PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Porta Potty Rental Software

How to Choose Porta Potty Rental Software: The Questions That Matter

There are plenty of software options that will tell you they can run a portable toilet company. Some were built for it; many were built for plumbers or lawn crews and adapted. Importing Your Customer List From a CSV File covered how to get your data in. Before that, you have to pick where it's going. These are the questions that separate software that fits from software you'll fight.

Does It Know What a Unit Is?

Generic field-service software schedules a visit to an address. Your work is units at an address. Ask whether each job can carry unit type, quantity, unit numbers and placement notes, and whether those show under the address on the office lists and on the driver's phone. If the answer is "put it in the notes", every driver will be reading paragraphs to find out what's on a site.

Also ask whether the software claims things you don't need. Some products pitch features built for other trades, or for warehouse-style inventory, that add screens without adding value to a portable toilet route. What you need day to day is what's on each site, where, since when, and when it's due again.

Does Weekly Service Come Due on Its Own?

Ask how recurring service works. The approach that holds up is minimum days between visits: when a service is completed, the site comes back when it's due, based on when it was actually done. Fixed calendar slots break the first time a truck runs late. Also ask how you see what's overdue. A map with due and overdue status tells you more in five seconds than a calendar does in five minutes.

Does It Track Rental Days and Bill the Extras?

Ask whether the software records delivered and picked-up dates, the days included and a per-day rate after, and whether extra days go on the invoice automatically. If the answer involves someone checking a report and adding a line by hand, the extra days will get missed on busy weeks.

Can It Handle One Customer With Many Sites?

Contractors and property managers have several sites. Ask whether a client can have many job sites with their own contacts and access notes, and whether you can bill a client monthly with one statement covering every site, each line labeled with the address. More on that in Monthly Accounts: One Statement for Every Site a Customer Rents At.

What Does the Driver Actually See?

Ask to see the driver's screen, not just the office. Jobs in route order, navigation, units and placement on each card, Start, Skip and Complete, photos, and automatic texts to the customer. Check that it runs on the phones your drivers already carry. Check how drivers sign in; a company login with a personal PIN is simpler than an account and password per driver.

What Does the Customer See?

Ask whether customers get their own app: a live view of the route on service day, service requests, invoices, online payment and card on file, and a choice of alerts. Every one of those takes a call off your office.

Ask how the live view handles privacy. A customer watching for the truck should see their own place on the route, not the names and addresses of your other customers. And ask whether customers can choose which alerts they get, because a customer who gets too many texts tends to tune out all of them.

How Does Billing Work?

Ask whether invoices come from completed jobs, whether you can keep cards on file and auto-charge on completion or on a schedule, whether sales tax can be set per site, and whether past-due follow-up is automatic.

Then ask the question most demos skip: what happens with a contractor who has five sites and wants one bill? If the answer is five separate invoices or a manual statement in a spreadsheet, the software wasn't built for how construction accounts actually pay.

How Is It Priced?

Ask how pricing grows. Per-user pricing gets expensive for a company that adds seasonal drivers. PortaPottyBossPro is $59, $89 or $199 a month and never billed per user. Ask what's included in texting, too; PortaPottyBossPro plans include 500, 1,000 or 2,000 text segments sent plus received each month.

How Long Does Setup Take?

Ask whether you can import your customer list from a CSV and how long until you're running real jobs. A company should be able to get its active customers, sites and units in and run its first day quickly, not after a months-long onboarding project.

Test It With Real Work

The only test that really counts is a real day. Use the free trial to put a delivery on the Waiting List, dispatch it, complete it on a phone, and look at the invoice. If any step needs a workaround, you'll hit it every day. PortaPottyBossPro's trial is 14 days with no credit card. For the full list of what it does, see the porta potty rental software overview.