GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Commercial Doors

Property Manager Garage Door Accounts: One Manager, Many Properties, One Record

A property manager is a door company's best kind of repeat customer. They manage rental houses, duplexes, small apartment buildings with garages and sometimes commercial spaces, and every one of those properties has doors that break. Once a manager trusts you, the calls keep coming. Keeping that trust depends on getting the details right at every address they send you to.

How Manager Accounts Differ

Public buildings with several sites under one buyer are covered in Fire Station Bay Doors: Organizing Service for Stations and Public Buildings. A property manager account has the same many-addresses shape, plus a third party in the middle: the tenant who actually lives or works at the property.

That means three people on almost every job. The manager approves and pays. The tenant opens the door, reports the problem and is home (or not) when the tech arrives. And the owner of the property, who may never be involved directly, eventually sees the bill through the manager. Good records keep all three happy.

Every Property Under One Client

In GarageDoorBossPro, the property management company is one client, and every property they send you to is an address under that client. Each address keeps its own door list, access notes, job history and pin on the map. When the manager calls about “the rental on Maple,” the office opens the client and picks the address.

Each address also keeps its door and hardware list: the garage door with brand, model #, size, material and year, the opener with HP and drive type, springs, sensors, keypad and remotes. The “From House” picker fills new jobs in from that list, and changes on a job flow back to the address.

Tenant Contact and Access Notes

The tech usually needs to deal with the tenant, not the manager. Access notes stored on the address carry what the tech needs:

• “Tenant contact in notes. Text before arriving.”
• “Lockbox on side door, code from the manager's office.”
• “Tenant has a large dog, ask them to put it inside.”
• “Detached garage, door faces the alley.”

Those notes show on the job card every time that address comes up. When a tenant moves out and a new one moves in, the office updates the address once. Two-way texting from the office makes it easy to confirm a time with the tenant, and automatic alerts can tell whoever is on the account that the tech is on the way.

Approvals Before the Work

Managers usually set a limit on what a tech can do without asking. Write it in the client's notes or a custom field: “Approve anything over the service call with the manager first.” When a job turns out bigger than expected — a broken spring call that turns into a new opener, or a dented panel that needs a section replaced — the office builds an estimate from the service list and sends it to the manager to approve online. The approved estimate becomes the scheduled job.

Estimate follow-up emails go out on their own if the manager hasn't answered. That covers the manager who is handling a dozen other properties and forgets to click. The approval process is covered in Getting a Property Manager to Say Yes: Online Estimate Approval and Follow-Ups.

Photos and Inspection Results

Managers are rarely at the property when the tech is. Before-and-after photos from the tech app stay on the job, so the manager sees the bent track or the broken cable and the finished repair. If the tech worked the door safety inspection checklist, the condition and recommendations are on the job too, and the office can print a Garage Door Safety Inspection report to send along.

That paperwork also helps the manager explain the bill to the property owner. A photo and a written recommendation answer most questions before they get asked.

One Statement, Lines by Address

Managers juggle many owners and many properties, and they need to know which charge goes with which address. In GarageDoorBossPro, set the client to Monthly and every job at every address lands on one statement each month. Each line is labeled with the address, so the manager's bookkeeper can split charges by property without calling you.

If a manager would rather pay per job, invoices are created when the tech taps Complete, with line items, sales tax and online payment from the customer app.

Earning More Properties

Managers start small. They send you one house to see how it goes. If the tenant was treated well, the photos were clear, the approval was easy and the bill made sense, the next call is five houses. Clean records at every address are how one property turns into the whole portfolio.

For how manager accounts fit with HOAs, warehouses and your other commercial clients, return to the commercial garage door software overview.