PlumbingBossPro Blog — Property Managers & Commercial

Importing a Property Manager's Address List Into Your Plumbing Software

The day a property manager says yes, they usually send a spreadsheet. Sometimes it is tidy: one row per property, street, city, zip. More often it has merged cells, owner names in the address column, unit numbers in three different formats and a few properties they sold last year. Getting that list into your software cleanly is the first real job on the account.

Why Import Instead of Typing

One Account, Many Addresses: Setting Up Commercial Plumbing Clients the Right Way explains why every property belongs under one client. For a landlord with four rentals, typing them in takes five minutes. For a manager with sixty doors, typing is an afternoon of mistakes waiting to happen.

PlumbingBossPro has CSV import. You save the spreadsheet as a CSV file, bring it in, and the addresses are placed on the map automatically. The account is ready to dispatch the same day, and nobody has to look up whether it was 1180 Birch Avenue or 1180 Birch Court.

Clean the Spreadsheet First

Five minutes of cleanup saves an hour of fixing later. Before you export to CSV, go through the manager's sheet:

• One row per address. Remove header rows, totals, blank rows and merged cells.
• Separate columns. Street, city, state or province, and postal code each in their own column if possible.
• Units handled consistently. Decide whether each unit is its own address or the building is one address with units in the notes. Then make the sheet match.
• Remove what is gone. Ask the manager which properties they no longer manage, and delete those rows.
• Keep useful extras. If the sheet has lockbox codes, owner names or unit counts, keep those columns so they can go into notes or custom fields.

Then save it as CSV. Every spreadsheet program has a “Save as CSV” option.

Keep a copy of the manager's original sheet, untouched. If a question comes up later about what was on their list, you can compare the two without relying on memory.

Bringing It In

Make sure every row names the management company as the client, so the addresses end up under one client rather than as sixty separate customers. Then import the CSV. When it finishes, look at the map. Every address should show as a pin. Two things to check right away:

• Pins in strange places. A pin in the wrong town usually means a typo in the street or zip. Fix the address and it moves.
• Missing addresses. Compare the count on your side with the number of rows in the sheet. If one is missing, it was usually a blank or malformed row.

Seeing the whole account on the map is useful by itself. You can tell at a glance which properties are near the shop, which are on the edge of your area, and which ones cluster together for routing.

What to Add After the Import

The import gets the addresses in. The rest of the account builds up over the next few weeks:

• Access notes for each address: lockbox codes, which tenant to call, manager's office hours.
• Equipment as techs visit: water heaters with brand, model, serial, size and year, plus shut-offs, cleanouts, sump pumps and backflow preventers.
• Recurring work on the addresses that need it, like a yearly water heater flush or a backflow test.
• Tags and custom fields on the client for the details the office keeps asking about.

Equipment is the slow part, and that is fine. Each first visit fills in one more building. The full approach is in Equipment Records Per Unit and Per Building for Commercial Plumbing Accounts.

When the Manager Sends an Updated List

Property managers gain and lose doors all the time. When an updated list comes in, compare it with what you have. New properties can be added under the client by hand or with a small import of just the new rows. Properties they no longer manage should have their recurring work stopped so they stop showing up on the Waiting List. Their history stays on file.

It is worth asking the manager to send you a note whenever a property comes on or off their list. Managers who are used to plumbers losing track tend to appreciate one who asks.

Importing Other Accounts

The same process works for a restaurant group's locations, a church with several campuses, or a landlord's portfolio. And if you are moving your whole company from spreadsheets and paper into PlumbingBossPro, CSV import brings your residential customers in the same way.

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