SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Commercial Arrays

Bringing Commercial Solar Cleaning Accounts Over With a CSV Import

Most solar cleaning companies run their commercial accounts from a spreadsheet before they switch to real software. A tab per customer, a row per building, columns for panel counts and last cleaned dates, and a notes column that keeps getting wider. Or the customer hands you their own list of twenty sites. Either way, nobody wants to type it all in again.

Starting From a Spreadsheet

The invoices in Commercial Solar Cleaning Invoices: Line Items by Address, Sales Tax and Getting Paid depend on clean client and address records. A CSV import is the fastest way to build those records from what you already have.

SolarCleaningBossPro supports CSV import. Save your spreadsheet as a CSV file, bring it in, and imported addresses are placed on the map automatically. That means every building shows up as a pin, ready for the Waiting List and for routing.

Clean the List First

An import is only as good as the file. Spend half an hour on the spreadsheet before you import:

• One row per address. If a customer has five buildings, that is five rows.
• Consistent client names. “Oak Ridge Properties,” “Oak Ridge Props” and “OakRidge” should all be the same name, so the buildings land under one client and not three.
• Full addresses. Street, city, state or province, and postal code, in their own columns if you can. Complete addresses place more accurately on the map.
• Building labels. For sites that share a street number, add “Building A,” “North Carport” and so on to the address line.
• Contacts. Phone and email for the main contact on each client.
• Remove duplicates. Old spreadsheets often have the same building twice.

Clients and Addresses

Remember the structure: the client is the business you bill, and addresses are the sites you clean. The goal of the import is one client per commercial customer, with all their sites underneath. That is the setup described in One Account, Many Addresses: Setting Up Commercial Solar Cleaning Clients.

After the import, open each commercial client and check that all their buildings landed under them. Fix any that ended up as separate clients because of a spelling difference.

Check the Map

Because imported addresses are placed on the map automatically, a quick look at the map tells you a lot. Pins in the wrong town usually mean a typo in the city or postal code. Rural addresses, like farm ground mounts, may land on the mailbox rather than the array. Fix those addresses, and for rural sites, add directions to the array in the access notes.

After the Import: Fill In the Details

The import brings in clients and addresses. A few things are worth setting by hand on commercial accounts:

• Tags. Tag every commercial client Commercial.
• Custom fields. PO numbers, accounts payable emails, facility manager names.
• Panel details. Panel count, mount, roof stories and pitch, extras. These show on every visit after, so it is worth getting them right. Pull them from your spreadsheet columns, or fill them in on the next visit.
• Access notes. Copy over what is in your notes column: hatches, keys, sign-in, spigots, timing. Clean them up as you go.
• Plans. Set each site to 90, 180 or 365 days between visits.
• Billing. Set multi-site accounts to Monthly so they get one statement.

Last Cleaned Dates

The most important thing to carry over is when each site was last cleaned. That is what decides when it comes due. If a warehouse was cleaned six weeks ago on a quarterly plan, it should not show up as due tomorrow. Make sure the timing is right before you trust the Waiting List, so the first quarter on the new system lines up with what customers expect.

If your spreadsheet does not have reliable dates, that is fine too. Look back at your old invoices or texts to work out roughly when each site was last cleaned, and use that. For anything you truly cannot pin down, text the facility manager and ask: “We're moving our records over. Do you remember when we last cleaned Building C?” Most will check their own records and tell you. It is also a natural reason to say hello before the next visit.

Do It Account by Account

If you have dozens of commercial accounts, you do not have to finish everything in one evening. Import the list, then work through the biggest accounts first, adding panel details, notes and plans. Smaller accounts can be filled in as they come due. To see what you get once the accounts are in, go back to the commercial solar cleaning software page.