GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Commercial Doors

Importing a Property List by CSV: Getting a Manager's Addresses Into Your System

A new commercial account often starts with an email: “Here's our list of properties.” Attached is a spreadsheet with forty addresses. Typing those in by hand takes an afternoon and invites typos. Importing them takes a few minutes and gets every address on the map at once.

Why Import

Deciding which van goes where is covered in Dispatching Commercial Door Work: Which Van Goes to the Warehouse. None of that works until the addresses are in the system. For a manager or HOA with a long list, CSV import is how they get there.

GarageDoorBossPro supports CSV import of clients and addresses. Imported addresses are placed on the map automatically, so once the import is done, every property shows as a pin, ready for door records, access notes and recurring work.

Preparing the Spreadsheet

Most manager spreadsheets need a little cleanup before import. Before you bring a file in, check:

• One address per row. Street, city, state or province and ZIP or postal code, each in its own column if possible.
• Consistent formatting. No mix of abbreviations and full words where it can be avoided.
• No blank rows or totals. Remove summary rows the manager added at the bottom.
• Property names, if they use them. “Oak Ridge Townhomes, Unit 12” helps the office find properties the way the manager talks about them.
• Contact details, if provided. Keep site or tenant contacts handy so they can go in each address's access notes.

Save the file as CSV from whatever spreadsheet program the manager used.

One Client, Many Addresses

For a property manager, warehouse company or HOA that pays for doors, the goal is one client with every address under it. That way the monthly statement covers every property, and each address keeps its own doors and history. The structure is covered in One Client With Many Addresses: How Commercial Door Accounts Are Set Up.

For an HOA where homeowners pay for their own doors, each homeowner is their own client. Tag them with the community name so you can find and group them.

After the Import

Once the addresses are in and on the map, a few quick steps make the account ready to work:

• Check the pins. Look at the map and make sure the properties landed where they should. Anything that looks off is usually a typo in the original file.
• Add access notes. Whatever the manager can tell you about gates, keys, lockboxes and contacts goes on each address.
• Set billing. If the manager wants one bill, set the client to Monthly.
• Add recurring work. If any properties are on a maintenance plan, set the minimum days between visits on those addresses.

Door Records Come Later

A property list rarely includes door details. That is fine. Door records get built on the first visit to each property: the tech adds the garage door, opener, springs, sensors and anything else they see, with brand, model #, serial #, size and year. Each property can also hold measurements like square feet, doors and openers.

If the manager does have door information — from a previous vendor's records or their own files — it can be added to each address before the first visit, giving techs a head start.

Adding Properties Later

Managers pick up new properties and drop old ones. When a manager adds one or two, add them by hand under the same client. When they add a whole new community or portfolio, import another CSV. Properties the manager no longer manages can stay on the record with their history; just stop scheduling there.

Importing also works when you are moving your own existing customer list into GarageDoorBossPro, residential or commercial. The same rule applies: clean file, one address per row, check the map after.

A Quick Test Run

For a big list, try a small piece first. Import a handful of rows, check that they landed on the map where you expected and that the fields came in the right columns, then bring in the rest. Catching a column mix-up on ten rows is much easier than fixing it on two hundred.

Keep the manager's original file too. If a question comes up later about an address, you can check what they sent.

From Spreadsheet to Route

Once the addresses are on the map, they behave like every other property. Due visits show on the Waiting List, jobs go on the dispatch board, techs see the access notes on their phones and the work rolls into the manager's statement. For how it all fits together, go back to the commercial garage door software page.