PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Porta Potty Rental Software

Monthly Accounts: One Statement for Every Site a Customer Rents At

Some customers rent from you once. Others rent from you all year, at five sites at a time. Those second customers usually don't want an invoice every time a truck stops. The overview in Billing in Porta Potty Rental Software: Invoices, Card on File and Auto-Charge covered per-job billing. This article covers the other way: one statement a month.

Who Monthly Accounts Are For

Monthly accounts fit customers with ongoing, repeat work across more than one location:

• General contractors and builders with several projects going at once.
• Property managers who keep units at a few properties.
• Municipalities, parks and facilities with seasonal units in several places.
• Event companies that rent from you for many events through a season.

What they have in common is volume and an office that pays bills on a cycle. A stack of small invoices creates work for their accounts payable people, and work for yours.

How It Works

In PortaPottyBossPro, you set a client to Monthly. From then on, instead of getting an invoice each time a job is completed, all of that client's work for the month goes onto one statement. The statement covers every job at every one of their sites: deliveries, weekly services, extra pump-outs, pickups and any extra rental days.

Each line is labeled with the site address. A builder with projects on Oak Street, Main Street and the new subdivision sees exactly which charges belong to which project. That's what lets their office split the bill across job costs without calling you.

It also makes your own life easier at month end. Instead of sending twenty small invoices to one contractor and tracking twenty separate payments, you send one statement and track one payment. When a payment comes in short, the site labels make it easy to see which project the contractor is questioning.

Why the Site Label Matters

Without site labels, a monthly statement is just a long list of services, and the customer has to work out which project each one belongs to. That's where disputes start: "We didn't have units at that site in March." With every line tied to a site address, the statement answers the question before it's asked.

That depends on setting up your client and sites correctly: one client, with each job site added as its own property, with its own address, contacts and access notes. More on that in Clients and Job Sites: How Porta Potty Rental Software Organizes Customers.

The Driver Doesn't Change Anything

From the field, a monthly account looks like any other customer. The driver sees the job, the units and the placement notes, taps Start and Complete, and moves on. The difference is entirely in billing. Drivers don't need to know who's Monthly and who isn't.

Sales Tax on a Monthly Statement

Since each line is tied to a site, sales tax per site still applies. A contractor with sites in two tax areas gets the right tax on each line, all on one statement.

Payment on Monthly Accounts

Monthly customers can pay the statement online from the customer app, or you can charge their card on file. Past-due follow-up works on monthly statements the same way it does on regular invoices. For larger contractors, keeping a card on file can be the difference between getting paid this month and next.

When a Project Ends

Construction projects end, and the units come back. The pickup goes onto that month's statement like everything else. When the contractor starts a new project, add a new site under the same client, and the new site's work starts appearing on their statement with its own address.

Over a year, a good contractor account might run through a dozen sites. Keeping them as sites under one client means the history stays together. You can see every project you've worked for that customer, which helps when it's time to quote the next one.

Setting Up a Monthly Account

The setup is short:

• Create the client, or open the existing one.
• Add each of their job sites with address, site contacts and access notes.
• Put the units and services on each site.
• Set the client to Monthly.

From there, the statement builds itself as drivers complete work. At month end, the customer gets one bill covering everything.

When Not to Use Monthly

Monthly works best for customers you trust to pay on a cycle. For one-time renters, homeowners and new customers, per-job billing with a card on file is usually safer. You can always move a good customer to Monthly once they've built a track record.

The Bigger Picture

Monthly accounts are one of the clearest reasons to use software built for this work rather than a generic invoicing tool. For the full platform, see the porta potty rental software overview.