TrashCanBossPro Blog — HOAs & Commercial

Reports by Account: Knowing What Each HOA and Commercial Bin Cleaning Client Is Worth

A big account feels like a good account. Eighty HOA homes, a property manager with forty rentals, a restaurant group with five pads. But "big" is not the same as "profitable." Some large accounts pay well and route easily. Others pay late, skip constantly and send the crew across town for one address. You only know which is which if you look.

Organized Accounts Make Reporting Easy

If you set up tags and fields the way Tags and Custom Fields for HOA and Commercial Bin Cleaning Accounts describes, and every commercial customer is one client with many addresses, then looking at an account is simple: everything about it is in one place. If the same manager is spread across fifteen separate customers, nothing adds up.

What to Look at for Each Account

TrashCanBossPro includes reports, and every client keeps its invoices, payments and job history. For each commercial account, a few numbers tell you most of what you need:

• Billed per month: what the monthly statement usually comes to
• Collected: what was actually paid, and how fast
• Addresses: how many places you clean under the account
• Skips: how often the crew could not do the work, and why
• Route fit: whether the addresses sit on routes you already run

You do not need a spreadsheet wizard for this. Once a quarter, look at each commercial account and jot these down.

Revenue Per Address and Per Stop

Divide what the account bills by the number of addresses. An HOA paying for eighty homes at a low per-home rate can still be great if those homes are on one street on one day. A property manager paying a higher rate per rental can be worse if the rentals are scattered across three towns.

Look at the dispatch board on a typical day for that account. How many stops, how far apart, how long the trailer was there? That route time is your real cost.

Crew hours from the time clock help here too. If a crew clocks a long day every time a certain account is on the route, that account is eating labor whether or not the statement shows it. Compare what the account bills on that day to the hours it took. An account that looks large on paper can turn out to be one of your slowest earners once drive time and labor are counted, and a small, dense account can turn out to be one of your best.

Collections Matter as Much as Billing

An account that bills well and pays in 75 days is tying up your cash. Check how each account pays. Check accounts that are always late may need to move to a card on file, as discussed in Card on File or Check? Setting a Payment Policy for Commercial Bin Cleaning Accounts. Past-due follow-up helps, but a policy change helps more.

Skips Tell a Story

Every skip comes back from the tech app with a reason. When you review an account, look at those reasons. "Cans not out" at the same five rentals every month means the manager needs to talk to those tenants. "Gate code not working" over and over means the account is not telling you when codes change. "Past time window" means your route is the problem, not the customer.

Skips also cost you. The trailer drove there either way. If your agreement says skips do not bill, a high-skip account may be losing money.

When the Numbers Say Change Something

Reviewing accounts is only useful if it leads to decisions. Common ones:

• Raise the price on an account that grew in work but not in rate
• Move the account to a different day so it rides with a nearby route
• Change the skip policy at renewal
• Move payment to card on file for chronic late payers
• Add a service, like pad cleaning, the account clearly needs

Make those changes at renewal when you can. Quoting a new price with online approval is covered in Quoting Commercial Bin Cleaning Work With Online Approval.

Commercial vs. Residential

It is also worth stepping back and comparing your commercial work as a group to your residential subscriptions. Filter clients by the HOA and Commercial tags and look at what those accounts bring in compared to the rest. Some owners find commercial work smooths out cash flow. Others find residential subscriptions pay better per hour. Your numbers will tell you which to chase.

Next Steps

Look at each big account once a quarter. Keep the ones that pay, fix the ones that do not. For the full commercial toolkit, see the commercial bin cleaning software page.