ElectricalBossPro Blog — Commercial Accounts

Commercial Electrical Software: The Complete Guide to Property Manager, Retail and Office Accounts

Most electrical shops start on houses. A homeowner calls about a dead outlet, a tech shows up, the job gets done and the card gets charged. Then one day a property manager calls about a unit that needs work before a new tenant moves in, and a few weeks later they call about another building. Before long that one manager is sending you a dozen addresses, asking for one bill a month, and wondering whether you can take over the parking lot lighting too.

That is a good problem to have, but it breaks the way most small shops keep track of work. This guide walks through how commercial accounts run in ElectricalBossPro, from setting up the client to sending the monthly statement, and points to the deeper articles in this series along the way.

What Makes a Commercial Account Different

If you want the short version first, the commercial electrical software page covers the features on one screen. The longer version is this: a residential customer is one person at one address who pays for each job. A commercial account is one organization with many addresses, a person who approves the work who is rarely on site, and an accounting office that wants paperwork in a particular shape.

The accounts in this category tend to look like:

• Property managers and landlords with rental houses, duplexes and units spread across town.
• Apartment complexes with several buildings, common areas, a leasing office and a maintenance team.
• Gyms with long open hours and more than one location.
• Retail and restaurant chains where every storefront has a manager and a schedule you cannot interrupt.
• Offices with suites, floors, a front desk and a building engineer who holds the keys.

What they share is that the work has to fit the building, and the paperwork has to fit the account.

One Client, Many Addresses

In ElectricalBossPro, a client can have as many addresses as they need. A property management company is one client. Each rental, building or suite they send you is an address under that client. Each address keeps its own access notes, its own equipment records, its own measurements and its own job history, while the billing, contacts and account settings live once on the client.

That means when the manager calls about “the building on Elm,” the office opens the client, picks the address, and sees every past job, every note and every panel on file at that location. It also means you can bring in a manager's whole address list at once with CSV import, and the imported addresses are placed on the map automatically. The details are in Property Manager Electrical Accounts: One Client, Dozens of Addresses, One Place to Find Them.

One Monthly Statement for Every Address

Nothing frustrates a commercial accounting office faster than a stack of separate invoices. Set a client to Monthly billing and ElectricalBossPro sends one statement each month covering every address, with each line labeled by the address where the work happened. The manager sees “Unit 4B — GFCI replacement” and “Main Street store — lighting maintenance” on the same page and can split the cost to the right property on their end.

Residential customers on the same system keep paying per job with a card on file, so you do not have to choose one billing style for the whole company. Invoices carry line items and sales tax, and past-due follow-up works on statements the same way it works on single invoices.

Recurring Lighting Maintenance and Inspections

A lot of steady commercial work is recurring. Retail lots and storefront lighting get checked and relamped on a regular cycle. Building owners want a yearly safety inspection. In ElectricalBossPro each recurring service is a plan set by the minimum number of days between visits: 14 or 30 days for lighting maintenance, 365 for a yearly inspection.

When a visit comes due, it lands on the Waiting List, a live map and list of everything that needs scheduling. Pins are colored by status: not due yet, due now, and overdue once a visit is past a 7-day grace. The office picks the due buildings, assigns them to a van and a day, and the route builds itself. Nobody keeps a spreadsheet of relamping dates. The full walkthrough is in Commercial Lighting Maintenance Routes: Relamping Every 14 or 30 Days Without a Spreadsheet.

Access, After-Hours Work and the Front Desk

Commercial jobs stall at the door more often than at the panel. The electrical room is locked, the key is with a maintenance tech who left at noon, or the store manager wants the work done after close. ElectricalBossPro stores access notes on each address and shows them on the tech's job card: where the key is, who to ask for at the front desk, which entrance to use, and what hours the building allows work.

After-hours jobs go on the dispatch board like any other job. The office puts them on the right day and van, adds the timing to the notes, and sets route order by hand when a night job needs to come last. The tech's phone shows the same order the board does.

Equipment Records Per Building

Every address keeps a list of its electrical equipment: main panel, subpanels, meter base, service entrance, exterior disconnect, generator and transfer switch if there is one, EV chargers and more. Each item has brand, model number, serial number, year installed, rating in amps or kW, phase (single or three phase), location and access notes. For a commercial building that might read “Main Panel · 400A · Three Phase · Back stockroom,” with “Key at the register” underneath.

New jobs at that address can fill in equipment straight from the house record with the From House picker, and anything the tech updates on the job flows back to the address. So the second visit to a building starts with everything the first visit learned.

Inspection Reports for Owners

The tech app includes a safety inspection checklist: panels inspected, breakers tested and labeled, GFCI and AFCI devices tested, grounding and bonding checked, connections checked for heat or looseness, detectors, exterior outlets, meter base and service drop, and more. The tech records readings, picks a condition of Good, Needs attention or Repair recommended, and writes recommendations.

The office sees it all on the job and can print an Electrical Safety Inspection report. For a building owner who never walks into the electrical room, that report is the clearest proof the visit happened and the clearest way to see what should be done next.

Turnovers, Requests and Estimates

Property managers send a steady stream of small jobs: a unit turning over between tenants, a fixture out in a hallway, a breaker that keeps tripping. Requests can come in by two-way text, through the customer app, or through your website request form, which drops into Form Responses. The office turns each one into a job at the right address under the right client.

Bigger work, like a tenant improvement, starts as an estimate built from your own service list. The manager approves it online, and the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job. Follow-up emails go out on estimates that are still waiting.

Mixing Commercial and Residential

Few electrical shops are all commercial. Most run one van on residential service calls and another on installs, inspections and commercial buildings, then shuffle when the week gets busy. ElectricalBossPro puts both on one dispatch board, filtered by van, with saved views so the office can look at only the commercial work or only the service calls. Auto-route sorts each van Closest First or Furthest First from the shop.

Getting Started With Your First Account

Pick your biggest multi-address customer. Add the client, bring in their addresses, set billing to Monthly, add access notes for the buildings you already know, and put any recurring lighting work on a plan. Your first month's statement will tell you whether it worked. Plans are $59, $89 or $199 a month, and the 14-day free trial needs no credit card. When you are ready to see the features side by side, go back to the commercial electrical software overview.