SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Commercial Arrays

Tags and Custom Fields for Commercial Solar Cleaning Accounts

Once a solar cleaning company has a few dozen residential customers and a handful of commercial ones, the client list starts to blur. Which ones are commercial? Which need a PO number on the statement? Who is the accounts payable contact for the school district? Tags and custom fields are the small tools that keep a mixed client list sorted.

Sorting a Mixed Client List

The photos in Proof-of-Service Photos for Owners and Facility Managers on Commercial Arrays are proof for the customer. Tags and custom fields are organization for you.

In SolarCleaningBossPro, every client can carry tags, such as Residential, Commercial or Twice a Year, and custom fields that you define for the details your business tracks. Tags answer “what kind of customer is this?” Custom fields answer “what do I need to know about this customer that does not fit anywhere else?”

The Commercial Tag

Tag every commercial client Commercial on day one. It costs a second and it pays off in a few ways:

• Filtering. Pull up only commercial clients when you want to review them, call them, or check who is due.
• Reports. See commercial work on its own, separate from residential, so you know what each side of the business brings in.
• Messaging. When someone in the office texts a customer, the tag shows at a glance that this one is a business with a facility manager, not a homeowner, and the message can be written to match.
• Routing. Make it easy to spot which due jobs belong on the commercial truck.

You can add other tags that fit how you think about your customers. Some companies tag by type (Warehouse, Church, School, Farm, Property Owner) or by billing (Monthly Statement). Keep the list short enough that people actually use it.

Custom Fields Worth Adding

Custom fields hold the details commercial customers care about. Some that solar cleaning companies find useful:

• PO number. Many businesses will not pay a bill without one.
• Accounts payable email. Where the statement needs to go, which is often not the person who hired you.
• Facility manager. Name and direct cell, if different from the main contact.
• Regional or corporate contact. For chains and property management companies.
• Contract dates. When the agreement started and when it is up for renewal.
• Tax status. A note if the customer has told you they are tax exempt. Check with your accountant on how to handle it.
• Insurance certificate on file. Many commercial customers ask for your certificate of insurance. Note when you sent it and when it expires.
• Vendor number. Some companies give you a vendor ID to put on every bill.

Store these once on the client and everyone in the office sees them. No more searching old emails for the PO number.

Client-Level vs Address-Level Details

Remember the split. Tags and custom fields live on the client, because they describe the business. Panel details and access notes live on each address, because they describe the site. The PO number belongs to the account. The roof hatch belongs to Building B. Keep them in the right place and both the office and the crew find what they need. The structure is explained in One Account, Many Addresses: Setting Up Commercial Solar Cleaning Clients.

Keeping Fields Current

Custom fields are only useful if they are right. Facility managers change jobs. PO numbers expire at the end of a fiscal year. Insurance certificates need to be resent. Make it a habit to check a commercial client's custom fields when you send a renewal quote, and update anything that changed. A text to the manager (“Do you have a new PO number for this year?”) takes seconds and saves a bounced statement.

Office Roles

If you have office staff, office user roles let you set each person up for the job they do. The person who handles billing lives in the PO and accounts payable fields. A dispatcher mostly needs the facility manager's cell and the timing notes on each address. Set people up to fit how your office works, and agree on who is responsible for keeping commercial client details current, so it does not fall between two desks.

It also helps to agree on naming. If one person types “AP email” into a note and another fills in the custom field, the information ends up in two places and nobody trusts either. Decide which custom fields you use for commercial clients, fill them the same way every time, and the next person in the office will know exactly where to look.

Small Tools, Real Payoff

None of this is complicated. A tag and a few fields. But when the school district's statement goes out with the right PO number to the right inbox, gets paid on time, and nobody had to ask, that is the difference between a commercial account that runs itself and one that eats your evenings. To see how tags and custom fields fit with the rest of commercial work, visit the commercial solar cleaning software page.