ElectricalBossPro Blog — Electrical Contractor Software

Setting Up Electrical Contractor Software in the Order That Saves Rework

Setting up new software in the wrong order is how a two-hour job turns into two days. Import customers before your plans exist, and you have to go back to each one. Add techs before vans, and you assign them twice. The order below is the one that lets each step build on the last, so nothing has to be redone.

Before You Start

Your customer file should be ready to go, as described in CSV Import: Bringing Your Electrical Customer List Into New Software. Have your price sheet and a list of your techs and vans handy too.

Set aside one quiet block of time, such as an afternoon or an evening, away from the phone if you can. Most of the setup is a single sitting, and it goes faster when nobody is interrupting you to book a call. The rest happens during your first week of real work.

Step 1: Company Details

Start with the basics: your company name, address, contact details and logo. Your shop address matters more than it seems, because auto-routing on the dispatch board sorts stops Closest First or Furthest First from the shop. Set your sales tax and your country.

ElectricalBossPro works in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK and bills customers in their own currency. Getting this right first means every invoice afterward is correct.

Step 2: Your Service List

Enter what you sell with your own prices. Service call, troubleshooting, outlets, GFCI, breakers, ceiling fans, light fixtures, recessed lighting, dedicated circuits, smoke detectors, surge protectors, EV charger installs, panel upgrades, generator installs, rewires priced per square foot. A $99 service call, a $165 GFCI replacement, whatever your numbers are.

The service list comes before customers because estimates, invoices and plans all pull from it. See Building the Service List That Every Electrical Estimate and Invoice Pulls From.

Step 3: Recurring Plans

Next, set up your recurring services with their minimum days between visits: a yearly safety inspection at 365 days, yearly generator maintenance at 365 days, and commercial lighting maintenance or relamping every 14 or 30 days if you do it.

Plans come before the import so that when your customers arrive, you can attach the plans they are already on. Their next visits will come due on the Waiting List on their own, and nobody has to remember who was due when.

Step 4: Import Customers

Now run CSV import. Your clients and addresses come in, and the addresses are placed on the map automatically. Check your multi-address clients, such as landlords, property managers and commercial accounts, and set the ones who want one bill to Monthly.

Then attach recurring plans to the customers who have them. Start with the ones coming due soonest. Equipment, measurements and tags can wait and fill in over time.

Step 5: Employees, PINs and Vans

Add each tech as an employee with a personal PIN and a van assignment. Add office users with the roles that fit what they do: dispatch, billing, or everything for the owner.

Have each tech open the tech app in their phone's browser and install it to the home screen. No app store. They sign in with the company login and their PIN. Do this with them in person if you can. It takes a few minutes per phone.

Step 6: Website Forms and Customer Alerts

Put the request form and sign-up form on your website so new customers land in Form Responses. Decide which services and plans customers can sign up for in the customer app, such as a yearly generator maintenance plan.

Check how customer alerts will work: night before, when they are next, and when the tech arrives, chosen by each customer. Texting is for customers in the US and Canada, and every plan includes a monthly text allowance.

Step 7: Test, Then Go Live

Before real calls, run a few test jobs. Book a service call at your own address. Put it on a van. Have a tech open it, tap navigation, tap Start, take a photo, fill a safety inspection checklist on a second test job, and tap Complete. Check that the invoice looks right with your prices and tax.

Send a test estimate to yourself and approve it online. Watch it become a scheduled job. If anything looks off, fix it now, while nothing real depends on it.

Then go live. What to expect in those first days is covered in The First Week on Electrical Contractor Software, Day by Day. For the full system you are setting up, visit the electrical contractor software overview.