SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Recurring Cleanings

Monthly Statements for Property Owners on Recurring Solar Cleaning Plans

A homeowner with one roof is easy to bill. A property owner with six buildings across two business parks, each with its own array and its own quarterly plan, is not. Send them an invoice per site per visit and you have created a stack of paperwork their accounts payable team will hate. Monthly statements solve that.

The Problem With Per-Visit Invoices

Auto-Charging Each Recurring Solar Cleaning Visit to the Card on File covered billing for homeowners, where charging the card at completion is ideal. Commercial accounts are a different story.

A property owner with many sites on recurring plans might have cleanings land on different days of the month: two carports one week, a warehouse roof the next, and a ground mount at the end of the month. That could be a handful of separate invoices in a single month. Each one has to be matched, approved and paid. Questions come back. Payments get delayed. Sometimes one gets lost entirely.

How Monthly Account Billing Works

In SolarCleaningBossPro, a property owner or business can be set to Monthly account billing. Instead of getting an invoice each time a site is cleaned, they get one statement each month covering every building or site cleaned that month.

Each line on the statement is labeled with the address. The property manager can see at a glance that the North Lot carport, the Building C rooftop and the warehouse on Industrial Drive were all cleaned, and what each one cost. Line items and sales tax are included, just as on a regular invoice.

Setting Up a Multi-Site Client

A commercial client in SolarCleaningBossPro is one client with many addresses. Set it up like this:

• One client for the property owner or management company, with the billing contact.
• One address per site, each with its own panel count, mount, stories, pitch, extras and access notes.
• A plan on each address, usually quarterly at 90 days, though some sites may need a different spacing.
• The Commercial tag, so commercial accounts are easy to filter.
• Monthly billing on the client.

Each site comes due on the Waiting List on its own count. The office schedules them, often as a block on the commercial truck, and every completed visit lands on that month's statement. Setting up quarterly plans is covered in Quarterly Commercial Solar Cleaning Plans for Arrays, Carports and Rooftops.

Photos Back Up the Statement

A property manager who sees six sites on a statement may want proof each one was done. Before-and-after photos taken in the tech app stay with each job, so when someone asks whether Building C was really cleaned in May, the answer is right there. Job notes add any details the tech saw, such as a cracked panel or bird nesting under the array.

That record also protects you if ownership or management changes and the new team wants to see the history.

Who Should Be on Monthly Billing

Monthly account billing fits:

• Property management companies with several buildings
• Businesses with arrays at more than one location
• Owners of commercial carports and parking structures
• Landlords with solar on several rental homes
• Farms and ranches with multiple ground mounts

It is less useful for a single homeowner. For them, charging the card at completion is simpler for everyone.

Following Up on Statements

Commercial accounts sometimes pay on longer terms. Past-due follow-up keeps open statements from being forgotten, and the customer app lets the billing contact see and pay invoices online. A short text to the property manager when a statement goes unpaid often clears it faster than an email to a general inbox.

Keep the billing contact current. When management companies change staff, update the client so statements go to the right person.

Ask each commercial client how they want statements handled before the first one goes out. Some want them sent to an accounts payable inbox; others want the property manager to review first. A short conversation at the start saves a lot of back-and-forth later.

It also helps to match the statement to the way the client thinks about their properties. If they call a building “North Lot” rather than by street number, include that name with the address so the label on each line means something to the person paying the bill.

When a new site is added to the account, set its plan and panel details right away so it starts showing up on statements the first month it is cleaned.

One Statement, Many Roofs

Monthly statements make you easy to work with, which is half of keeping a commercial account. For how commercial plans fit with home plans, the Waiting List and routing, visit the recurring solar cleaning software page.