The two flavors, and which one you're actually doing
Every busy stretch, your phone rings and you’re three weeks deep. Every slow stretch, you stare at half-empty rows on the calendar. Some other shop across town is flipped the other way around. An afternoon of conversation fixes both schedules. It also creates problems you won’t see until eighteen months in.
There are two kinds of subcontracting between competing shops, and most owners blur them. Sub out: you sold the job, you can’t get to it, you pay a competitor to do the work. The customer is yours. Sub in: a competitor sold it, hands it off, pays you. The customer is theirs.
Both are legitimate. Mix the two up and you’ll be in a fight over a customer six months later.
When subbing out makes sense
You’re slammed in peak season. Three weeks deep on the calendar and the phone is still ringing. Either you push the job to a competitor and keep the margin, or you turn it down and they call your competitor on their own next time, too.
Or the work has gone sideways. Boiler call that turned into a gas line job, and you don’t do gas. The plumber you trust takes the gas piece, and you keep the customer.
Or it’s geography. A regular customer’s daughter bought a place an hour outside your service area. You don’t want to drive it. You really don’t want to lose her either.
One thing worth getting straight. Your name is on the invoice. The warranty falls on you. If the sub does sloppy work, the customer doesn’t blame the sub, they blame you.
When subbing in makes sense
You’re soft. Your competitor isn’t. Their overflow keeps your trucks moving in January when nobody is calling you for AC.
Or they have access you don’t. A property management contract, a builder you’ve been trying to crack for two years, a warranty network you can’t get on.
Or you’re new and trying to build a name. Five months of clean subcontract work for a busier shop gets word around faster than five months of door hangers.
The thing to keep front of mind. The customer is not yours. The job site isn’t yours either. Touching their customer database, leaving your card on the counter, slipping a fridge magnet behind the orange juice, every one of those is how you lose the work that’s been keeping your shop alive.
The paperwork most owners skip
A one-page sub agreement does more for you than a dozen handshakes. Who pays whom, and by when. Whose insurance covers what. Who picks up the phone when the warranty call comes in a year later.
- Insurance, both sides. Ask for the certificate. Read it. If they fold it back without showing you, walk away.
- Licensing. Your license doesn't extend to them. The sub has to be licensed for the work, and in some states an unlicensed sub on a permitted job puts your license at risk too.
- A non-solicit clause in plain English. "Don't market to a customer you met on a job I sent you." One sentence on paper saves two arguments a year.
- Payment terms in writing. Net 30 to the sub and net 45 from the customer is the floor. Get it shorter on both sides if you can.
The watch-outs nobody warns you about
Brand control is the one that bites first. The truck pulls into your customer’s driveway with somebody else’s logo on the side. The shirts too. The customer is confused, and confusion costs you the next call. Run them in plain shirts, or tell the customer in advance.
Payment timing is the slow bleed. You pay the sub net 30, the customer pays you net 60. You just financed the job, on your line of credit. Build that into the price or it eats you alive over a year.
Warranty a year out is the one nobody plans for. The sub has moved on, gone bust, or just doesn’t return your calls. You’re the one fixing it on your dime. Hold a small retainer, or fold a warranty allowance into what you pay them.
Customer poaching cuts both ways. If your sub leaves a card on the counter and the next call goes to him, he just took a customer you spent years earning. Same the other direction. Watch for it, and have one honest conversation the first time you catch it. Stop it cold then, or accept it’ll keep happening.
“A handshake feels like trust. On paper, it's just a job you can't find anymore.
Track it like it’s any other job
A handshake job is a job that goes missing. Subbed work needs the same file every other job has. Who sold it, who did the work, what got paid out, what came back six weeks later as a callback.
That’s where one job file pays for itself. Photos before and after, the signed estimate, the invoice, the sub assignment, the warranty notes. All in one place that office and field can both see. Whether your guy did the work or a sub did, the trail is clear.
Where ToolbagCRM fits
ToolbagCRM keeps the whole job in one record. Photos, notes, who did what, the customer history, all attached to one file. One flat monthly price covers every tech in the field and every hand in the office. Adding a dispatcher to keep an eye on the overflow queue doesn’t cost a cent extra. The office manager who tags subbed jobs separately and runs the report at month-end doesn’t add a per-seat fee, ever.
Founders pricing is $99/mo for your first three months, then $150/mo locked in for the life of the account. Same monthly price whether you’re subbing out two jobs a month or twenty.
Who pays whom, when, whose insurance covers what. The form is half a page. The argument it prevents is six hours.
License and insurance, in your hands, current. If they hedge, that's your answer.
Plain English. The customer goes back to the shop that sold the job. Hold that line.
Hold a retainer, or price a warranty allowance into what you pay the sub. Year-out callbacks are guaranteed, not optional.
Same job record as any other. Who sold it, who worked it, what got paid, what came back six weeks later.