across many of these sectors, we’ve seen an acceleration of three to five years, measured in the adoption of digital tools,” said Collinson. “A lot of what’s ‘stuck’ are the behaviors that were ingrained on the consumer side” as so much commerce has gone online. Owners of small businesses are following suit.

FinTech is just emerging in home services. But these smaller operations — typically staffed by three or four individuals — need help managing their cash flow, finances and the jobs themselves, without juggling a range of solutions.

In doing so, said Collinson, the small companies, moving beyond analog processes, join the connected economy.

Business Management-as-a-Service

In essence, Jobber operates a field services/business management Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for small home service businesses. Collinson said it frees customers from the confines of manual and paper-based processes, keeping track of everything in one place and automating day-to-day operations.

She said Jobber has helped more than 100,000 home service professionals serve more than 12 million households in more than 47 countries.

The platform itself helps companies tackle tasks spanning scheduling, invoicing, customer relationship management, card processing/online payments, reporting and consumer and business financing.

As the pandemic hit economies hard, she said, the company already had contactless functionality embedded in its platform, enabling enterprises and customers to interact digitally and contractors to get paid. Last year, the company embedded funding into its offerings, working with Stripe Capital to bring online financing and instant payouts to give home services working capital if they need it.

The instant payouts dramatically shorten the time it takes digital payments to settle in the provider’s bank account (from days to seconds), Collinson said. The funding option expands Jobber’s relationship with Stripe, which had already been the payment engine for Jobber Payments. In term of mechanics, Jobber’s Card Reader allows enterprises to take credit and debit payments in person, onsite at a job.

With a nod to the small business financing, Collinson noted that cash flow in the sector can be highly unpredictable and seasonal, so access to working capital can be critical for managing day-to-day operations (borrowers repay the loans as a percentage of revenues).

The company is broadening its offerings to include online tipping — a functionality that is in beta testing. That feature will make it easier for the companies themselves to attract, retain and motivate staff amid the ongoing labor shortage, she said.

“Tipping is a win-win here because your employees feel great and the [end] customers get even better as there is an ‘extra’ layer of care being put into the job,” she told Webster.

Describing the simplified workflow Jobber enables, Collinson noted that customers can receive a quote from a home services provider and with a couple of clicks can pay a quote deposit or apply for financing from buy now, pay later (BNPL) provider Wisetack (in partnership with Jobber) — which in turn ensures that the services provider captures the job and its associated revenues.

“We’re providing a single operating system where a business can access everything they need without a complicated tech stack or an analog set of processes,” said Collinson.