Worked setups · Plumbing & heating engineers
Same-day emergencies, landlord certificates with a tenant on site, and a diary that promises a morning or an afternoon, never an hour.
Worked example: Hartwell & Daughters Plumbing & Heating. A fictional two-van family firm in Bath, Gas Safe registered: emergency callouts, boiler servicing and repairs, landlord gas safety records, new boiler installs and bathroom plumbing, within fifteen miles of Bath.
Proven in a full run on the live system on 4 September 2026. The businesses on these pages are fictional — worked configurations we built to run BLAM8 end to end on the live system, not customers. Every step described happened in the run it cites.
1 · The diary
Every job is one of a short menu of fixed-length visits, so the diary runs per service. Two vans means two jobs can run at once (capacity 2), with a 30-minute travel gap between jobs, two hours' notice, and Saturday mornings as their own hours. The setup assistant proposed all of this from three questions and the owner saved it as offered.
morning or afternoon
£85 covering the first hour, then £65 an hour. Same day if reported before 2pm.
morning or afternoon
£95.
morning or afternoon
£80, certificate emailed within 24 hours; the tenant is on site, the landlord is billed.
morning or afternoon
whole day
Quoted only after a free survey — never priced over email.
whole day
exact time
The one visit with an exact time: the customer is meeting you, not waiting in.
Timing is what the customer is offered: an exact time for an appointment they come to; morning or afternoon for work at their address where you manage the hour; a whole day for a day-long job. The diary reserves the real length either way, so it can never double-book.
2 · Before a booking is made
Eight details, most of them recommended by the setup assistant in the trade's own words — and two of them scoped to particular jobs, so a landlord question is only asked on a gas safety record and a boiler question only on boiler work.
| Detail | Needed | How it's gathered | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full address and postcode | Required | Asked in the reply, or reused if already known | Also remembered on the customer record. |
| Contact phone number | Required | Asked in the reply, or reused if already known | |
| Description of the problem or job | Required | Asked in the reply, or reused if already known | |
| Access notes | Optional | Asked in the reply, or reused if already known | Parking, gate codes, whether someone will be home — remembered. |
| Landlord or tenant contact details | Optional | Asked in the reply, or reused if already known | Only asked for a gas safety record — who gets the certificate. |
| Boiler make and model | Optional | Asked in the reply, or reused if already known | Only asked for emergency, service and repair jobs — remembered. |
| Photo of the fault or boiler | Optional | As an attachment — a photo or scan | Only for emergencies and repairs, as an attachment. |
| Previous gas safety record | Optional | As an attachment — a photo or scan | Only for a gas safety record; waived gracefully when the landlord can't find it. |
The agent asks only for what is genuinely missing, never re-asks something already in the thread or on the customer's record, and refuses to book until every required detail is present. Documents are requested as attachments and their contents are never claimed as checked — a human reviews them.
3 · The CRM that fills itself
Plus Won and Lost. A contact quiet for 5 days is flagged for a nudge.
Property address
Where the work is — reused for every job at the same property.
Boiler make and model
So the engineer brings the right parts.
Access notes
Keys, parking, dogs, who's home.
Landlord or letting agent
For rented properties: who gets the certificate and the invoice.
Extracted from the emails as they arrive, plus the contact's phone number. A returning customer is never asked for any of it again — by email or on the portal.
4 · What the agent knows
Eight notes. In the run the agent applied the same-day rule, the gas-smell safety line and the warranty check without being asked — and one pricing note had to be reworded when it quoted the out-of-hours rate for a weekday job.
Standard call-out £85 covering the first hour, then £65 an hour; out-of-hours (evenings and weekends) £140 for the first hour; boiler service £95; landlord gas safety record £80 with the certificate emailed within 24 hours; parts at cost plus 10%.
All gas work by Gas Safe registered engineers — registration 512345.
No heating or hot water, an unstoppable leak or a smell of gas is an emergency: same day if reported before 2pm, first thing next morning after. A smell of gas: call the National Gas Emergency line on 0800 111 999 first, open windows, touch no switches.
New boilers and power flushes are quoted only after a free survey.
Payment on completion by card or transfer; landlords and letting agents on 14-day terms.
Bath and fifteen miles around; a £20 travel supplement beyond ten miles.
A boiler under two years old is under warranty — send the customer to the manufacturer first, don't book a paid repair.
Every boiler installed or serviced is due its next annual service eleven months later.
5 · The journey we proved
The run we proved on the live system on 4 September 2026, in order.
Customer
Emails: boiler packed up overnight, no hot water, two small kids, a Worcester Bosch showing an EA fault, at an address in Bath. Can someone come today, morning or afternoon? What does a callout cost?
BLAM8
Checks the diary once, holds this afternoon as an arrival window on the first try, and drafts: we can be with you this afternoon, the standard weekday callout is £85 for the first hour then £65, parts at cost plus 10%, the boiler is old enough that warranty isn't a factor, and if you smell gas call 0800 111 999 first. The customer record gains the address, phone, boiler and access notes from the one email.
Owner
Approves. The reply is the confirmation; the job lands in the calendar as an afternoon block.
Customer
Writes again as a landlord: a gas safety certificate is due at a rented property, the tenant can be in Tuesday or Wednesday morning, send the certificate and invoice to me, not the tenant.
BLAM8
Quotes £80 with the certificate inside 24 hours, reserves Tuesday and Wednesday mornings as exclusive offers, asks for the previous certificate as an attachment because this is a gas safety job, and notes that paperwork goes to the landlord.
Customer
‘Tuesday morning please’ — and can't find the old certificate.
BLAM8
Flips Tuesday to a real booking, releases Wednesday, waives the optional document without fuss, and confirms in one line. The tenant's name and number sit on the job as the person on site.
Customer
Opens the portal with the reference from the email footer, asks whether anything is still needed, and asks for a boiler service at the first address one morning next week.
BLAM8
Answers from the promise ledger, offers Thursday and Friday mornings as arrival windows, and books Thursday from a single message with no questions — everything needed was already on file. A confirmation email follows.
Owner
Sends a quote for a new boiler with an optional smart thermostat and a 25% deposit.
Customer
Accepts online by typing their name.
BLAM8
Raises the 25% deposit invoice and emails it with the bank details. Money shows the balance still to invoice, net of the deposit.
Proven on a live plumbing & heating engineers since
Watched working end to end on our own rig after the run above, each with a test that fails if it breaks.
What this run showed us we still owe this trade
Built since · 4 September 2026 — First the damage: a fact read from an email no longer overwrites one on the record — it becomes a chip that says what it would replace — and the portal reuses an earlier job's boiler or address only for the same place and the same work. Then the feature, the same afternoon: Dependants. Name the kind — properties — and what to know about each one, and every property is its own record on the landlord's card, with its own boiler, its own certificate expiry, and bookings that name which property they're for.
Built since · 5 September 2026 — A quote now finds its deal by the JOB it is for, not by counting the customer's: it follows the booking back to the email that created it and lands on the deal that email belongs to. Invoices too. When there is no job to follow — a quote written from scratch — the form asks which job it is for, and only when the customer genuinely has more than one on the go.
Built since · 4 September 2026 — A party named in an email now lands on the job that email is about: the bookings the email placed or moved are marked as its own job, a stated reference still wins, and with no own job and several live ones it refuses to guess.
Connect your mailbox and tell the setup assistant what you do. It proposes the diary, the services, the checklist and the pipeline for you to confirm — nothing is saved until you press Save. Free 14-day pilot, no card.
BLAM8 assistant