PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Construction Site Accounts

One Contractor Account, Many Job Sites: Setting Up Porta Potty Clients the Right Way

Why the Account Structure Comes First

Whether you serve the large commercial jobs in Commercial Builders and Big Job Sites: Porta Potty Service at Scale or a roofer with weekend tear-offs, every construction account sits on the same foundation: one client record for the company and one site for each place you set units. Get that structure right and the rest of the software works the way you expect. Get it wrong and you spend every month end merging invoices by hand.

This is the setup article. It is short on theory and long on steps, because it is the one thing you should do the same way for every contractor.

Step One: Create the Client

The client is the company that pays you. Use the legal or trade name the contractor uses on their checks. Put the billing contact on the client record with an email for invoices and statements, and a phone number for billing questions.

Set the billing method. A contractor who pays per job uses a card on file, charged when a job is completed or on a schedule. A contractor who wants one bill a month is set to Monthly, and gets one statement covering every job at every site. You can change this later, but it is easier to ask on the first call.

Add tags such as Contractor or Builder, and fill any custom fields you use. Custom fields are good for a vendor or account number the contractor assigned you, the name of the project manager who brought you in, or a referral source.

Step Two: Add Each Job Site

Each project is a site under the client. A site has its own address, its own sales tax, its own site contacts and its own gate and access notes. If the project has no street address yet, use a clear site name and put the nearest cross streets in the access notes.

Add the superintendent as a site contact with a mobile number. If the project manager handles the orders, keep them on the client as well. A site with the wrong contact is a site where your driver gets stuck at a locked gate.

Name sites the way the contractor talks about them. If the super calls the project "the Main Street clinic," use that as the site name with the address underneath. When the super texts about "Main Street," the office finds the right site in seconds.

Step Three: Put the First Delivery on the Site

Schedule the delivery on the site, not on the client. Record unit type, quantity, unit numbers and placement notes. Set up weekly service with the minimum days between visits that fits the crew. The delivered date starts the rental clock, and rental tracking takes over from there with the days included and the per-day rate after.

From this point, the site's work appears on the Waiting List map on its own, colored by status. The dispatcher assigns visits to a truck and day, and the driver sees them in route order with the details on the phone.

Step Four: Add New Projects as Sites

When the contractor calls with a new project, open the existing client and add a new site. Do not create a new client. The new site gets its own contacts and notes, and its jobs roll into the same monthly statement or the same card on file.

If you are moving a lot of contractors over at once, a CSV import of your existing customer list gets the client records in. Then add each active job site and its current units. It is worth an afternoon to get every active site right before the first route runs from the new system.

Step Five: Keep the Account Clean

Construction accounts change all the time. Supers rotate, projects finish, phases move units across the site. Make a habit of updating the site contact when you hear about a new super, closing out rentals when units come off, and adding notes when a gate code changes.

A clean account pays off in two places. The driver always has the right information on the phone, and the monthly statement shows the right sites with the right lines. Site Contacts and Superintendents: Who to Call on Every Construction Porta Potty Job covers keeping site contacts current, and Monthly Statements for Contractor Porta Potty Accounts: One Bill, Every Site shows what the statement looks like.

What You Get From Doing It Right

With one client and many sites, reports by account show the total value of each contractor across every project. Two-way texting history stays with the client. The customer app shows the contractor every invoice in one place. And when the contractor asks what they spent with you last year, you have the answer in a minute.

To see the account structure in action, visit construction porta potty rental software from PortaPottyBossPro and start a free trial with one of your own contractors.