Van Stock Replenishment Software for Plumbers: 6 Tools 2027

Key Takeaways

• Judge each tool on whether it knows what is on each van, not on a company-wide count. A total can look healthy while one truck is out of the part that closes the job.

• ServiceTitan documents truck replenishment through purchase orders, but says the feature is meant for businesses that do not keep inventory in QuickBooks.

• Ply and FieldPulse publish the most explicit reorder features in the pages reviewed: minimum levels, alerts and automatic purchase orders.

• ServiceTitan, Ply and FieldPulse publish no prices on their pricing pages, so budget for a sales conversation before you can compare cost.

• Housecall Pro's published plans do not list inventory. A Zapier, Make or n8n build is possible, but your shop then owns the monitoring, error handling and upkeep.

Who this is for

This guide is for an owner or operations lead at a small plumbing or home services business who is close to choosing a van stock tool and wants to know which options can actually restock a truck. It assumes several service vehicles, technicians who use parts on jobs, and someone who places supplier orders.

Red flags: a single van with a shelf you can count by hand, inventory that must stay inside QuickBooks, or a need for a new dispatch and scheduling system before van stock matters at all.

What the category covers

Van stock replenishment software tracks the parts, consumables and tools each service vehicle carries, records what is used on each job, and flags or drafts a restock when a van drops below its set minimum. A general inventory system usually counts stock in one warehouse, which is how a shop can show a healthy total while the van across town is out of 3/4-inch fittings.

So the category decision comes first. Buy a tool that knows the stock on each truck and produces the restock order, rather than a warehouse counter with a truck tab added on. The rest of this guide follows from that test.

How we evaluated these tools

We weighted six criteria toward the problem a plumbing shop actually has: the part is on the wrong truck, and nobody knows until a job stalls. The weights are our judgment, not a published standard. We did not reduce them to a total score, because several vendors publish no prices and no plan-level feature list, and a score built on missing data would look more precise than it is.

The evidence base is each vendor's own pricing and help pages, plus one trade article and one association notice. Independent measurement of van stock software is thin. We did not find a 2025 or 2026 study measuring restock accuracy at plumbing shops, so the comparison below rests on what each vendor documents, not on measured outcomes.

Side-by-side feature matrix

Read this table as a documentation check. "Not verified" means the feature did not appear on a page we could open in this review. It does not mean the product lacks the feature.

The column that most often decides a purchase is the accounting link. ServiceTitan's own documentation draws a hard line there, and FieldPulse's and Ply's pages describe the link far less specifically than the stock features.

What each option publishes about price

Pricing checked October 27, 2026. The table below shows only figures printed on each vendor's own pricing page, and marks "Quote-based" wherever the page gave no number.

Replenish plan on eTurns: $40 per stockroom a month according to eTurns (2026). The price is billed semi-annually, and the page offers volume discounts. Higher stockroom tiers sit above it. The same page also shows two per-vehicle prices with no plan labels, so ask eTurns which plan each one buys before assuming a truck is priced as its own location.

Essential plan on Fleetio: $4 per vehicle a month according to Fleetio (2026). That figure applies to annual billing, and the page assumes a fleet of five assets. Professional and Premium are annual-only tiers, and the page says subscriptions also depend on fleet size range, contract term and payment term.

Pro plan on Zapier: $19.99 a month billed annually according to Zapier (2026). That base includes 750 tasks a month, and the Free plan covers 100 tasks. Team and Enterprise sit above it, with Enterprise quote-based.

Max plan on Housecall Pro: $299 a month billed annually according to Housecall Pro (2026). The Basic and Essentials plans sit below it. None of the three plans lists inventory, parts or equipment tracking as a feature, so the price buys scheduling and invoicing, not a van-stock module.

ServiceTitan, Ply and FieldPulse publish no figures on their pricing pages. ServiceTitan offers Starter, Essentials and The Works packages behind a Request Pricing button. Ply prices by stock location. FieldPulse describes its pricing as seat-based and custom. Treat those rows as a request list for quotes, not as a gap in the analysis.

Why stock accuracy is the buying question

Shrinkage fell from 10–15% to 3–5% of cost of goods according to PM Magazine (2012). The source describes Barnett, a plumbing and heating distributor, whose truck replenishment program had technicians record the materials used on each job, with restocking built from those records. The figure is more than a decade old, so treat it as an illustration of the mechanism, not a current benchmark.

The mechanism is the point. A restock is only as accurate as the usage record behind it, which is why the trigger questions in the feature matrix matter more than the list of integration logos. The ASA relaunched its Voice of the Contractor survey on May 6, 2026, and says it covers inventory challenges for plumbing, mechanical and pipe contractors, with PHCC and MCAA helping distribute it (ASA's notice). The notice publishes no van-stock results, so it shows the problem is being studied, not how large it is.

Vendor profiles

ServiceTitan

Published: ServiceTitan's truck replenishment help page has you set up trucks under Settings > Inventory > Trucks & Warehouses, link each technician to a truck, and assign a primary vendor to each material in the pricebook. Replenishment starts when technicians add materials to invoices. Those items appear under Materials Used, move through Pending POs, Sent and Received, and can be grouped into one PO per vendor or one per truck. Received POs can be batched and exported to QuickBooks. According to ServiceTitan, the feature is intended for businesses that don't use QuickBooks for inventory, because simultaneous use isn't supported.

Our read: ServiceTitan fits a shop that already runs ServiceTitan and keeps inventory outside QuickBooks. The restock list is only as good as the invoice discipline behind it, since a part that never gets added to an invoice never triggers a reorder. Clean the pricebook first, including primary vendors and part numbers, because the replenishment flow pulls from it. The help page also says existing customers must contact their success or implementation manager to turn the feature on, so ask about that before you sign.

Limitations: the QuickBooks restriction is the hard one. The page names accountants as the primary users, which suggests the setup is an office task as much as a van task.

Ply

Published: Ply's truck inventory page says each truck is registered with a plate number, make, model and assigned technicians. Stock is tracked per truck at the item level, moves from warehouse to truck use barcode scanning, and each technician sees only their assigned truck's inventory, including offline. Trucks are restocked against min/max thresholds, and with Smart Min/Max the system can generate pick lists or purchase orders when truck stock drops below them. According to Ply, the page lists ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro and QuickBooks Online under "Works with your existing tools," but it gives no detail on what data moves between them. The pricing page says plans are priced by stock locations, meaning trucks plus warehouses, with unlimited users on every plan.

Our read: Ply is the most trade-specific option in this list for the van-first problem. Because pricing scales with trucks and warehouses, count your stock locations before the sales call. Its pricing page adds Plus-level features such as replenishment, PO approvals, three-way match and cost reporting, and API access as an add-on on any plan.

Limitations: no figures are published, the page does not say how low-stock alerts are delivered, and the integration depth is undocumented. Confirm exactly what syncs with your field-service or accounting system before you buy, since the logos alone do not show it.

FieldPulse

Published: FieldPulse's inventory page says stock can be tracked in real time across trucks, warehouses and job sites. Minimum stock levels trigger notifications, and purchase orders can be generated and sent automatically to preferred suppliers. Technicians can build POs from the job site when parts run low, barcode scanning updates stock location, and inventory items can be added to estimates and invoices from a shared catalog (FieldPulse). Its pricing page says pricing is seat-based and custom, and it does not list inventory among any plan's features (FieldPulse pricing).

Our read: FieldPulse covers the whole loop in one vendor, which suits a shop that wants scheduling, invoicing and van stock in one app. The gap is plan placement. Ask for the plan that includes inventory in writing, because the pricing page does not show it. QuickBooks appears only as a navigation link on the inventory page, so confirm the accounting sync on the call.

eTurns (TrackStock)

Published: eTurns' plan page prices Replenish per stockroom, billed semi-annually, and offers volume discounts. It shows per-vehicle prices with no plan labels and asks buyers to get in touch for details. The eTurns datasheet did not load in this review, so its truck features beyond pricing are unconfirmed.

Our read: eTurns is a stock-first product with a clear per-stockroom pricing unit, which can suit a shop with one or more warehouses feeding many trucks. The open question is whether each truck counts as a separate location for pricing, because the unlabeled per-vehicle figures do not answer it. Ask for a written quote that names the plan and the unit.

Fleetio

Published: Fleetio's pricing page prices by vehicle per month, with Professional and Premium on annual billing only, and it assumes a fleet of five assets. Its developer reference documents a create-part endpoint at POST /parts, which tells you it has a parts record model but nothing about low-stock behavior by tier.

Our read: Fleetio is a fleet maintenance platform first. It may fit a shop that already tracks vehicle service intervals and wants parts counts alongside them. Its parts pages and plan comparison did not load in this review, so the tier that includes purchase orders or low-stock notifications is unconfirmed. Ask which tier includes them before you count Fleetio as a van-stock option.

Housecall Pro

Published: Housecall Pro's pricing page lists Basic, Essentials and Max plans. Its feature lists include a price book on the Basic plan and job costing, but no inventory, parts or equipment tracking appears on any plan. Its webhook help article says webhooks are available only on the Max plan, and it lists events including job.completed and invoice.paid, according to Housecall Pro's help center.

Our read: Housecall Pro is a strong scheduling and invoicing choice whose published features do not include van stock. Expect to add a separate stock tool or build one. Ply lists the Housecall Pro logo among its integrations, which makes that pairing worth a direct question to both vendors. Red flag: buying Housecall Pro expecting automatic van restocks from its published plan features.

Building it yourself, and what that costs

Zapier, Make and n8n are the realistic alternative for many owners, usually a build on a spreadsheet of minimum levels, so compare that option fairly. These tools can keep run history, retry failed steps, branch on errors and produce audit evidence when they are configured that way. Make's pricing page lists error-handler modules, including Rollback, Break, Resume, Commit and Ignore, and gives 1,000 credits a month on its Free plan, according to Make. Its pricing page does not describe run history, so check the product documentation before assuming it.

Starter plan on n8n: €20 a month billed annually according to n8n. The Business plan is self-hosted only, and its page says pricing is based on monthly workflow executions, regardless of complexity.

What you own in a build is the part vendors do not sell you. You design idempotency, so a job edited twice does not create two purchase orders. You define escalation when a PO fails, control access to supplier accounts, and assign someone to read the logs. Zapier's allowance is counted in tasks, and Make's and n8n's in credits and executions, so the monthly bill follows job volume rather than headcount.

Worked example (illustrative, not a customer): a six-van shop where each van completes 25 jobs a week has 150 completed jobs a week, or about 650 a month (150 × 52 ÷ 12). A DIY build that starts a restock from Housecall Pro's job.completed event would need the Max plan, the only tier with webhooks, so that plan decision belongs in the first design meeting. Ply prices by stock location, so the same shop would count seven locations: six trucks plus one warehouse. Each of the roughly 650 monthly events needs a rule for what happens when the job's materials list is empty, and that rule is where the owner's review time goes.

Choosing by shop situation

Where a proposed US Tech Automations workflow fits

A proposed workflow that US Tech Automations could configure would start with a trigger, a job marked complete in the field system. In Housecall Pro, that is the job.completed event, available only on the Max plan. The action step reads the materials logged on that job and compares them with each van's minimum-level list, kept in a configured sheet or table. The outputs are a draft restock list for each van and a draft purchase order for the supplier. This is a configurable design, not a deployed system for any customer.

Prerequisites: the field system must expose completed-job and materials data through a webhook, API or scheduled export, and the help article does not show whether a job event carries the materials list. A QuickBooks connection is needed if purchase orders post to accounting, since QuickBooks is one of the named integrations on US Tech Automations' site. Someone must also maintain the van-level minimums, because the workflow can only compare against them. The site does not list inventory, purchasing or field-service workflows, so a ServiceTitan, Ply or Housecall Pro feed would need confirmation during scoping.

Human review points: a person approves each draft purchase order before it goes to a supplier, and a weekly physical count of each van is reconciled against the system to produce an exception list. Those two checks are what keep a bad materials record from turning into a bad order.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: skip a custom build if your vans are already well served by a built-in tool such as Ply's or FieldPulse's reorder features, since those are documented and need no custom design. Skip it if you want a self-serve product that your own staff configure without outside help. Skip it too if your field system exposes no job or materials data at all, because then the workflow has nothing to trigger on and a simpler manual count will do more for you.

Terms used in this guide

• Van stock: The parts, consumables and tools a technician carries on a truck.

• Minimum level (min/max): The lowest quantity a van should hold for an item. Restock triggers when stock falls below it.

• Pick list: A list of items to load onto a van or pull for a specific job.

• Pending PO: A purchase order drafted in the system but not yet sent to the vendor.

• Stock location: Any place stock is counted, such as a warehouse or a truck. Ply prices by this count.

• Shrinkage: Stock that goes missing or goes unrecorded, usually expressed as a share of cost of goods.

• Webhook: A message a software system sends automatically when an event happens, such as a job being completed.

Checklist before you choose

• Does the tool show stock by van, not just the company total?

• Does a low-stock event create a draft PO or pick list, or only an alert?

• Where does job usage come from: technicians logging materials, barcode scans, or both?

• Which system is the accounting source of record, and does the tool conflict with it?

• Is the price quote-based, and what unit is quoted: technician, vehicle, stock location or stockroom?

• Who maintains the minimum levels after launch, and how often are they reviewed?

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a separate van stock tool if I already use Housecall Pro?

Not always, but Housecall Pro's published plans do not list an inventory module, so confirm the feature in writing before assuming it exists. Ply lists Housecall Pro among its integrations, and Housecall Pro's own webhooks for completed jobs require the Max plan.

Can a spreadsheet handle van stock?

A spreadsheet can hold minimum levels for each van, but it cannot reduce stock when a technician logs a part on a job unless someone types that entry in. The reliability gain comes from tying usage to the job record, which is the step a spreadsheet does not do on its own.

Which vendors publish prices?

Housecall Pro, eTurns, Fleetio and Zapier publish list figures on their pricing pages, and n8n publishes euro figures. ServiceTitan, Ply and FieldPulse publish no figures and quote on request, and Make publishes credit allowances rather than prices in the pages reviewed.

Is the 10–15% shrinkage figure still current?

No. It comes from a 2012 trade article about a plumbing distributor's truck replenishment program, so treat it as a historical example of how usage-based restocking works, not as a current benchmark.

Can Zapier, Make or n8n replace a van stock product?

Yes, if your shop builds and maintains the workflow. These tools can keep run history, retry failed steps and branch on errors when configured, but the shop still owns idempotency, escalation, access controls and ongoing maintenance.

Bottom line

Choose on one question: does the software know what each van holds and write the restock order from that count? ServiceTitan is the documented choice when the shop already runs it and keeps inventory outside QuickBooks. Ply and FieldPulse publish the most explicit truck-level reorder features in the pages reviewed, and eTurns is worth a written quote if you run several stockrooms. Fleetio and Housecall Pro need confirmation of tier-level features before a purchase. If you are weighing a custom layer on top of your existing tools, see how US Tech Automations configures this.