A plumbing company’s money is concentrated in a handful of tools that everyone needs and nobody owns. The press gun and its jaw sets, the drain camera, the pipe threader, the freeze kit, the jetter - each costs more than a van full of hand tools, each is shared across every crew, and each spends its life being the thing someone is driving across town to fetch. Meanwhile the vans themselves quietly absorb whatever fits through the back doors. This guide covers the two-tier system that keeps a plumbing firm’s kit accounted for: personal van stock and the shared pool, tracked differently because they fail differently.
What you will learn
- Two tiers of plumbing kit
- Running the shared pool
- Van kits, site boxes, and the battery problem
- What to track and what to count
- Workflows for a trade that works wet
- The first week
- FAQ
Two tiers of plumbing kit
Plumbing firms lose equipment in two distinct ways, and a single policy handles neither.
Van stock drifts. Each plumber’s van fills with tools over years - some issued, some inherited, some borrowed and naturalised. Nobody can say what a given van should contain, so nobody can say what is missing from it. The fix is kitting: a defined standard kit per van, checked out to the plumber who runs it, audited by a scan-through a few times a year.
Pool tools vanish into jobs. The drain camera goes out Monday for a survey, the survey runs over, and by Thursday the camera has been in three vans and a customer’s hallway. The fix is the equipment pool: expensive shared tools are booked out per job with a due date, and the register always shows who has each one and when it comes back.
Two tiers, one register, one rule shared between them: every tool has exactly one current holder.
Running the shared pool
The pool is small but carries most of the replacement cost:
- Press tools and jaw sets. Label the gun; run the jaws as a kitted case that travels with it. A missing jaw set is invisible until the day its size is needed.
- Drain cameras and locators. The classic contested asset. Checkout per job, due date, condition on return - reels and camera heads take damage that nobody mentions until it is someone else’s problem.
- Pipe threaders and roll groovers. Heavy, occasional, and exactly the kind of tool that lives “wherever it was last used”.
- Jetters, freeze kits, core drills, test pumps. Out for a day, back for a week, and worth tracking the service history on as much as the location.
The habit that makes the pool work is the weekly look at the overdue list. A camera one day overdue is a phone call; a camera one month overdue is a search party.
Tip: when a pooled tool goes in for repair, check it out to the repairer. The register then answers “where is the jetter” correctly even when the answer is “the pump specialist until Thursday” - and nobody books a job around a tool that is in pieces on a bench.
Van kits, site boxes, and the battery problem
The vans themselves belong on the register - with documents, service dates, and the plumber responsible - and so does what defines their contents:
- The standard van kit, checked out as a set to the named plumber. A quarterly scan-through against the list finds wandering tools while they are one van away, not gone.
- Site boxes for longer jobs, tracked as assets with their location set to the job. A box that stays on site after the job closes is the most commonly forgotten item in the trade.
- Cable reels, transformers, and lights - shared between vans constantly, which is exactly why they need labels and recorded transfers.
- Tool batteries - most firms should not track every battery individually. Label batteries to a van or kit, audit the count, and per-item track only the large platform batteries whose price justifies it.
What to track and what to count
| Kit | Approach | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Press guns, drain cameras, jetters, threaders | Per item, pooled, booked per job | High value, shared, contested |
| Jaw sets, camera accessories | Kitted case travelling with parent tool | Too small to label, too costly to lose |
| Power tools, gauges, test pumps | Per item, part of a van kit | Drift between vans |
| Vans, site boxes | Per item with documents and locations | Vehicles and forgotten boxes |
| Batteries, chargers | Counted per van or kit | Volume defeats per-item tracking |
| Fittings, pipe, consumables | Stock with reorder points | Bought to be used up |
The line to hold: the register is for things that come back; consumables need a reorder trigger, not an ownership history.
Workflows for a trade that works wet
Plumbing work is wet, dirty, and urgent, which rules out anything that needs a laptop or patience:
- Scan at handover. The label on the tool, a phone camera, five seconds. The checkout is the record - nothing depends on end-of-day data entry, because end-of-day data entry does not happen.
- Report damage from the tool. Scan the dead jetter, log the issue with a photo, done. The report lands in a queue with a status instead of scrolling away in the group chat, and the tool’s repair history builds itself.
- Condition on every pool return. Thirty seconds of honesty that ends the “it was like that when I got it” era.
- Weekly overdue review. The office’s only recurring task: what is out, who has it, what is overdue. Ten minutes.
The same playbook serves the neighbouring trades - HVAC firms run an almost identical pool-plus-vans split - so a multi-trade firm can run one system across all of it.
The first week
- List the pool first. The press tools, cameras, threaders, jetters - a dozen-odd items, an afternoon’s work, most of the value covered immediately.
- Label and photograph as you list. Durable laminated QR labels on bodies and cases, away from impact zones; serials recorded for theft reports and insurance.
- Define one van’s standard kit and check it out to its plumber. Roll the pattern across the fleet a van at a time.
- Set the two rules: pool tools are booked out with a due date, and every handover is a scan.
- Put the overdue review in the diary. Same slot every week, whoever runs the office.
For the system underneath, AMPthilly matches this shape closely: checkouts with due dates and an overdue list, returns that capture who, when, and condition, printable QR labels scanned with any phone camera in the browser (nothing to install on a plumber’s phone), a service desk that keeps every repair on the tool’s permanent record, and bulk checkout for issuing a whole van kit at once. The free plan - 3 users, 25 assets, no card required - fits a small firm’s entire pool, which is the right first bite; pricing covers the move up when the van kits follow.
FAQ
How do plumbing companies keep track of tools? Two tiers in one register: defined van kits checked out per plumber, and a bookable pool for press tools, cameras, and jetters with due dates and one holder per item.
What is the best way to share a drain camera across crews? As a pooled asset - scanned out per job with a due date, visible to whoever needs it next, condition recorded on return.
How do you keep track of press tool jaws and batteries? Jaws as a kitted case travelling with the labelled gun; batteries counted per van or kit, with only big platform batteries tracked individually.
Should fittings and consumables go in the asset register? No - they are stock with reorder points. The register is for tools that come back.
How does a plumber report a broken tool from site? Scan the label, log the issue with a photo and category; it lands in a queue, and the repair history stays on the tool.
The takeaway
A plumbing firm’s tracking problem is really two problems: vans that absorb tools and a pool that everyone raids. Solve them separately - kitted vans with named holders, a booked pool with due dates - and bind them with the same two habits: every handover is a scan, and the overdue list gets read weekly. The drain camera stops being a mystery, the jaw sets stop vanishing by the piece, and the firm stops rebuying tools it already owns.