For plumbing subcontractors
Plumbing contractor software for commercial jobs — underground to fixture set.
You are first in the ground and last out of the building. Underground goes in before anyone else’s work exists, and fixtures go in after everyone else’s is finished — which parks something like a quarter of your contract value behind the finish trades and the retainage. SubMark tracks the whole job in between, in your office and in the trench.
14-day free trial, no card needed. Sign up from here and plumbing is already selected when you pick your trade. See pricing →
- Photo-backed record of every underground surprise
- Stored fixture packages billed on their own line
- Every test and inspection on a dated daily record
What actually goes wrong on a commercial plumbing job.
Underground is the riskiest money on the job, and then it is buried.
Rock where the soils report said clay. An abandoned line nobody drew. A re-route around a footing that grew. A failed air test and a day of re-work. Every one of those is extra work, every one of them gets argued about four months later, and by then the trench is backfilled and poured over. A daily log with photos and a date, a change event raised the morning it happened and a T&M tag signed by the superintendent before he leaves the site turn a hole in the ground into a record you can bill from.
You are the last trade, and the money knows it.
Fixture trim cannot start until flooring is down and paint is finished. So the final 15 to 20% of your contract sits behind somebody else’s schedule, on top of the 10% retainage that has been held all along. The only defense is knowing exactly what is left on each line, which GC’s cutoff is next, and what has to be signed off before you can bill it.
Fixtures arrive early and install last.
China, carriers, trim, water heaters, pumps, grease interceptors and backflow assemblies get delivered months before anyone sets them, because the lead times demand it. They sit in a conex or a warehouse being insured, damaged and occasionally stolen. Carry them as stored-material lines on the SOV, tie the supplier invoice and PO to the job, and the cash is not stranded until trim-out.
Your billing is gated behind inspections you do not control.
The underground air test, the hydrostatic test on the risers, the backflow certification, the chlorination and the final AHJ sign-off. Each one unlocks a piece of your draw, each one depends on an inspector’s calendar, and missing one by a day pushes a whole month’s draw into the next one. Logging each one on the daily log the day it happens, next to the draw calendar that says when each GC cuts off, is how a month stops getting lost.
Before you mobilize
The 4 things plumbing subs settle with the GC before mobilizing.
What is approved, where your scope stops, what has to be true before you start, and how you get at the work. Every one of them turns into a change order three weeks in if nobody writes the answer down — and the answer is worth nothing if it only lives in one PM’s inbox.
In the pack
Switch on Pre-Construction Review and these 4 questions are already the list, worded the way plumbing subs ask them.
- Confirm the approved fixture and trim schedule, including owner-furnished items
- Confirm the points of connection and who carries the tap and meter fees
- Confirm the slab, underground and rough-in inspection sequence
- Confirm whether insulation, firestopping and sleeves are our scope
Tick them off job by job, with your own note on each. The note is your answer — the pack ships the question and leaves the answer to you.
Pre-Construction Review is an opt-in module — it is not one of the eight switched on at setup. Turn it on in Settings and the list is already there in plumbing terms, with no upgrade and no setup call. Edit it once and it applies to every job; the tick and the note stay with the job it was asked on. See every module →
The plumbing job, phase by phase.
Underground, above-ground rough and fixture trim are three different jobs with three different crews, three different risk profiles and months between them. Here is how the work maps to what ships in SubMark.
- 01 Bid & estimate
Fixture counts off the P-sheets, underground takeoff, riser diagram, specialty equipment pricing.
Bid Board, Plans & Drawings, Takeoff, Estimating & Proposals
- 02 Submittals & fixture release
Fixture, carrier, specialty and backflow submittals approved before anything is ordered.
Submittals with a material library and merged PDF export
- 03 Underground
Sanitary and storm under slab, underslab domestic water, sleeves and penetrations — on the concrete sub’s pour date.
Daily Labor Logs with photos, Change Events for every surprise in the trench
- 04 Test & backfill
Air or water test, inspector sign-off, backfill and then it is gone under the pour.
Daily Labor Logs as the dated record, T&M Tags signed on site
- 05 Above-ground rough
Waste and vent stacks, domestic water risers, branch water, gas piping, roof drains, hangers and supports.
Crew Scheduling, Time Clock & Labor Logs feeding Job Costing
- 06 Top-out & test
Hydrostatic test, insulation, cover inspection before the walls close.
Job Costing for the job’s labor and material, Daily Labor Logs
- 07 Fixture set & trim
Fixtures, carriers, water heaters, pumps and interceptors — chasing flooring and paint, floor by floor.
Where Workers Are, Crew Scheduling, Daily Labor Logs
- 08 Final & closeout
Backflow certification, chlorination, final inspection, as-builts and the retainage release.
Schedule of Values & Draw Log, Lien Waiver Tracking, Submittals
Every module named above ships today; the eight below are on from day one, and the rest are a switch in Settings, not an upgrade. The full list is on the product page.
In the pack
These 8 phases load with the Plumbing pack the moment you pick it at setup.
They are the phase list your foremen pick from on every daily log, so the hours come back tagged to the part of the job they were spent on.
- 01 Permit / Layout
- 02 Underground Rough
- 03 Underground Inspection
- 04 Rough-In
- 05 Top-Out
- 06 Top-Out Inspection
- 07 Trim / Set Fixtures
- 08 Final Inspection
Plus “Other”, for the work that fits nowhere. Rename, reorder or delete any of them in Settings — the pack is a starting point, not a cage.
A plumbing schedule of values that bills in the order the work happens.
Plumbing money arrives in three waves months apart — underground, rough, trim — and a thin SOV collapses them into one line you cannot bill against. These are the kinds of lines a commercial plumbing SOV usually needs:
In the pack
Open the SOV builder on a new job and these 5 lines are already in it.
- Underground 25%
- Rough-In / Top-Out 35%
- Fixtures / Material 25%
- Trim / Set 10%
- Final 5%
What most commercial plumbing subs add
- 01 Submittals & coordination
- 02 Underground sanitary
- 03 Underground storm
- 04 Underslab domestic water
- 05 Sleeves & penetrations
- 06 Above-ground waste & vent
- 07 Domestic water risers
- 08 Branch water & stub-outs
- 09 Natural gas piping
- 10 Roof drains & leaders
- 11 Fixtures & carriers — material stored-material line
- 12 Fixture set & trim — labor
- 13 Water heaters, pumps & specialties
- 14 Backflow, testing & chlorination
- 15 As-builts & closeout
Keeping the fixture material line separate from the fixture labor line is the single most useful split on a plumbing SOV. The material is billable the month it is delivered; the labor is not billable until the finish trades let you in.
That longer list is an illustration, not a template — your SOV is negotiated with your GC. SubMark gives you the SOV to build, and tracks every draw, retainage amount and payment against it. It is your record of the job, not a replacement for the GC’s billing system — you submit the draw the way each GC requires and log it here.
Read next
Schedule of values for subcontractors: how to build one that bills clean
How to break out line items so underground, rough and trim each bill on their own schedule instead of collapsing into one line you cannot prove progress on.
T&M tickets in commercial construction: getting signed, and getting paid
Rock in the trench and a failed air test are T&M work — what belongs on the ticket, how to get it signed before the superintendent leaves, and how tags become one change order.
Inside SubMark
One calendar for every crew on every job.
An underground crew, a rough crew and two trim crews across five jobs. SubMark schedules every worker in one calendar and flags the double-booking before the trench sits idle.
On from day one, in every trade’s setup.
Nothing is paywalled by tier. These eight are switched on in every one of the 29 trade packs, plumbing included, from the moment you finish setup.
T&M Tags
Field tickets priced off your own rate lists and signed by the GC on the spot.
Change Events
The field logs a scope change with photos the day it happens, then it converts to a CO.
Draw Calendar
Every GC’s billing cutoff and submission method in one calendar, with reminders.
Submittals
Submittal packages with a material library, cover sheets and merged PDF export.
Daily Labor Logs
Weather, narrative, labor, materials and photos, with a submit-and-review workflow.
Timesheets
Weekly rollups with worker signatures and supervisor approval, plus a payroll summary export.
Where Workers Are
A live view of which workers are on which job today.
Safety
Toolbox talks, inspections, incidents, and certification and COI tracking with expiry dates.
Pick Plumbing at setup and SubMark loads the plumbing pack: plumbing phase names, checklists and material lists, and a schedule-of-values breakdown shaped like a plumbing job. Anything the pack gets wrong, you change in Settings.
The worker types are already there too — Journeyman Plumber, Apprentice, Foreman and Helper — on every worker record and on every daily labor log. The only thing left to enter is your own rates.
Questions
Plumbing subcontractors ask us these.
We run a service division as well as construction. Does that fit?
The project side fits — bidding, contracts, submittals, phased installation, progress billing against a schedule of values, change orders and retainage. SubMark is not a service dispatch platform, so if your service division runs on call routing and maintenance agreements it will keep running on its own tool. The construction half is what this covers today.
How do I prove an underground extra four months later?
With the record you made on the day. A daily log carries the weather, the narrative, the crew, the materials and the photos. A change event logs the scope change the morning your foreman hits it, with photos and the trades responsible. A T&M tag prices the work off your own rate list and the superintendent signs it on site. Four months later you are showing a dated, signed record rather than reconstructing a week from memory.
Can I bill for fixtures that have been delivered but not installed?
You build the schedule of values, so yes — carry the fixture package as a stored-material line and bill it as it is delivered, separately from the set-and-trim labor that happens months later. SubMark tracks what you billed on each line, what was certified, what retainage is held and when payment landed.
Does it track medical gas or specialty certifications?
It tracks the certifications your people hold and when they expire — brazer certifications, backflow tester cards, OSHA cards, anything you add — along with COIs, and it warns you before they lapse. It is a certification tracker, not a medical gas compliance system, and it does not file anything with an authority on your behalf.
We submit through four different GC portals. Does SubMark replace them?
No, and it does not need to. Each GC keeps its portal or its emailed form, and you keep submitting through it. SubMark is where the schedule of values lives — underground sanitary and storm, underslab water, risers, fixtures as material and fixture set as labor — and where every draw you submit is logged against it, with retainage held and the payment date on each one. One place to read every draw across every GC, instead of a spreadsheet per job.
Does it connect to QuickBooks?
Yes. Connect QuickBooks Online once and bills and purchases pull into job costing (hourly, if you switch auto-pull on) so material and sub costs sit against the right job; draws go across as QuickBooks invoices and POs as purchase orders, one at a time with a click; and a coverage meter shows how much of the cost pulled from QuickBooks is coded to a job.
Do my field crews cost extra?
No. Field users are free and unlimited, and so are the subs you invite into a job. You pay one company subscription: $249 a month with your first 3 office users included, then $39 a month each. The whole breakdown is on the pricing page.
See it on a plumbing job.
Start the trial, confirm plumbing on the first screen, and the pack loads your phases, checklists and worker types in your own words. Or take a 30-minute walkthrough with the person who built it, on your kind of jobs, instead of a canned demo script.
14-day free trial, no card needed. See the whole product →
$249/mo for your company, your first 3 office users included, $39/mo each after that. Field crews are free and unlimited. See what's included →
Other trades
Electrical
Gear you pay for months before you bill it, rough-in hours that disappear, and every tenant change landing on your scope.
HVAC / Mechanical
Equipment bought a year before it is billed, shop fab the GC will not pay for, and a closeout that holds your last 10% for six months.
Drywall & Framing
A third to half the contract spent on board before anything is hung, five finish passes nobody can measure, and three punch walks and a clean-up that are all on you.
Concrete
Pour days that cannot move, ready-mix invoices you reconcile weeks later, and forms that are capital cycling across placements.
Fire Sprinkler
Weeks of hydraulic engineering before you can bill a dollar, and every phase gated behind an inspection you do not schedule.
Glazing & Glass
Custom material you cannot order until you field measure, cannot return once you do, and cannot bill until a water test passes.
Roofing
A tear-off that owns the building until dry-in, rotten deck nobody bid, and a warranty package standing between you and retainage.
Low voltage
Drop counts that move with every furniture plan, cable sitting in a locked IDF for months, and a final 10% that waits on a test report.
Fire alarm
A quarter of the contract behind an acceptance test you do not schedule, retests you never bill, and device counts that move all year.
Painting
The last trade on the schedule, four return trips for other people’s damage, and prep bid against a wall nobody left you.
Flooring
A slab that fails its moisture test, prep bid against a flatness spec nobody hit, and a whole building’s material stored for months.
Masonry
Scaffold that is capital, grout lifts gated by an inspector, and a mock-up panel holding up the whole brick order.
Structural & Misc Steel
Two thirds of the contract is detailing, mill material and shop work, earned before a single piece is erected, and the last five percent is a handrail holding your retainage.
Wood Framing
Fourteen buildings billed as one percentage, a lumber package that is 40% of the contract before a wall goes up, and blocking you owe six other trades that nobody drew.
Excavation & Sitework
The only schedule of values on this site that opens without a single line for product you buy: your contract is production, billed against quantities somebody else surveyed.
Waterproofing
Work that is buried within a week of going in, blamed for every drop of water for the next ten years, and finished with sealants months after everyone forgot you were on the job.
Doors, Frames & Hardware
Half the contract is product you buy months early, and the last three openings out of four hundred hold your punch, your final draw and your retainage.
Demolition
A scope nobody can see until you open the wall, extra work that leaves in the dumpster before anyone prices it, and retainage held for a year after you demobilized.
Insulation
A four-day window between rough-in inspection and board that nobody protects, half the contract sitting in material you staged weeks early, and firestopping everyone assumed was yours.
EIFS / Stucco / Plaster
A schedule set by cure time that nobody believes, a weather barrier you bury on day two and get blamed for in year three, and joints drawn by somebody else that crack on your wall.
Acoustical Ceilings (ACT)
Grid that cannot start until every trade above the ceiling is finished, tile that drops in the last three weeks of a two-year job, and a finished ceiling the whole building then uses as an access hatch.
Paving & Asphalt
Material with a clock on it and a crew on the clock whether you place or not, a subgrade somebody else owns, and six months of construction traffic on the binder course you have to warrant.
Tile & Stone
A finished floor installed on somebody else’s slab, to a flatness tolerance the concrete sub was never asked to hit, with waterproofing and movement joints that belong to nobody until the warranty call comes.
Millwork & Casework
Half your contract earned in your own shop before anything reaches the site, built to a drawing of walls somebody else framed, with the furnish-and-install line drawn in a meeting you were not in.
All trades
SubMark ships a setup pack for 29 commercial trades. See the full list.