PressureWashingBossPro Blog — Commercial Accounts

Tags and Custom Fields for Commercial Pressure Washing Accounts

A few commercial accounts are easy to keep in your head. Twenty are not. Somewhere along the way you need to know which clients are restaurant groups, which need a PO number on every statement, which contracts renew in the spring, and which store numbers the franchise office uses when they call. That kind of information does not fit neatly in an address or a phone number. It is what tags and custom fields are for.

Where Tags and Fields Fit

Monthly statements are covered in Monthly Statements Per Account: Billing Commercial Pressure Washing Clients Once a Month, including the need for PO numbers on some bills. Tags and custom fields are where that kind of detail lives.

In PressureWashingBossPro, clients can carry tags and custom fields. Tags are short labels you can attach to any client. Custom fields are named slots you create for information your company tracks, like a store number or contract end date. Both stay on the client and are there whenever the office opens it.

Useful Tags for Commercial Work

Tags work best when they are short and consistent. Some that commercial companies find useful:

• Account type: Restaurant, Retail Center, HOA, Apartments, Fleet, Gas Station, Garage.
• Billing: Monthly Statement, Needs PO, Card on File.
• Timing: Overnight, Before Open, After Close, Daytime OK.
• Area: North Route, Downtown, Highway Corridor.
• Status: Trial Month, Bid Out, Renewal Due.

Pick a list and stick to it. “Restaurant” and “Restaurants” and “Rest.” are three different tags to the software, and none of them will find all your restaurants. Agree on the spelling with whoever else works in the office.

Useful Custom Fields

Custom fields hold specific values that change from client to client:

• PO Number: for clients whose accounts payable rejects bills without one.
• Vendor Number: the number the client's system uses for your company.
• Store or Unit Number: how a franchise or management company refers to each location.
• Contract Start and End: so renewals do not sneak up on you.
• Regional Manager: the person above the store manager, in case the store manager changes.
• Fleet Unit Count: the number of vehicles in the agreement for fleet accounts.

The point is that any of this can be looked up in seconds instead of found by digging through old emails.

Keep custom fields for information that belongs to the client as a whole. Anything that belongs to one location, like the spigot, the enclosure key or the opening time, still goes in that address's access notes so the crew sees it on the job card. A good rule: if the crew needs it on site, it goes on the address; if the office needs it for billing, contracts or phone calls, it goes in a custom field on the client. That split keeps the crew's cards short and the office's records complete, and nobody has to hunt in two places for the same thing.

Tags and Fields in Daily Work

Tags and custom fields earn their keep in day-to-day office work:

• Before sending statements: check every client tagged Needs PO to confirm the number is current.
• Planning a slow month: pull up clients tagged Renewal Due and reach out before the contract ends.
• When a franchise office calls: they quote a store number, and the custom field tells you exactly which address they mean.
• When a manager leaves: the Regional Manager field gives you a contact who already knows your company.

Renewals get their own guide: Keeping Commercial Pressure Washing Accounts Renewing Year After Year.

Tags and Reports

Tags also help when you look at the business as a whole. Reports in PressureWashingBossPro can show what each account has been billed and paid. Pairing that with tags lets you ask useful questions: are restaurants worth more per visit than retail centers? Are HOAs paying on time? Are overnight accounts worth the late hours compared to daytime ones?

Those answers help decide where to spend your selling time. Reports by account are covered in the next guide.

Keeping It Tidy

Tags and fields only help if they are kept up to date. A few habits make that easy:

• Add tags and fields when the client is created, not months later.
• Update the contract dates the day a renewal is signed.
• Remove Trial Month or Bid Out tags once they no longer apply.
• Give one person in the office ownership of the tag list.

A few minutes of setup per client saves hours over a year. To see how tags and fields fit with the rest of commercial account management, go back to the commercial pressure washing software page.