ElectricalBossPro Blog — Commercial Accounts

Mixing Commercial and Residential Electrical Work in One Schedule

Very few small electrical shops are purely commercial or purely residential. Most started on houses, picked up a property manager or two, added a retail chain's lighting, and now run a mix. That mix is healthy. Residential calls fill the gaps, commercial plans keep the calendar steady. But it only works if both kinds of work live in the same schedule instead of two separate systems.

Why Two Systems Fail

What keeps commercial accounts happy is covered in Keeping a Commercial Electrical Account Happy: Show Up, Report Back, Bill Clean. A lot of that depends on keeping commercial work from getting lost behind residential calls, or the other way around.

Some shops try to run commercial on a spreadsheet and residential in their software. Others keep a separate calendar for the big accounts. Either way, the office has to look in two places to plan a day, and a van ends up driving across town to a building when it was two blocks away from it that morning. Double-booking is easy. Forgotten relamping visits are easier.

One Board for Everything

ElectricalBossPro puts every job on one dispatch board, whether it is a $99 residential service call, a panel upgrade, a homeowner's yearly safety inspection, a turnover at an apartment complex or a 30-day relamping visit at a strip center. Jobs show by day, assigned to a van. Auto-route sorts each van Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, and the office can set any stop's order by hand.

Because everything is on one board, the office sees the real shape of each day. A van running residential calls in the north end can pick up a commercial stop nearby. A van on a commercial route can fit in an urgent residential call on its way back.

One Waiting List for Every Plan

Recurring work feeds the same place no matter who the customer is. A homeowner's yearly generator maintenance, a landlord's yearly inspection and a gym's 14-day lighting visit all come due on the same Waiting List map, colored not due yet, due now or overdue past a 7-day grace. The office plans from one map instead of comparing two lists.

Filters and Saved Views

Seeing everything is useful, but sometimes the office needs to focus. The van filter on the dispatch board shows one van's day at a time. Saved views let the office set up the views it uses often, such as just the commercial van, or just this week's inspections, and come back to them with a click.

Tags on clients help too. Tag commercial accounts, and the office can quickly tell which jobs on the board belong to a monthly account and which are one-time residential calls. For more on tags and custom fields, see Tags, Custom Fields and Reports for Commercial Electrician Accounts.

Billing Follows the Client, Not the Day

Mixing work on one schedule does not mean mixing how it is billed. Billing is set on each client. Homeowners can pay per job, with the tech's Complete button creating the invoice and charging the card on file. Commercial accounts set to Monthly get every job across every address on one statement, labeled by address.

The tech does the same thing at both kinds of stop: Start, do the work, take photos, Complete. The office does not have to sort anything by hand at the end of the month.

Same Tech App, Different Cards

Techs do not need separate tools for commercial work. The tech app shows every stop in route order with a navigation button, access notes, equipment and past notes. A house card might show “Garage · Panel is behind the shelving.” A commercial card might show “Check in with the store manager, electrical room key at the register” and a three-phase main panel. Same app, same buttons.

Customer texts work the same way too. Homeowners and managers both get automatic on-the-way and arrived alerts, based on the preferences each one has chosen.

Planning the Mix

A few habits keep a mixed schedule running well:

• Plan recurring commercial visits first, since they are predictable, then fill around them with residential calls.
• Keep after-hours commercial jobs at the end of a van's day, or on their own day.
• Group commercial stops that are close together into one route.
• Leave room in each day for the urgent residential call that always comes in.

Many shops settle on one van for service calls and another for installs, inspections and commercial work, then shuffle when the week gets busy.

One Business, One Schedule

Commercial and residential work are two sides of the same business. Running them on one schedule is how a small shop gets the most out of every van. For the commercial side in full, see the commercial electrical software overview.