ElectricalBossPro Blog — Electrical Contractor Software

Clients, Addresses, Tags and Office Roles: Keeping Electrical Company Records in Order

The features people talk about are the tech app, the map and the payment at completion. The thing that makes them all work is less glamorous: clean records. Who the customer is, where the work happens, how they are grouped, and who in your company can see and change what. Getting that structure right early saves a lot of cleanup later.

Records Behind Every Text and Invoice

Every text in Two-Way Texting and the Monthly Text Allowance in Electrical Contractor Software goes to a client, and every invoice goes to one too. This article is about how those records are organized.

In ElectricalBossPro, the client is the person or company you deal with and bill. The address, or property, is where the work happens. Most residential customers have one of each. Landlords, property managers and commercial clients have one client and many addresses.

One Client, Many Addresses

Keeping the client and the address separate is what lets one landlord own twelve rentals without twelve duplicate customer records. Each address has its own:

• Equipment, such as the panel, generator, EV charger and surge protector
• Measurements, such as square feet, fixtures and circuits
• Access notes and past job notes
• Recurring plans, such as a yearly safety inspection
• Job history

The client holds the contact details, the card on file and the billing setting. Set the client to Monthly and every address rolls into one statement. Leave them as regular and each job is invoiced on its own.

Avoid Duplicate Clients

The most common mess in any customer list is the same person entered twice: once as “Bob Smith” and once as “Robert Smith,” with half the history on each. Duplicates cause missed plan visits, split invoice histories and confused techs.

Before adding a new client, search for them first. When a returning customer calls about a second property, add the address to their existing client rather than creating a new one. A minute of checking saves a lot of untangling.

The same goes for imports. If you bring your list in with CSV import, clean the spreadsheet first: one row per address, consistent spellings, and the client name written the same way on every row that belongs to the same person or company. Imported addresses are placed on the map automatically, so a tidy file gives you a tidy map from day one.

Tags and Custom Fields

Tags let you group clients in ways that matter to your business. A few that electrical shops find useful:

• Generator owner, for customers you might offer a yearly maintenance plan
• Property manager or landlord, for multi-address accounts
• Commercial, for gyms, retail and offices
• Referral source, to see where customers come from

Custom fields hold the details that do not fit anywhere else: a store number for a retail chain, a building manager's name, or a preferred contact time. Keep the list short. A field nobody fills in is just clutter.

Reports

Reports turn the records into answers. They show what was done, what was billed and what is still open. Clean records make reports trustworthy. If half the generator owners are not tagged, a report on generator owners will be wrong.

Make a habit of checking a few reports each week. They show where the business is going and where the records need attention.

Office User Roles

As a shop grows, more people use the office side: an office manager, a dispatcher, a part-time bookkeeper. Office user roles let you decide who can see and change what. The person scheduling calls may not need to change prices on the service list. The bookkeeper may need billing but not dispatch.

Roles also protect the business. When someone leaves, turning off their access is one change, and nothing goes with them.

Employees, PINs and Vans

Techs are set up as employees with a personal PIN and a van assignment. The PIN is how they sign in to the tech app along with the company login, so every clock-in, photo and completed job is tied to the right person. The van assignment is how jobs on the dispatch board end up on the right phone.

When a tech moves from the service van to the install van, change the assignment. When a tech leaves, turn off their PIN. Their past work stays on the jobs, and their access ends. More on van setups in Electrical Contractor Software for a Shop Running a Few Vans.

Structure First, Then Speed

Clean structure is what lets everything else move fast. When clients, addresses, tags, roles and employees are set up right, the tech sees the right equipment, the right customer gets the right invoice, and the reports mean something. For how records feed the rest of the system, visit the electrical contractor software page.