Backflow testing season without the spreadsheet: lists, testers, reports.

Where a water supplier requires backflow prevention assemblies to be tested every year, a plumbing shop with licensed testers runs a second business alongside its repairs: a list of assemblies, each with a deadline set by the purveyor, a customer to notify, a tester to send and a report to file. The list is date-driven and repetitive, and kept in a spreadsheet updated late in the evening, it is where dates get missed.

An AI assistant can carry that list: building it from the purveyor's notices and the shop's records, sorting it by deadline, drafting customer notices and checking that each tester's credential is current on the booked date. It never records a pass or a fail, never signs or submits a test report, and never tells a customer they are compliant. Those belong to the licensed tester and the owner.

EPA's fact sheet on cross-connection control and backflow prevention, written for public water systems, describes these programs as varying by state and municipality. It notes that rules on allowable assemblies, testing frequency and repair options can differ from state to state, that tester certification requirements may differ by state, and that a program's records should cover testing and repair, the credentials of the people doing the work, and inspection dates and results (as checked on 13 October 2026).

For a plumbing shop that means there is no general rule to automate. There is the program of each water supplier whose customers the shop tests for, and every row on the list has to carry which purveyor it answers to. A shop working across several suppliers can have several notice cycles, report forms and submission routes on the same list.

The San Antonio Water System (SAWS) publishes its annual testing requirements, and they show the moving parts clearly. As checked on 13 October 2026, the SAWS page sets out the following.

• THE REQUIREMENT

  Annual testing of backflow prevention assemblies is required by the City of San Antonio's plumbing code and code of ordinances, and by SAWS's own cross-connection program.

• NOTICES AND REMINDERS

  For assemblies at commercial and residential sites with alternative water use or on-site sewage facilities, BSI sends notification letters on behalf of SAWS; residential lawn-irrigation reminders go out quarterly.

• WHO TESTS

  Testing must be done by a licensed backflow prevention assembly tester, with separate requirements for fireline and recycled-water services. The customer and the tester arrange the test between them.

• THE REPORT

  The tester completes a Test and Maintenance (T&M) report for each assembly, and completed reports are submitted through BSI Online.

• A FAILED TEST

  A failing assembly must be repaired and retested, and SAWS treats a submitted T&M report showing a failure as a delinquency.

• WHAT IT DOES NOT COVER

  SAWS reminds customers that backflow testing does not replace their responsibility to test and maintain thermal expansion equipment and water-heater relief valves.

The SAWS details translate directly into the fields a shop's list needs, and the same structure works for any purveyor once the owner enters that supplier's rules. Each row carries the customer and site; the assembly's type, serial number and location; the purveyor and its deadline for this cycle; the last test date and result exactly as the tester recorded them; the tester assigned; the date that tester's credential lapses, where it has one; and whether the report has been submitted, when and by whom. A failed result adds a repair job and a retest date to the same row, so a failure cannot drop off the list.

The list lives in the shop's own system, not in an assistant's memory. The List Bot is a Bot in Grok Bot, working on a persistent cloud computer, and the documentation is clear that what a Bot remembers does not replace the source system. A list Bot reads and updates the list it has been given access to; reaching a field-service platform is a custom integration, or supervised browser use where the vendor permits it, subject to testing.

Based on the Grok Bot documentation at docs.x.ai as checked on 13 October 2026. The trade examples are Aevrion's illustrations, not documented Grok Bot use cases. Aevrion Ops is an independent consultancy. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or a partner of xAI, SpaceXSI or Cursor. Grok Bot is named here only to describe it.

The state model below follows one assembly through one annual cycle. The assistant's states are all preparation; every state that produces a record of compliance is held by a person.

1. 01

   Due date on the list

   Owner

   List Bot

   Advances when

   The purveyor's notice or the shop's own due date is added, and a customer notice is drafted

2. 02

   Notice awaiting approval

   Owner

   The owner

   Advances when

   The owner edits and sends the customer notice

3. 03

   Test booked

   Owner

   The owner or office person

   Advances when

   A date is agreed with the customer and a tester assigned; the List Bot checks the tester's credential is current on that date

4. 04

   Tested

   Owner

   The licensed tester

   Advances when

   The tester records pass or fail on the report

   Ends when

   A pass moves straight to reporting

5. 05

   Failed, repair needed

   Owner

   The owner and the customer

   Advances when

   The repair is quoted and approved, and a retest is booked

6. 06

   Report to the purveyor

   Owner

   The tester

   Advances when

   The report is submitted through the purveyor's portal, with any login done by a person

7. 07

   Closed for this cycle

   Owner

   The owner, then List Bot

   Advances when

   The owner records the submitted report on the row; the List Bot proposes next cycle's due date from the purveyor's rule for the owner to confirm

   Ends when

   Closes only when a submitted passing report is on file

A test-due list is a natural routine: the same preparation on the same day every week. Grok Bot's routines run on a schedule the owner sets, at least five minutes apart, and the documentation's guidance on designing them applies almost line for line to backflow season.

• PREPARE, DO NOT EXECUTE

  The routine builds the list and drafts notices. Sending, booking and submitting stay with people.

• NO-DATA POLICY

  If the list or a purveyor's notice cannot be read, the routine says so and stops, instead of working from last week's copy.

• HARMLESS REPEATS

  Re-drafting a notice is safe; sending it twice is not. Because the routine only drafts, and checks for an existing draft before writing one, a repeated run leaves at most one notice for the owner to send.

• PARTIAL COMPLETION

  If it finishes half the list, it reports which rows were done and which were not, in the place the owner reads every Monday.

• RE-TEST AFTER CHANGES

  When a purveyor changes its portal, its notice format or its report form, the routine is checked again before it runs unattended.

• READ THE RUN HISTORY

  Each routine's run history shows recent successes and failures. Someone reads it every week, because a routine that quietly did not run is a missed deadline in waiting.

Purveyor portals ask for logins, and some ask for two-factor codes. Grok Bot's documentation says the Bot should hand those steps to a person through a takeover of its computer rather than get around them, and that a site may block automation altogether. For a backflow list that means the assistant prepares everything up to the portal and stops: a person signs in, and the tester or the person the owner designates submits the report.

It also means care with the shared computer. Every Bot on the account uses the same cloud computer and the same browser sign-ins, and separate Bots are not a security boundary, so a purveyor portal left signed in is open to all of them. Keep the submission step human and sign out afterwards.

The test itself is never touched. Only a licensed tester records pass or fail, and an assistant that tidies a result field has altered a regulatory record. Its job is to make sure the tester arrives with the right assembly, the right report form and a clear deadline, and that nothing on the list goes quiet. Irrigation contractors whose customers' assemblies appear on the same notices can use the same list; this article is the series' home for annual testing.

Aevrion Ops can help plumbing shops build the list, the routine and the integrations to their field-service software, so far as the vendor's API or terms permit and only once tested, and the reliable workflows article covers routine design across trades. The workflow automation readiness assessment is the place to start.

1. Backflow testing frequency and tester requirements are set by state and local programs, so each row on the list carries its purveyor's rules.
2. SAWS, as one published example, requires annual testing by a licensed tester, a T&M report per assembly submitted through BSI Online, and treats a submitted failed report as a delinquency.
3. An assistant can sort the list by deadline, draft customer notices and check tester credentials against booked dates.
4. Only the licensed tester records pass or fail; reports are submitted by a person, and portal logins go through a human takeover.
5. Build the weekly routine with a no-data policy, draft-only actions, partial-completion reporting and a weekly look at run history.