PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Construction Site Accounts

Moving Construction Porta Potty Accounts Off Spreadsheets and Paper

When the Spreadsheet Stops Working

Most porta potty companies start with a spreadsheet, a whiteboard and a stack of paper invoices. It works for a while. Then a builder adds a tenth site, a general contractor wants one bill for six projects, a super calls for an extra pump-out while you are on a truck, and the spreadsheet cannot keep up.

Extra pump-outs, covered in Extra Pump-Outs on Busy Construction Sites: Fitting Them Into the Week, are exactly the kind of thing paper systems miss. This article covers how to move construction accounts into PortaPottyBossPro without disrupting routes.

Step One: Import the Customer List

Start with a CSV import of your existing customer list. Export the client names, billing contacts, emails, phones and addresses from your spreadsheet. The import creates the client records in one step, so you are not typing hundreds of names.

After the import, add tags such as Contractor and Builder to the construction accounts, and set the billing method on each one: card on file or Monthly. Contractor and Builder Tags: Organizing Construction Porta Potty Customers covers tags.

Step Two: Add Active Job Sites

For each contractor, add their active job sites under the client. Each site gets its address, site contacts and access notes. Focus on active sites first. Finished projects can wait, or be skipped entirely if you do not need the history in the new system.

This is where a spreadsheet usually reveals its gaps. You may find sites with no super's number, or gate codes only one driver knows. Fill them in now, by asking drivers and texting supers. It is worth the time.

Step Three: Record Units Out

For every active site, record what is on the ground: unit type, quantity, unit numbers and placement notes, with the delivered date. If you do not know the exact delivered date, use your best record, such as the first invoice. Rental tracking counts days from that date, with the days included and the per-day rate after.

Getting units right is the most important part of the move. If the record says three units and there are four, the fourth will not get serviced or billed.

The best source of truth is the driver. Before the move, have drivers note every unit they service for a week: site, unit type, unit number and where it sits. Compare that to your spreadsheet. Units that appear in the driver's list but not on paper are units you have probably not been billing. Units on paper that drivers never see may have been picked up without anyone closing the rental, or may be sitting on a site nobody visits. Either way, the comparison is worth doing once, carefully, before you trust the new records.

If you find a forgotten unit on a finished project, talk to the contractor before you bill months of back rent. Picking it up and starting fresh is usually better for the relationship than a surprise invoice.

Step Four: Set Up Weekly Service

Set the service on each site with its minimum days between visits. Once set, each site's next visit comes due on its own and shows on the Waiting List map. Check the map after setup. Any site that shows overdue may truly be overdue, or may need its last service date corrected.

Step Five: Run a Week in Parallel

Many owners run the first week with both the old system and the new one. Dispatch from the Scheduled List, put drivers on the app, and compare against the old schedule. Differences point to missing sites or wrong unit counts. After a week, retire the spreadsheet.

Drivers log in with a company login and their own PIN, and the app works in the phone's browser. Give them a short ride-along on the first day and most will be comfortable by lunch.

Step Six: The First Statement

At the end of the first month, contractors on monthly billing get one statement covering every job at every site, each line labeled with the site address. Review the first round of statements before they go out, and fix anything that looks wrong on the job records. After the first month, it runs on its own.

Expect a few small surprises in the first month. A site you forgot, a super's number that was wrong, a price that was never written down. Each one is easier to fix in the new system than it was in the spreadsheet, and each fix makes the records better for every month after.

Keep What Works

Moving to software does not mean throwing away what you know. Your pricing, your service habits and your relationships with supers move with you. What changes is that the information lives in one place, where the office, the drivers and the contractor can all see it.

To see how contractor accounts look once they are set up, visit PortaPottyBossPro construction porta potty rental software.