PlumbingBossPro Blog — Property Managers & Commercial

Tags and Custom Fields for Commercial Plumbing Accounts

Every commercial account comes with a handful of details the office keeps asking about. Does this manager need a PO number on the bill? What is their approval limit for repairs? Who is the kitchen manager at the second location? How many units are in the building? If those answers live in someone's head or on a sticky note, they get lost. Tags and custom fields give them a home.

The Details That Do Not Fit Anywhere Else

Backflow devices, covered in Backflow Testing for Commercial Plumbing Sites: Yearly Visits That Come Due on Their Own, have a natural place: the equipment list. Many other account details do not. They are not equipment, not an address, not a job. They are facts about how this client works.

PlumbingBossPro has two tools for those facts: tags and custom fields.

Tags: Sorting Accounts Into Groups

A tag is a short label you put on a client to group it with others. Tags are good for questions like “show me all my restaurants” or “which clients are property managers?” Useful tags for commercial work include:

• Account type: Property Manager, Landlord, Restaurant, Church, Office, Retail, Warehouse.
• Plan: Jetting 14-Day, Jetting 30-Day, Backflow Yearly, Flush Yearly.
• Status: New Account, Key Account, Monthly Billing.
• Source: Referral, Website, Landlord Group.

Keep the list short and consistent. Five tags everyone uses are worth more than fifty that nobody remembers.

Custom Fields: Storing the Specifics

A custom field holds a specific value for a client. Where a tag says “this is a property manager,” a custom field says “their approval limit is $250.” Custom fields that pay off on commercial accounts:

• Approval limit. The amount a tech can spend fixing something without a quote. Saves a text on every call.
• PO required. Whether bills need a PO number, and where to get it.
• Billing contact. The person in accounting who actually pays, if different from the manager.
• On-site contact. The kitchen manager, building super or church secretary.
• Unit or door count. Handy when quoting a portfolio-wide flush or inspection.
• Contract notes. “Rate review every January” or “Renewal conversation in March.”

Set up the fields once, then fill them in as you learn. The office sees them on the client record.

The approval limit is the one that saves the most time. Without it, every turnover and every service call at a rental turns into a text asking “can we fix this?” With it, the tech fixes anything under the limit, notes it on the job, and only sends a quote for the bigger items. Managers like it because they are not interrupted for a flapper.

Tags, Fields or Access Notes?

It is easy to put information in the wrong place. A simple rule helps:

• Tags are for grouping clients. If you would ever filter by it, it is a tag.
• Custom fields are for facts about the client as a whole: limits, contacts, billing rules.
• Access notes are for facts about one address: lockbox codes, hours, where the shut-off is.
• Equipment is for things installed at the address: water heaters, backflow preventers, sump pumps.

A manager's approval limit is a custom field. The lockbox code at 412 Oak St is an access note. The water heater at 412 Oak St is equipment. Keeping them straight means the tech sees what they need on the job card and the office sees what it needs on the client.

Using Tags in Everyday Work

Tags earn their keep when the office needs a list. Some examples:

• Pull up every Restaurant client before the holiday rush to check that jetting plans are current.
• Look at all Property Manager clients when planning a yearly check-in.
• Find every Landlord client to offer a yearly flush program in the fall.
• Filter by Monthly Billing at month end to make sure every statement went out.

Tags also make it easier to read your reports. Once every restaurant is tagged, it is simple to pick them out and ask whether the restaurant side of the business is worth growing. That is covered in Reports by Account: Seeing What Each Commercial Plumbing Client Is Worth.

Start Small

You do not need a perfect system on day one. Start with an account-type tag on every commercial client and two or three custom fields — approval limit, PO required, on-site contact. Add more when the office asks the same question twice. Once a year, clear out tags nobody uses, so the list stays short enough to be useful.

For more on organizing and running commercial accounts, visit the PlumbingBossPro commercial plumbing software page.