TrashCanBossPro Blog — HOAs & Commercial

Tags and Custom Fields for HOA and Commercial Bin Cleaning Accounts

When you have six commercial accounts, you remember everything about them. When you have thirty, you do not. Which HOA renews in March? Which manager pays by check? Which school slows down in summer? Tags and custom fields are where that knowledge goes so it does not live in one person's head.

Proof Is Stored, Now Organize the Accounts

In Before and After Photos as Proof of Service for HOA Boards and Property Managers we covered keeping proof with every job. This article is about keeping order across the accounts themselves, so anyone in the office can find the right account and know how it works.

Tags: Sorting Accounts at a Glance

TrashCanBossPro clients can carry tags. Several are useful out of the box for bin cleaning companies:

• HOA for homeowners associations
• Commercial for property managers, apartments, restaurants, retail, churches and schools
• Monthly for accounts billed on one monthly statement
• Every-Other-Week for accounts on a 14-day plan

Tags let you filter your client list fast. Want to see every HOA before board budget season? Filter by HOA. Want to check every account that gets a statement before month end? Filter by Monthly.

An account can have more than one tag. An HOA billed on a statement gets both HOA and Monthly.

Custom Fields: Your Own Details

Tags answer "what kind of account is this?" Custom fields answer everything else. You define the fields that matter to your business. For commercial bin cleaning, good candidates are:

• Contract renewal month, so you start the renewal conversation early
• Board contact or decision maker, when it differs from the day-to-day contact
• Payment terms: card on file, or check due in 30 days
• Skip policy: do skipped addresses bill or get credited
• Resident notice: who tells residents about cleaning day
• Seasonal schedule: summer interval for schools
• Center or portfolio name for managers with several properties
• Codes last confirmed for accounts with gate codes

Do not go overboard. Ten fields that get filled in beat thirty that nobody touches.

Tags and Fields Support the Rest of the System

None of this is just tidy record keeping. Tags and fields feed the decisions you make every week:

• The office checks the payment terms field before calling about a late statement
• The renewal month field tells you which accounts to visit this quarter
• The skip policy field tells you whether to bill a skipped address on the statement
• The Commercial tag lets you pull your commercial accounts together when you review what they bring in

For more on that last one, see Reports by Account: Knowing What Each HOA and Commercial Bin Cleaning Client Is Worth.

Client Fields vs. Address Notes

Keep the line clear. Things about the whole account go on the client as tags and custom fields: renewal month, payment terms, board contact. Things about one place go on the address as notes: gate codes, can location, time windows, the site contact. The crew needs the address notes on their phone. They do not need the renewal month.

This split is covered in more detail in Site Contacts and Access Notes for Commercial Bin Cleaning: Keys, Lockboxes and Gate Codes.

Setting Them Up

The best time to set tags and fields is when the account is created, right after the estimate is approved. Make a short checklist for the office: tag it, fill in renewal month, payment terms and skip policy, then add the addresses. If you import an HOA's address list from a CSV, set the client's tags and fields once and you are done.

For accounts you already have, set aside an afternoon and go through them. Every account you tag now is one you will not have to remember later.

Keep Them Current

A renewal month that is two years old is worse than none. When a contract renews, update the field. When an account switches from check to card, update payment terms. It takes ten seconds and saves a wrong phone call.

Pick one person in the office to own this. When everyone is responsible for keeping fields current, nobody is. A quick monthly pass through the HOA and Commercial tags, checking renewal months, payment terms and contacts, keeps the records honest. It also gives you a natural moment to notice an account that has gone quiet, a manager who has not added an address in a year, or a board whose contract is coming up sooner than you thought.

Next Steps

Tags sort the accounts; custom fields hold what you need to know about them. For the full commercial toolkit, see the commercial bin cleaning software page.