ElectricalBossPro Blog — Running an Electrical Business

Property Managers and Multi-Location Accounts: Monthly Billing for an Electrical Company

A homeowner calls when they need you. A property manager calls all the time. They have dozens of units, a list of tenants with problems, and an accounting department that wants one clean bill each month. Gyms and retail chains are similar: several locations, recurring lighting work, and someone at head office who has to approve every invoice. These accounts can become a steady base of work for an electrical company, if the business side is set up for them.

Many Addresses, One Customer

In Yearly Safety Inspection Plans: Turning One-Time Customers Into Annual Visits, a landlord with several rentals had an inspection plan on each address. That landlord is the simplest version of a multi-location account.

In ElectricalBossPro, one client can have many addresses. The property manager is the client. Each building, unit or store is an address with its own equipment, notes, access details, plans and job history. The van goes to the address. The bill goes to the client.

Keep Each Location's Records Separate

Each address in a multi-location account deserves the same record as a single house:

• Equipment. Panels, subpanels, meter base, exterior disconnects and anything else at that location, with model, serial, rating and phase. Commercial buildings often have three-phase service, which is worth having on the record before the tech arrives.
• Access notes. Where the electrical room is, who has the key, which door to use, when the building opens.
• Measurements. Square feet, fixtures and circuits, which can be used to price services like relamping.
• History. Past jobs, notes and photos at that specific location.

That separation matters when a call comes in. “Unit 4B's kitchen outlets are dead” should pull up 4B, not the whole building.

Recurring Commercial Work

Many multi-location accounts want regular visits, not just repairs. Recurring work is set by minimum days between visits:

• Commercial lighting maintenance or relamping every 14 or 30 days for stores, gyms and offices.
• Yearly safety inspections on each rental unit or building.
• Yearly generator maintenance where a location has a backup generator.

Each visit comes due on the Waiting List when it's time, with pins on the map colored by status. The office can group nearby locations into one route day, and auto-routing orders the stops from the shop.

One Monthly Statement

The feature that matters most to these customers is billing. Set the account to Monthly, and instead of a separate invoice for every visit, they get one statement each month covering every address. Each line is labeled with the address, so the accounting department can see exactly what was done where.

The monthly statement also helps when a property manager reviews their vendors at budget time. Twelve statements with every location and every visit listed is an easy record to hand over. It shows the work you did without anyone in your office digging through a year of separate invoices to answer the question.

For the electrical company, that means fewer invoices to send and fewer questions to answer. For the property manager, it means one bill to approve. It's a small thing that makes you easier to work with than a shop that sends twenty separate invoices.

Who Calls In

Multi-location accounts often have several people who can request work: the property manager, a maintenance supervisor, a store manager. Write down who is allowed to approve what. Use custom fields or notes on the client to record contacts and approval limits, so the office knows whether a store manager can say yes to a repair or whether head office needs an estimate first.

For larger work at one location, send an estimate. The customer approves it online and the approved estimate becomes a scheduled job at that address.

Keeping Tenants Informed

When a tech is heading to an occupied unit, someone needs to know. Automatic alerts can be set the way the account prefers: the night before, when the tech is next, and when they arrive. Two-way texting from the office handles the details, like which tenant to call for access.

Winning and Keeping These Accounts

Property managers and chains stay with companies that are reliable and easy to bill. Show up when scheduled, keep records by location, send one clear monthly statement, and answer texts quickly. Those habits are what keep them renewing. The next article covers the payment side of that in more depth: Getting Paid Faster in an Electrical Business: Card on File, Auto-Charge and Past-Due Follow-Up.

For everything else on the business side of an electrical shop, go back to the electrical business software overview.