GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Commercial Doors

Tags, Custom Fields and Reports for Commercial Door Accounts

Once a door company has more than a few commercial accounts, questions start coming up that the schedule alone can't answer. How many property managers do we work for? Which accounts are on maintenance plans? Which manager needs a PO number on every bill? How much of our work is commercial now? Tags, custom fields and reports are where those answers live.

Organizing Beyond the Schedule

Choosing how each client pays is covered in Invoicing Commercial Door Work: Per-Job Invoices, Card on File or Monthly Billing. Tags and custom fields help keep track of all those choices and more.

In GarageDoorBossPro, clients can carry tags and custom fields. Tags are labels you can filter by. Custom fields hold extra information you want on the client that isn't one of the standard fields.

Tags for Grouping

Tags work best for sorting clients into groups. Useful tags for commercial work include:

• Commercial or Residential, to split the client list.
• Property Manager, HOA, Warehouse, Storage, Auto Shop, Public, for the type of account.
• Maintenance Plan, for clients on recurring visits.
• A community name, for HOA homeowners who pay their own bills.
• Referred by a particular manager, if you want to see where work comes from.

Keep the list short and consistent. A handful of tags that everyone uses the same way is more useful than dozens that each person invents.

Custom Fields for Details

Custom fields are for information specific to each client. On commercial accounts, common ones are:

• PO number, for clients who want one on their paperwork.
• Approval limit, like “Call manager before any repair over the service call.”
• Vendor number, if the client assigns one.
• Department or cost center, for larger organizations.
• Contract dates, if the account has an agreement that renews.

Putting these on the client means the office doesn't have to dig through emails to find them. The approval limit in particular saves awkward moments, since anyone in the office can check it before sending a tech to do extra work.

Reports

GarageDoorBossPro includes reports on your work and billing. With commercial clients tagged, the office can use those reports to look at commercial accounts on their own and see how that side of the business is doing.

Questions worth asking every so often:

• Which commercial accounts brought in the most work this year?
• Which accounts haven't called in a while?
• Are maintenance visits getting done on time, or are some slipping into overdue?
• Which accounts have unpaid statements?

The Waiting List helps with the maintenance question directly: overdue pins show which visits are late. Reports help with the bigger picture.

Tags When Planning the Week

Tags pay off on busy days too. Before planning the week, a quick look at the clients tagged Maintenance Plan reminds the office which accounts are paying for visits on a schedule, and that helps decide what can wait and what can't. A residential tune-up that slides a few days is rarely a problem. A commercial maintenance visit that slides past due can be.

Office Roles

Commercial accounts often involve more people in the office: someone dispatching, someone handling billing, the owner looking at the big picture. Office user roles let each person see and do what they need. Employees in the field have their own PINs and van assignments, so jobs and clock-ins are tied to the right person.

Keeping It Tidy

Tags and custom fields only help if they stay accurate. A few habits:

• Add tags when a client is created, not months later.
• Update custom fields when a manager tells you something changed.
• Review commercial accounts a few times a year and fix anything that's out of date.

The same goes for door records and access notes on each address. Clean records at every level make every report more reliable. For keeping those records current, see Door Records Per Building: Brand, Model, Serial, Size and Bay for Every Commercial Door.

Measurements and the Bigger Picture

Each property can also hold measurements like square feet, doors and openers. On commercial accounts, the door and opener counts on each property are a quick way to see how big an account really is. A manager with ten properties averaging several doors each is a very different account from one with ten single-door rentals. Knowing that helps you plan van time, price maintenance plans and decide which accounts deserve the most attention when the schedule gets tight.

Combined with tags, those counts tell you where your commercial work is concentrated and where there is room to grow.

Seeing the Commercial Side Clearly

Commercial accounts grow quietly. One manager becomes three, one warehouse becomes a company with four buildings. Tags, custom fields and reports let the owner see that growth and plan for it. For how they fit with the rest of the commercial setup, go back to the commercial garage door software page.