PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Construction Site Accounts

Serving General Contractors: How Porta Potty Companies Win and Keep GC Accounts

What a General Contractor Is Really Buying

A general contractor is not buying a plastic box. They are buying one less thing to think about on a project with a hundred moving parts. The super wants units where the crews can reach them, serviced on a dependable day, and gone when the site closes. The office wants a bill that matches the projects and arrives the same way every month.

If you have read Construction Porta Potty Rental Software: The Complete Guide to Running Contractor Accounts, you already know the account structure. This article is about the general contractor in particular, the biggest and most demanding version of a construction account, and how to run it so they keep calling you when the next project breaks ground.

GCs also talk to each other and to their subs. A GC who trusts your service will mention you to the framer, the concrete crew and the next builder they partner with. A GC who gets surprised by a missed service will mention that too.

Setting Up the GC Account

Create the general contractor once as a client. Put the billing contact on the client, the person in accounts payable who will actually receive the statement, and set the billing method: card on file or Monthly. Add a Contractor tag so the account shows up when you filter construction customers, and use custom fields for anything you need to track, such as a vendor number the GC assigned you or the name of the project manager who placed the first order.

Then add each project as a job site under that client. Each site gets its own address, site contacts, access notes and sales tax. When the GC opens a new project in another town, it becomes a new site on the same account, not a new customer. One Contractor Account, Many Job Sites: Setting Up Porta Potty Clients the Right Way walks through this in detail.

The People on a GC Job

A general contractor account usually has at least three people you deal with. The project manager orders units and approves changes. The superintendent runs the site day to day and is the one your driver needs to reach. Accounts payable pays the bill.

Put the super on the site as the site contact with a mobile number, and keep the project manager and accounts payable on the client. When a driver texts from the field that the gate is locked, the office knows who to text back without digging through emails. Two-way texting keeps the conversation tied to the account, so the next person in the office can read what was said.

Supers move between projects. When a new super takes over a site, update the site contact right away. It takes a minute and it saves a driver from calling a number that now belongs to someone on a different job.

Units and Service on a Big Site

GC projects tend to have mixed units: several standards, an ADA Accessible unit, one or more hand wash stations, and sometimes a High-Rise / Crane unit on upper floors. Record each delivery with unit type, quantity, unit numbers and placement notes so the driver sees exactly what should be on site and where.

Set weekly service with the minimum days between visits that matches the crew size. As the visits come due, they appear on the Waiting List map, and the dispatcher assigns them to a truck and day on the Scheduled List. Big sites with many units often justify their own place early in the route, and auto-routing can order the rest of the stops around them.

When the crew size jumps, the GC will ask for more units or a second weekly service. Add the units on a new delivery, update the service, and the extra visit shows up on its own. Adding Porta Potties as a Construction Project Grows covers that growth.

Billing a General Contractor

Most general contractors want a monthly statement. Set the account to Monthly and it gets one statement each month covering every job at every one of their sites, each line labeled with the site address. Their bookkeeper can match each line to a project without calling you to ask which job a charge belongs to.

Rental tracking counts the days each unit has been out against the days included, and extra days are added to the invoice automatically. That keeps long projects billed correctly even when a project runs past its schedule, which happens on almost every construction job. Invoices are available in the customer app, and past-due follow-up handles the accounts that slip.

Keeping the GC for the Next Project

A GC decides whether to call you again during the last two weeks of a project. That is when the punch list is running, the super is tired, and the units need to come off the site without a reminder. Schedule the pickup as soon as the super gives you a date, take photos when the units come off, and close out the rental so the final statement is right.

Then keep in touch. Tag the account, run a report of contractor accounts by revenue, and check in when you know the GC has new work coming. For the full picture of construction accounts in one place, see construction porta potty rental software from PortaPottyBossPro.