GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Commercial Doors

Choosing Commercial Garage Door Software: What to Check Before You Switch

Most field-service software handles a house call well enough. An address, a job, an invoice. Commercial door work asks more: one client with many buildings, many doors at each building, visits that repeat on a cycle, paperwork for a manager who isn't there and a bill that covers all of it. Before you switch, it pays to check how a system handles those things, not just how it looks in a sales video.

Start With Your Real Accounts

The habits that keep commercial accounts are covered in Keeping Commercial Door Accounts Year After Year: Service Habits Managers Notice. The software you pick should make those habits easy.

Before you look at any system, write down two or three of your real commercial accounts: a property manager with several properties, a warehouse with a row of dock doors, an HOA. Then test each system against them. Can you set them up the way they actually work?

Clients and Addresses

Check whether one client can have many addresses, each with its own doors, notes and history, and each on the map. If a property manager has to be entered as twelve separate clients, monthly billing and history will be a mess from the start.

Also check how you get addresses in. A manager's spreadsheet should be a CSV import, with addresses placed on the map automatically, not an afternoon of typing. See One Client With Many Addresses: How Commercial Door Accounts Are Set Up.

Door Records

Check whether each address can keep a list of doors and hardware with real fields: type (including commercial rolling and sectional doors), brand, model #, serial #, size, material, year installed and bay. A single notes box isn't a door record.

Then check the flow. Do new jobs fill in from the saved doors? Do changes on a job flow back to the address? Does the tech see the door details on their phone? If the answer to any of those is no, records will go stale fast.

Recurring Maintenance

Check how recurring visits work. Can you set a commercial plan at 90 days and a residential tune-up at 365 days, on the same system? Do due visits show up on their own, somewhere you will actually see them? Is there a clear way to spot overdue visits?

In GarageDoorBossPro, recurring work is set by minimum days between visits, and due visits land on the Waiting List map, colored not due yet, due now and overdue past a 7-day grace.

Inspections and Photos

Check whether techs can record an inspection on the phone, with a real checklist, a condition and written recommendations, and whether the office can print a report for the facility manager. Check that before-and-after photos taken in the field stay on the job.

Managers judge door companies by the paperwork they leave behind. If the software can't produce it, you'll be writing it by hand.

Billing

Check whether the system can bill commercial clients the way they pay:

• One monthly statement covering every address, with each line labeled with the address.
• Per-job invoices with line items and sales tax.
• Card on file charged on completion or on a schedule.
• Past-due follow-up without someone keeping a list.

Monthly statements by address are the one feature property managers ask about most. Make sure it is real, not a workaround.

The Tech App and the Schedule

Check what techs actually see on the phone: route order, navigation, the door details, access notes, past notes, the checklist, photos, Start / Skip / Complete. Check whether it runs on the phones your techs already have without an app store download. Check that commercial and residential work share one dispatch board, with auto-routing, saved views and crew GPS on the office map.

And check the price against the whole package. GarageDoorBossPro plans are $59, $89 and $199 per month (Start, Pro and Crew), with commercial accounts and monthly billing on every plan and a monthly text allowance included.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Before you sign up for anything, answer a few questions about your own business. How many commercial accounts do you have now, and how many do you want in a year? How many vans and techs? Do you bill anyone monthly today, and how do you do it? Where do your door records live right now? The answers tell you which features matter most to you and which ones are nice to have.

Try It Before You Switch

The best test is to click around with real data. GarageDoorBossPro has a fully-stocked sample garage door company you can explore with no signup in the live demo. Then start the 14-day free trial, no credit card, and set up one real commercial account from start to finish: the client, the addresses, the doors, a maintenance plan and monthly billing.

For the full picture of how commercial work runs in GarageDoorBossPro, go back to the commercial garage door software overview.