ElectricalBossPro Blog — Commercial Accounts

Tags, Custom Fields and Reports for Commercial Electrician Accounts

Every commercial account comes with its own vocabulary. One chain calls its locations by store number. A property manager has internal property IDs. An office building owner wants work split between the base building and tenant spaces. Your software needs room for those details without forcing every account into the same shape. That is what tags and custom fields are for, and reports are how you see the results.

Organizing After the Import

Bringing in a manager's list is covered in Importing a Property Manager's Address List: CSV Import for Commercial Electricians. Once the addresses are in, tags and custom fields are how you organize them so the office can find things quickly.

Tags: Quick Labels for Groups

Tags in ElectricalBossPro are short labels you put on clients. They are the fastest way to group accounts that have something in common. Useful tags for commercial work include:

• “Commercial” or “Residential”, so the office can tell at a glance which kind of account a job belongs to.
• The account type, such as “Property manager,” “Retail,” “Restaurant,” “Gym” or “Office.”
• After-hours, for accounts where most work has to happen outside business hours.
• Monthly, as a reminder that an account is on monthly billing.
• A region or part of town, if that is how you plan routes.

Keep the list of tags short. A dozen well-chosen tags are more useful than fifty that nobody remembers.

Custom Fields: Room for the Account's Own Details

Custom fields hold information specific to your business or your accounts. Where a tag is a label, a custom field holds a value. For commercial accounts, common custom fields include:

• Store number or property ID, so the office can match what the account calls a location.
• Who approves work, and up to what amount.
• Accounts payable contact, for statement questions.
• Purchase order or reference number, if the account wants one on their paperwork.

When a manager calls about “Store 14,” the office does not have to guess which strip mall that is. The store number is right there.

Custom fields are also a good home for details that do not fit anywhere else but come up again and again. A preferred day of the week for visits, the name of the building engineer, or a note that the account wants a call before any work over a certain amount. If the office keeps asking the same question about an account, the answer probably belongs in a custom field.

Remember that access details belong in the access notes on each address, where techs see them on the job card. Custom fields are mostly for the office.

Reports: Seeing the Commercial Side

Reports in ElectricalBossPro help you see how your business is doing. For an owner growing the commercial side, they are a place to start on questions like:

• Which accounts sent the most work this quarter?
• How is commercial work growing compared with residential?
• Which accounts have open balances?
• How many recurring visits are coming up?

Those answers help you decide where to focus. An account that is growing deserves attention. An account with a balance that keeps creeping up deserves a conversation.

Office Roles for a Growing Team

As commercial work grows, more people in the office touch it. Office user roles let you decide who can do what, so the person scheduling jobs is not necessarily the same person handling statements. Techs sign in to the tech app with your company login and their own PIN, separate from office users.

A clear setup means the office can split the work as it grows: one person on scheduling and dispatch, another on billing and statements.

Keep It Simple

Tags and custom fields work best when they are consistent. A few rules help:

• Decide on a short set of tags and write them down for the office.
• Use the same spelling every time, so filters and reports pick up every account.
• Only add a custom field when the office actually needs that information.
• Review tags and fields once in a while and retire the ones nobody uses.

The goal is not more data. It is the right data, in the right place, when the office needs it. The tag list also feeds planning on the dispatch board, which is covered in Mixing Commercial and Residential Electrical Work in One Schedule.

Organized Accounts Grow

Accounts that are well organized are easier to serve, easier to bill and easier to grow. Tags, custom fields and reports are the small tools that make that possible. For the rest of the commercial features, visit the commercial electrical software page.