ElectricalBossPro Blog — Electrical Contractor Software

Monthly Account Billing for Property Managers, Gyms and Retail Chains With Many Addresses

A property manager with twenty rentals does not want twenty invoices a month from their electrician. Neither does a gym owner with four locations or a retail chain with stores across the region. They want one bill they can check and pay. Monthly account billing gives them that, without changing how your techs work.

One Client, Many Addresses

Residential billing, job by job, is covered in Billing in Electrical Contractor Software: Invoices, Card on File and Past-Due Follow-Up. Commercial and multi-address accounts work differently.

In ElectricalBossPro, one client can have many addresses. A property manager is one client with every building or rental under them. A gym chain is one client with each location as an address. Each address keeps its own equipment, measurements, notes and job history. A service call at the third location shows that location's panel, not the first one's.

Set the Client to Monthly

When a client is set to Monthly, completed jobs at all of their addresses roll up into one statement each month. Every line on the statement is labeled with its address, so the property manager can see exactly what was done where:

• 412 Oak St, Unit B — Service call, GFCI replacement
• 88 Elm Ave — Smoke detector replacement
• Westside location — Lighting maintenance

One statement, one payment, and no stack of separate invoices to match up on their side.

On your side, the statement builds itself from the work. Nobody in your office has to collect a month of work orders, sort them by building and type up a summary on the last day of the month. Each completed job adds its line as it happens, labeled with the address it belongs to, so the statement is ready when the month ends and matches what the techs actually did.

The Techs Work the Same Way

Monthly billing changes the paperwork, not the work. Jobs at a monthly account's addresses go on the dispatch board like any other job. The tech sees the address, the equipment and the access notes on the phone, taps Start, takes photos and taps Complete. The difference is where the charge goes: onto the monthly statement instead of a separate invoice.

Access notes matter more on commercial accounts. “Check in with front desk.” “Electrical room key in the lockbox.” “Tenant prefers mornings.” Those live on each address and show on the tech's card.

Recurring Work at Every Location

Commercial accounts often include recurring work. Lighting maintenance or relamping can run every 14 or 30 days at each location, set by minimum days between visits. A landlord might put each rental on a yearly safety inspection plan at 365 days. Each visit comes due on the Waiting List on its own, at its own address.

With fixture counts on each property, lighting work can be priced off the measurement, so each location bills at the right amount. Every visit lands on the monthly statement with its address. See Recurring Electrical Work: Yearly Inspections, Generator Maintenance and Relamping Plans.

Why Commercial Clients Like It

For the client, the monthly statement is easier to approve. Someone in their office can check each line against the address and the work, sign off once and pay once. That is a much easier process than approving a pile of small invoices that arrive on different days.

For your shop, it usually means getting paid more reliably by commercial clients. A clear monthly statement gets processed. A stack of separate invoices gets set aside until someone has time. The client can also see the statement in the customer app.

Tags and Reports for Bigger Accounts

Tags and custom fields help organize a large account: tag every address that belongs to a particular property manager, or note a building number or store number in a custom field. Reports help you keep an eye on the work you do for each account.

Office user roles let you decide who in your office can see and change billing, which matters once someone other than the owner is handling commercial accounts.

Residential and Monthly in One System

Most electrical shops are mostly residential with a few commercial accounts. That is fine. Residential customers keep getting invoices job by job, with card-on-file charges at completion. Monthly clients get their statement. Both run in the same system, on the same dispatch board, with the same techs and the same phones.

Adding a commercial account does not mean adding a second system or a second spreadsheet. It means setting one client to Monthly. For how monthly accounts fit with the rest of the platform, go to the ElectricalBossPro electrical contractor software page.