Rivera Plumbing Pros
Dallas plumber killed a $820 per month software bill and used the savings to hire a seventh plumber
Carlos Rivera was paying $820 a month across three different platforms to run a 4-truck plumbing shop. After consolidating onto Kaldr Tech's free dispatch and invoicing, he reinvested $9,840 a year into payroll and brought on a full-time journeyman in 90 days.
$820 to $0
Monthly software spend
60 days post-switch
$9,840
Annual savings
Year one
1 journeyman
New hires funded
Within 90 days
18 days to 4 days
Invoice payment time
After 4 months
Three logins and an $820 monthly bleed
Carlos started Rivera Plumbing Pros in 2019 with one truck and a flip phone. By the time 2024 rolled around he had four trucks rolling out of a shop off Harry Hines Boulevard, six plumbers on payroll, and three separate software bills draining his checking account every month. The dispatch platform charged him $149 per user, and with 8 seats that came out to $1,192 — he negotiated it down to $520 flat. The invoicing and payments system was another $180 a month plus 2.9 percent plus 30 cents on every card transaction. A third tool for customer texting ran $120. Total damage: $820 every month before he wrote a single check to a plumber. And the three systems didn't talk to each other. His bookkeeper Norma would spend most of Friday copying data between tabs, flagging invoices the dispatch side had marked complete but the payment side had no record of. In March 2024, Carlos discovered that 14 jobs worth $11,700 had been completed by his crews but never invoiced because the handoff between apps failed silently. He ate the loss because most of those customers were six weeks out and he couldn't bring himself to send a surprise bill. On top of that, average collection time was running 18 days because the payment link was a separate email his customers had to hunt for. Carlos wanted to hire a seventh plumber — a journeyman named Victor he had worked with years ago — but he couldn't justify the $68,000 salary when $9,840 of his annual budget was disappearing into three software vendors.
"I was paying $820 a month to three companies to do what Kaldr does for free. That's a truck payment. That's a guy's health insurance. That's real money in a plumbing shop."
— Carlos Rivera, Owner, Rivera Plumbing Pros
One board, zero subscription
Carlos heard about Kaldr Tech from a supply house counter guy at Morrison Supply who had seen a demo at a trade show in Fort Worth. The pitch that stopped Carlos cold was the dispatch board being free with unlimited users and the invoicing being built in, not bolted on. He signed up in April 2024 and ran Kaldr alongside the old systems for 30 days to make sure nothing broke. The first feature he leaned on was the invoicing and payments — he turned it on for one truck, Victor's old friend Hector, and watched five jobs get invoiced and paid within 72 hours, versus the 14 to 21 day cycle on the old system. The built-in payment link went out by text the moment the job was marked complete, and customers tapped it on their phones without hunting through email. By week three he had moved the whole crew over. He killed the $520 dispatch platform mid-month and got a prorated refund. The $180 invoicing tool cancelled at the end of the billing cycle. The $120 texting app cancelled the following week once the Kaldr two-way SMS was proven. Norma's Friday tab-juggling routine collapsed from four hours to about 25 minutes, which is now just her confirming the weekly deposit batch. Carlos never paid an implementation fee, never signed a contract, never bought a single add-on. The support team helped Norma import 2,100 customer records over a Tuesday morning screen share.
Features that mattered most
A new journeyman funded by the software cancellation
Rivera Plumbing Pros stopped paying software vendors on June 1, 2024. The checking account stopped bleeding $820 a month, which annualized to $9,840 — not enough to fully cover Victor's salary but enough to cover his truck payment, his tools allowance, and his first three months of benefits. Carlos brought Victor on July 8, 2024, just 68 days after signing up with Kaldr, and Victor's truck was profitable by his second week because he stepped into an existing backlog that the other trucks couldn't get to. Collection time dropped from 18 days to 4 days because every invoice went out by text the moment the job was closed, with a tap-to-pay link that worked on any phone. Carlos's working capital sitting in receivables dropped from around $47,000 to about $11,000, which meant he stopped floating payroll on his personal Amex. Norma's hours on billing reconciliation fell from roughly 16 a week to 3, and Carlos gave her the extra time to start calling customers for maintenance agreement renewals, which generated an additional $3,200 a month in recurring service revenue by fall. Monthly revenue grew from $142,000 to $189,000 over the same 6-month window, a 33 percent climb, and the only operational change besides Kaldr was adding Victor. The 4 trucks are now 5 because Carlos used part of the savings toward the down payment on a used van, and he is currently interviewing for an eighth plumber.
Advice to another contractor
Add up every software bill you pay each month and write it on a sticky note. Look at that number at the end of the year. That is a plumber's truck payment, or a set of diagnostic tools, or a Christmas bonus for your crew. Kaldr gave me that money back and I put it straight into a human being. No regrets.
— Carlos Rivera
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