Home & trade services
Funding for plumbing service and repair businesses
Slab leak on Tuesday. Three no-hot-water calls on Wednesday. One truck to cover it all. The work is there. You just need the truck and the extra hands to get to it.
See my options
Start here
How a funding partner reads your business
Much of what a partner reads is in your bank statements, and it comes down to three questions. Everything below is me walking you through your own answers, so nothing in your statements surprises you later.
When does the money come in?
Job days, invoice terms, or a slow drip all month. The pattern matters more than the total.
How steady is it?
One great month doesn’t tell anyone what a normal month looks like.
What was each deposit for?
If a reader can’t tell, they assume the worst. A sentence of explanation fixes it.
The trade
Who pays a plumber, and when
Most homeowners pay you right when the job is done, by card or check. And it’s usually a few bigger jobs that make your month. A water heater here, a sewer line there, a repipe. You buy the materials first, then you get paid. Partners can see that pattern in your bank statements. It also means one slow week really stands out, because there aren’t a bunch of little jobs to smooth it over.
Commercial work is a little different. Property managers and bigger contracts often pay on terms, a month or more after the work, so that’s money you’re waiting on, not money in the bank yet. And if you offer financing at the kitchen table, that’s actually a plus. The finance company pays you, and the homeowner pays them back over time. So that big repipe shows up as a deposit in your account. It’s worth pointing that out, because the deposit and the invoice won’t always line up day for day.
Freeze week is not your month
Here’s what catches a lot of shops off guard. It’s not the slow season. It’s that one wild week. A freeze hits, pipes burst everywhere, your phone won’t stop ringing, and that month looks huge on paper. But it doesn’t repeat. If you take on a daily payment sized off that one month, that payment still comes out in March when things calm back down.
The risk
Let’s do the math together
Say you’re weighing a $40,000 advance. Here’s what that could look like in a good month, and in a normal one.
The arithmetic, as an illustration
A normal month
$45,000
comes in, about $10,400 a week
A freeze month
$90,000
comes in, about $20,800 a week. Big, but it doesn’t repeat
What you’d pay back
$52,000
remitted on a $40,000 advance at a 1.30 factor rate, about $310 every working day over eight months
Here’s the part that matters. That $310 comes out every working day, in good weeks and slow ones. In a freeze week, it’s about 7 cents of every dollar that came in. In a normal week, it’s about 15 cents. Same payment. It just feels very different.
Timing matters too. If you take money in late September, you’ll be paying it back through the slow fall months, right before winter picks up.
So don’t ask, “Can I afford this in my best month?” Ask, “Can I afford this in a normal month?” Most of your year is normal months.
An illustration, not a quote: nobody has offered anyone these terms. Real terms come from a funding partner.
Before you borrow
The cheaper money you may already have
A lot of funding pages act like you’re starting from zero, like your only choices are a loan or an advance. You’re not. You might already have cheaper options sitting right in front of you.
Trade credit
The supply house
You probably already buy on terms at the supply house. That’s real help: weeks to pay for materials for a job you’ll get paid for when it’s done. That lines up well with a repipe. It’s worth asking what terms you have before you pay for money somewhere else.
Inside your software
The offer inside your dispatch app
Check inside your dispatch app. Some of them put an offer in front of you based on the payments that run through the app, and you pay it back out of your payouts. It might be the same kind of product I’m talking about here, but prices vary a lot. It’s worth comparing it side by side with the questions in the advance guide.
Secured
Financing the machine itself
Jetters, cameras, and trucks hold their value. Because of that, you can often finance them against themselves. That can cost less than a line of credit or an advance, so it’s worth checking both ways before you decide.
Paperwork
Who holds the license, you or the company?
A paperwork question worth settling early. Whose name is the license in, yours or the company’s? A partner will usually want to see that the business is licensed for the work it’s billing for. If the license is in a person’s name and the invoices are in the company name, it can look like a mismatch and slow a request down while someone hunts for a document nobody asked for up front.
How it works
You talk. I work. You choose.
- 1You say
Tell me about the business.
What you do, what you bring in, what you need and when. One short form, about two minutes.
“I need $40,000 for a second truck before spring.”
- 2I do
I take it to funding partners.
I get it in front of partners who work with businesses like yours. I do not underwrite, price or decide.
Your request, told once, to people who can fund it.
- 3You decide
You pick, or you walk away.
Interested partners contact you with their terms, if an offer comes. Compare, pick one, or walk away.
“This one gives me the runway without crushing cash flow.”
The arithmetic
How much are you considering?
Play with the numbers
Pick a shape of money, drag the sliders, and watch the math change.
An advance is priced by a factor rate, not interest. Put in the amount, and the rate if somebody has quoted you one.
The arithmetic
- Advance
- $50,000
- Factor rate
- 1.30
- You remit in total
- $65,000
- Cost of the money
- $15,000
An illustration, not a quote: nobody has offered you these terms. Real terms come from a funding partner and depend on your cash flow, and fees can sit on top of the factor rate.
See my optionsEach one has its own page, with a worked example: all six calculators.
What the money buys
What owners in this trade actually spend it on.
A second truck, stocked
The truck is only part of it. You also need water heaters, fittings, a press tool, and enough parts on board so your tech isn’t driving to the supply house in the middle of a call. For some shops, having that ready could help them say yes to more work instead of booking it out a week.
A jetter or an inspection camera
If you sub out drain work you’d rather do yourself, a jetter and a camera could bring it in-house. A camera also lets you show a homeowner exactly what’s going on, so your quote makes sense to them.
A dispatcher, or a new tech’s first weeks
Missed calls cost more than they look. Some shops use funding to pay someone to answer the phone while you’re under a sink, or to cover a new tech’s pay for the first few weeks before they’re billing on their own. Whether it pays off depends on the work that comes in.
Materials for work already sold
For a repipe or a batch of water heaters, you have to buy everything before the customer pays you a dime. Some owners look at funding just to get through that gap.
Which one fits
Which financing fits your situation?
I don’t recommend a product without seeing your numbers. Below is how owners in this trade usually think the options through: possibilities to explore, not an offer or a recommendation. Where none of them is the right move, the table says so.
| Your situation | What might be worth exploring, and why |
|---|---|
| Freeze season is coming and you want a second truck ready before it hits, not in the middle of it. | A line of credit might be worth a look if you have the history for it. You could stock up and pay it back as jobs pay out. Some owners also look at an advance, but it usually costs more. It tends to work better when the work is already booked, not just hoped for. |
| You sold a repipe and the supply house wants to get paid before the homeowner pays you. | A line of credit might fit here. It’s built for short gaps like this. You cover the materials now and pay it back when the job is done and paid. |
| What you need is the jetter, the press tool, or the truck itself. | This might not be a cash flow problem at all. If it holds its value, you can often finance the equipment itself. Ask about equipment financing or a term loan when you fill out the form. |
| Most of your work is new construction and you get paid on the builder’s schedule. | That money you’re waiting on is stuck on somebody else’s timeline. That’s why some owners look at factoring for that gap instead of a line of credit or an advance. You can ask for factoring on the form. |
Which shape fits is my read, not an offer. Partners decide what they will do with a request, and on what terms.
Questions
Asked by plumbers
Read this before you talk to anyone:
- What is a merchant cash advance, in plain terms
- Merchant cash advance vs. revenue-based financing
- Do I need an EIN to get business funding?
- What a funding partner reads in your bank statements
- Seasonal businesses: the month the remittance starts
- The offer inside your shop or dispatch software
- Supply-house terms vs. a line of credit
For an advance, where I pay back a fixed amount, does a freeze week spike help or hurt?
It helps the total look good, but it can make your statements harder to read. A burst-pipe week isn’t a normal month, and a daily payment sized off that month still has to come out in March. Judge that payment against a slow, normal week. That’s the real test.
My license is held by a qualifier, not by the company. Does that matter?
It can, so bring it up early. Have your license and your business registration handy and it usually stops being an issue.
Can I use an advance to cover a new-construction job I am waiting to get paid on?
It usually doesn’t line up well. You’d be paying every working day for money that comes back in one big chunk, if the builder pays on time. For that kind of gap, some owners look at factoring instead.
Should I take an advance to buy a jetter?
Worth comparing first. A jetter should last you years and it holds its value, so you can often finance it by itself. An advance can be a pricey way to buy something that is meant to last that long. Check equipment financing side by side.
Will you pull my credit?
No. There is no credit pull from me; the form on this page is information, not an application. A funding partner does its own underwriting and may pull credit at that point, and it will tell you when it does.
My dispatch app just offered me an advance. Is that the same as the advances on this page?
It can be pretty similar. Some apps put an advance or a loan right in front of you and base it on the payments running through the app. You pay it back out of your payouts. Others point you to a bank line of credit. The product might overlap with what I’m showing you here, but price and terms change a lot by company, so compare the details side by side. The advance, with the working.
Get funding options
Tell me about your plumbing business.
About two minutes, and no credit pull from me. Tell me what you do, what you bring in and what the money is for, and I take your request to funding partners. You can strengthen it with a bank connection afterward.
Free to you. Funding partners pay Addy for the introduction.
Addy is not a lender, and does not underwrite, price or decide who gets funded.
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