Plumbing software: seven certificates, one office

A German plumbing and heating firm has one entry in one register. An Ontario firm doing the same work can need five.

Of the twenty-three compulsory trades in Ontario, seven are mechanical: plumber 306A, steamfitter 307A, sheet metal worker under both 308A and 308R, refrigeration and air conditioning systems mechanic under 313A and 313D, and sprinkler and fire protection installer 427A. Meanwhile the carpenter, the bricklayer, the painter and the roofer on the same building are voluntary trades and need no certificate at all.

That is the shape of the problem plumbing software has to fit in this country: the trade is not one ticket, it is a handful, and each one belongs to a person rather than to the company.

The job is the folder, and the proof goes in it

In Zirko a job holds its hours, its documents, its site reports, its files, its chat and its costing together. The file store is a folder tree you build yourself, to any depth, the same on every job, and for each folder you decide whether the crew sees it — the office always sees everything, and on the phone only what was released appears. One click turns a message in the job chat into a file in the job's store.

Report templates are built from blocks: date, period, crew, a number field, free text, photo and a signature taken with a finger. Fields you mark as required stop a report being closed half-written, which is the only reliable way a pressure test gets photographed. The customer signs on the phone — no account, no printer, no trip back.

Zirko issues no certificate, files nothing with a regulator and holds no register of who is ticketed for what. It keeps the record, the photographs, the signed report and the invoice on the same job instead of on whoever happened to raise them.

Holdback is a balance, not a rounding error

Ten percent of every payment sits in holdback until liens expire, and since 1 January 2026 an Ontario owner has to publish a notice within fourteen days of each contract anniversary so that the year's holdback can be released — released every year. On a two-year mechanical package that is real money that used to sit until the end.

And it is not taxed yet. Subsection 168(7) of the Excise Tax Act carves holdback out of the normal timing rule, so tax on that part becomes payable on the earlier of the day it is paid and the day it becomes payable — no tax before the holdback is payable. Bill the whole price with tax on the holdback and you have remitted money before anybody owed it.

Zirko does not decide this for you. What it does is issue document numbers on the server from ranges with no gaps, keep the outstanding balance on the document rather than in a spreadsheet, and refuse to change an issued invoice: a correction is a credit note or a cancellation with its own number.

The clock, and who is deemed to be on the payroll

The prompt payment rules give an owner twenty-eight days from a proper invoice and a contractor seven to pass it down, with a deficient invoice deemed proper since 1 January 2026 unless the owner objects inside a week — twenty-eight days, seven days, and a new invoice rule.

A second clock runs beside it and surprises more owners: in Ontario construction, sole proprietors, partners and executive officers are deemed workers for coverage purposes — deemed workers.

In Zirko a project status is one you name yourself, including its language and its document template, and a status change can set off a rule: a mail to the customer, a reminder to the office, files requested. The log records every message with its trigger, its recipient and its moment, so the same notice cannot go out twice — not even if the run starts twice. A dry run goes through the same functions and sends nothing.

What it does not do

No recurring maintenance generator: next year's service visits are not created for you. No dispatch board that optimizes routes or forecasts capacity, no map of your vans, no clock-in with location checking, and no parts catalogue from a wholesaler. Nothing in it is decided by a language model — the automation is eleven fixed rules you switch on one at a time.

Plans are counted in office seats, with field licences for anyone who only works on site, and the mobile application comes with every office seat. Nothing is metered by jobs per month. Fourteen days free, no payment details, and the trial ends by itself.