SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

One Statement, Every Site: Monthly Billing for Property Owners With Many Buildings

A homeowner with one roof is easy to bill. A property owner with arrays on eight apartment buildings, a carport over the parking lot and a ground mount behind the leasing office is a different animal. Cleaned on a quarterly plan, that is a lot of visits. Billed one invoice per visit, that is a lot of paper landing on a bookkeeper's desk, and a lot of chances for one to get lost.

A Different Kind of Customer

Residential billing is mostly about card on file and getting paid at completion. Even small things like the tax line, covered in Sales Tax on Solar Cleaning Invoices: Set It Once and Let Every Invoice Carry It, matter more with commercial accounts, because their bookkeeper checks every line. Property owners and businesses want something different from homeowners: fewer bills, clearer records and a predictable monthly cycle.

One Client, Many Addresses

In SolarCleaningBossPro, one client can have many addresses. The property owner is the client. Each building, carport or ground mount is an address under that client, with its own panel details, its own access notes and its own spot on the map.

That matters for the crew as much as the billing. Building A might be a flat roof reached by a roof hatch, while the carport is easy from a ladder and the ground mount behind the office needs a gate code. Each address carries its own details, so the tech's card for each site is right, and each site's cleaning comes due on its own plan.

Set the Client to Monthly

Here is the key setting. When a client is set to Monthly billing, they get one statement each month covering every building or site cleaned that month. Each line on the statement is labeled with the address, so the owner can see which buildings were done and what each one cost.

A statement for a property owner might read like this:

• 112 Elm St, Building A — quarterly array cleaning
• 118 Elm St, Building B — quarterly array cleaning
• 120 Elm St, carport — array cleaning and inspection
• 9 Mill Rd, office — ground mount cleaning, critter guards
• Sales tax and total

Their bookkeeper approves one bill. You follow up on one bill. If they want to split costs across buildings or tenants in their own records, the address labels let them do it without calling you.

Why Statements Beat Stacks of Invoices

Separate invoices for every site sound more precise, but in practice they cause trouble:

• Lost invoices. When eight invoices arrive in a month, one goes missing. That one goes unpaid for months before anyone notices.
• Approval delays. Many businesses have a person who approves each bill. Eight approvals take longer than one.
• Partial payments. The bookkeeper pays the invoices they have and forgets the rest. Now you are matching payments to invoices one by one.
• Questions. Each separate invoice is another chance for someone to ask what it is for.

One statement with every site on it fixes all four.

Who Fits Monthly Billing

Monthly statements are made for:

• Apartment and townhome owners with arrays on several buildings.
• Business parks, warehouses and retail centers with rooftop or carport arrays.
• Schools, churches and municipal buildings with arrays at more than one site.
• Property managers handling several owners' properties, if they pay on their owners' behalf.
• Landlords with solar on a handful of rental houses.

Tag these clients as Commercial so the office can tell at a glance which customers are on statements and which pay at completion. Residential customers can stay on card on file while commercial accounts get statements. Both work side by side.

Making Monthly Accounts Run Smoothly

A few habits help:

• Agree on terms up front. When the statement is due, and who receives it.
• Get the right contact. The person who books the cleaning is often not the person who pays the bill. Make sure the statement goes to accounts payable.
• Keep photos with each site. Facilities managers love before-and-after photos for their records. They also answer “was Building C actually done?” before it is asked.
• Send on the same day each month. A predictable statement gets paid on a predictable cycle.

Before each statement goes out, take a minute to compare it with the dispatch board for the month. Every site the crew cleaned should be on it, and every line on it should match a completed job. A site that was skipped for rain should not appear until it is actually done. That quick check is what keeps a commercial customer trusting the statement enough to pay it without picking it apart.

For the commercial side of invoicing in more depth, see Invoicing Commercial Solar Array Cleanings: Quarterly Visits, Site Labels and Clean Paperwork. For the full set of billing tools, visit the solar cleaning billing software page.