Plumbers: bill the callout before you leave the driveway.
A plumbing day is five or six stops, three of them unplanned. The geyser at eight, the blocked drain at eleven, the emergency that pushes everything else to tomorrow. By the time you get home the first job is a smear in a notebook and a number you half remember.
Orbit is in development. Join the waitlist and we WhatsApp you when it opens.
replaced geyser element in northcliff, 1450 plus 350 callout
Tracking that now ✅
invoice it
Invoice #0118 drafted — R1,800.00, 14 days. Tap to send.
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE
Where it goes
What costs a plumber money after the job.
Callouts get billed late, or not at all
The small ones are the ones that vanish. A washer, a trap, forty minutes and a callout fee. It never reaches an invoice because writing an invoice for R650 costs an evening you would rather not spend, and three of those a week is real money walked away from.
Materials come out of your pocket first
You pay for the copper, the fittings and the geyser at the counter, then try to remember which of the day's four jobs each slip belongs to. Anything you cannot place gets absorbed, which means the job you thought made money did not.
You are the only person who knows what is owed
The debtor list lives in your head. You know that the Rivonia job was three weeks ago and that the estate agent has still not paid, but you find out by remembering, usually at eleven at night, and never in time to do anything useful about it.
What Orbit does about it
One message, at the end of the job.
Orbit is being built so that the record happens where the day already happens. You finish a callout, you type one line into WhatsApp — what you did, where, and what you charged — and Orbit turns it into a job with a value against it. There is no app to open in a wet passage with one hand, no form with nine fields, and no second device.
Because the record is made at the job, the invoice can be drafted from it. Ask Orbit to invoice and it prepares the document with the customer, the address, the amount and the terms already filled in. You read it and you send it. Orbit never sends anything on your behalf — that rule holds across every Vyso product and it holds here.
The same record answers the questions you currently answer from memory: what did I charge at that address last time, what have I spent on materials this week, and who has not paid me. Those are the three questions that decide whether a plumbing business is quietly profitable or quietly not, and today most one- and two-van operations answer all three by guessing.
What it keeps for you
- Every callout with its address, what you did and what you charged
- Materials against the job you bought them for
- Invoices drafted from the job, ready for you to send
- Who has paid, who has not, and how long it has been
Orbit drafts. You send.
Questions
Plumbers ask us this.
Can I bill a callout fee and labour separately?
Say both in the message — "1450 plus 350 callout" — and Orbit is being built to read them as two lines on one job, so the invoice shows the callout and the work separately rather than one lump. Orbit is in development; join the waitlist and we will WhatsApp you when it opens.
Do I need to be at the job to record it?
No. Orbit is a WhatsApp conversation, so you can send the message from the van, from the counter at the merchant, or from the couch that evening. The job is recorded when you send the message, and you can tell Orbit which day it was if it was not today.
What about emergency work at night?
It works the same way, which is the point. A two-in-the-morning burst pipe is exactly the job that never gets invoiced, because by Monday it is one of nine things you half remember. One line into WhatsApp before you drive home is the whole record.
Will Orbit handle plumbing certificates of compliance?
Not at launch. Orbit is being built around the job, the money and the invoice first. Storing and reminding you about certificates is on the roadmap, not in the product, and this page will say so plainly until that changes.
Orbit for other trades
Orbit for plumbers.
Orbit is being built now. The list is free, it commits you to nothing, and founding pricing is locked for the people on it.