A plumbing franchise
where the numbers
finally make sense.

A service business moving fast, on books that couldn't keep up.

1-Tom Plumber is a service plumbing franchise — the business Chuck and Tanya Doucet have run for the past four years. It's not new construction or remodels. It's the calls that can't wait: leaky pipes, clogged drains, plumbing emergencies for homeowners, apartment residents, and restaurants who need someone out fast.

The franchise also works hand-in-hand with the Doucets' restoration company, Restoration Pros. When a plumber is on site and spots water damage or mold, they refer the customer over so the restoration side can step in and make the space safe again. Two businesses, one operation — and, in the early days, one shared financial problem.

Like the restoration side, the plumbing books started out DIY. Tanya — who runs the office while Chuck runs the field — had set up QuickBooks with what she knew from a single college course. Enough to enter transactions and build categories, but not enough to allocate expenses correctly, reconcile properly, or produce reports the business could actually rely on.

For a service plumbing business, that's a real problem. Jobs come in fast, crews are in the field, and costs — labor, materials, fuel — pile up quickly. Without clean books, there's no way to know which jobs were worth it, whether overtime was eating the margin, or where the money was actually going. The reporting was, in Tanya's words, all over the place.

One integrated team across both businesses — starting with clean books.

When the Doucets brought Nuve in, the plumbing franchise became part of one integrated engagement alongside Restoration Pros, their restoration company. Same team. Same standards. No juggling separate bookkeepers for separate entities.

The work started where it should: rebuilding the chart of accounts so every transaction lands in the right place. From there, Nuve put the systems in place that a fast-moving service business needs to stay on top of its numbers:

• Full ongoing bookkeeping with proper monthly reconciliation
• Custom reports that separate payroll, fuel, materials, and per-job costs
• Dext for virtual receipt management — so field techs and the office aren't chasing paper or trading emails over every receipt
• Tax services covering the business, after Nuve reviewed prior returns and flagged issues

And the responsiveness held up across both businesses. Every question answered within 24 hours. If email wasn't enough, someone got on a call. When a cost was categorized a certain way, the team explained why. For owners running two companies at once, that kind of consistency is the difference between staying in control and falling behind.

Real numbers behind every staffing and job decision.

For a service plumbing business, the value of clean books shows up in the daily decisions. Tanya can now pull the numbers and see what's actually happening — not guess at it — and that visibility feeds straight into how Chuck runs the field.

The clearest example is staffing. When the crew is consistently in overtime, that's now a visible signal: time to hire more field techs. When hours drop below 40, that tells them the business is slow, and it's time to check in with the sales and marketing side. Before Nuve, those were instincts. Now they're decisions backed by data.

The other outcome is simpler, and Tanya names it directly: time. Because Nuve handles the books, she's not stopping to research which expense category an invoice belongs in. She can pull a report and trust it. For two owners splitting their attention across a plumbing franchise and a restoration company, getting that work off their plate is its own kind of result.

What Tanya would tell another plumbing or trades owner.

Published with permission. Tanya Doucet confirmed use of the 1-Tom Plumber company name in this case study. Interview conducted June 2026.