GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Commercial Doors

One Client With Many Addresses: How Commercial Door Accounts Are Set Up

The first decision in any commercial account is where things go. Is the warehouse company the client, or is each warehouse a client? Is the HOA the client, or each townhome? Get it right and everything after is easy. Get it wrong and you end up with ten separate clients that should be one, ten separate bills and a manager asking why.

The Basic Shape

HOA communities, where the question comes up often, are covered in Townhome and HOA Communities: Managing Dozens of Garage Doors Under One Account. The general rule for any commercial account is simple: the client is whoever pays, and the addresses are wherever the doors are.

In GarageDoorBossPro, one client can have many addresses. A property management company, a storage operator with several facilities, a business with several locations or an HOA that pays for its doors becomes one client, with every property listed under it. Each address keeps its own:

• Doors and hardware, with brand, model #, serial #, size, material, year and bay
• Access notes — keys, codes, contacts, hours
• Measurements, like square feet, doors and openers
• Job history and past notes
• Recurring work, like a maintenance plan every 90 days
• A pin on the map

What Goes on the Client

The client record holds what applies to the whole account: the company name, the billing contact, the email where statements go, the card on file if there is one, and how the account is billed. This is also where tags and custom fields go. A tag like “Commercial” or “Property Manager” makes it easy to group these accounts in reports. A custom field can hold a purchase order number, an approval limit or a vendor number the client wants on paperwork.

If the client wants one bill, set them to Monthly. Every job at every address lands on one statement each month, with each line labeled with its address.

What Goes on Each Address

Anything a tech needs at the building belongs on the address, not the client. A gate code at one storage facility has nothing to do with another facility owned by the same company. A note that says “check in at the dock office” only makes sense at the warehouse with the dock office.

The same goes for door records. Doors live on the address they hang in. When a new job is made, the “From House” picker lists that address's doors, and the tech sees exactly those doors on the job card. For more on keeping those records tidy, see Door Records Per Building: Brand, Model, Serial, Size and Bay for Every Commercial Door.

Common Setups

A few patterns cover most commercial accounts:

• Single warehouse or shop. One client, one address, many doors on that address.
• Company with several locations. One client, an address for each location.
• Property manager. One client for the management company, an address for every property they send you to.
• HOA that pays for doors. One client for the association, an address for every unit.
• HOA where owners pay. Each homeowner is their own client, tagged with the community name.

When a manager takes over a new property, add it as another address under their client. When they lose a property, it can stay on the record with its history, and you simply stop scheduling there.

How Jobs Roll Up

Every job belongs to an address, and every address belongs to a client. That means the office can look at one building's history or the whole account's history. When the manager asks what you did at the Fifth Street building this year, open that address. When they ask what they spent with you this year, look at the client.

Recurring work works the same way. A maintenance plan is set on the address it applies to, so the warehouse that wants every 90 days and the storage facility that wants twice a year can sit under the same client with their own schedules. When each visit comes due, it shows on the Waiting List map at its own address.

Getting the Addresses In

For a client with a handful of locations, adding addresses by hand is quick. For a manager with a long list, CSV import brings in the whole list, and imported addresses are placed on the map automatically. After the import, every address is ready for door records, access notes and recurring work.

Before the first visit to each building, add whatever access notes the manager can give you. The tech adds the doors when they get there.

Starting Clean

One client, many addresses, details where they belong. It sounds like a small thing, but it is the foundation every other commercial feature sits on: the monthly statement, the maintenance plan, the inspection reports, the history. For how it all fits together, return to the commercial garage door software overview.