ElectricalBossPro Blog — Commercial Accounts

Landlords With Many Units: Keeping Every Rental Address Under One Electrical Account

Not every multi-address customer is a big management company. Plenty of the best accounts an electrical shop can have are individual landlords: someone who owns eight rental houses, a couple of duplexes and a small fourplex, and who calls the same electrician every time something goes wrong. They are loyal, they pay, and they keep calling. They also have tenants in the middle of every job, which makes the details matter.

The Landlord Is the Client, the Rentals Are the Addresses

The basic setup for any multi-address customer is covered in Property Manager Electrical Accounts: One Client, Dozens of Addresses, One Place to Find Them. A landlord works the same way, just on a smaller and more personal scale.

In ElectricalBossPro the landlord is one client. Each rental is an address under that client. For a duplex or fourplex, you can treat each unit as its own address (“412 Pine, Unit A” and “412 Pine, Unit B”) so that work done in one unit never gets confused with the other. Shared equipment like the meter bank or the main service can sit on whichever address makes the most sense to your techs, with a note saying it serves both.

The Tenant Is Not the Customer, but They Are Home

Rental work has a third party the landlord does not always think about: the tenant. Your tech needs to get in, and the tenant needs to know you are coming. The landlord, meanwhile, is the one paying and approving.

Access notes on each address are where that gets written down: “Tenant works nights, schedule after noon,” “Text the landlord before arrival, he will let the tenant know,” “Lockbox on the back door for vacant periods.” The tech sees those notes on the job card before knocking. Office texting can handle the coordination, and the landlord gets automatic on-the-way and arrived alerts so they know the visit actually happened without driving over.

Keeping Each Unit's History Straight

Landlords remember problems by address. “Didn't you replace something in the kitchen at the Maple house last year?” With every job tied to a specific address, the office can open that rental and see the visit, the notes and the photos. The tech on the next call sees the past notes too.

Each address also keeps its equipment list: the panel, any subpanel, the meter base, the exterior disconnect, and anything else your tech recorded. Older rentals often have equipment that is worth keeping an eye on, and having brand, model, rating and year installed on file means the next tech knows what they are walking into. For the deeper look at equipment records, see Equipment Records Per Building: Three-Phase Panels, Disconnects and Meter Bases on File.

Small Jobs, Lots of Them

Landlord work is mostly small and steady:

• A dead outlet or a GFCI that will not reset.
• A light fixture a tenant broke moving furniture.
• Smoke detectors that need attention between tenants.
• A ceiling fan the landlord wants added before listing.
• Turnover work when one tenant leaves and another moves in.

Each of these is a one-time job at a specific address, priced from your service list. A $99 service call and a $165 GFCI replacement on one rental, a fixture swap at another. Nothing about the size of the job changes how it is recorded.

One Bill or Pay Per Job

Some landlords are happy to have a card on file charged when each job is completed. Others, especially once they have more than a few properties, would rather see one bill a month. ElectricalBossPro handles both. Set the client to Monthly and every job across every rental rolls onto one statement, with each line labeled by the address, so the landlord can split costs by property at tax time. Leave it per job, and the tech's Complete button creates the invoice and can charge the card on file.

Making It Easy for the Landlord to Ask

Landlords will send you more work if asking is easy. They can text the office directly through two-way texting, request service from the customer app, or use your website request form, which lands in Form Responses. The customer app also shows their invoices and lets them pay online or update their card.

Whatever way the request comes in, the office creates the job at the right rental, and it shows on the Waiting List and dispatch board like any other call.

Where Landlords Fit in the Bigger Picture

A landlord with a handful of rentals is often the first step toward bigger commercial accounts. The setup you use for them is the same setup you will use for a management company with fifty units. To see how it all connects, from monthly billing to relamping routes, visit the commercial electrical software page.