GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Commercial Doors

Warehouse Accounts: Running Many Doors at One Address Without Losing Track

A warehouse is the opposite of a house call. One address, one parking lot, one contact — and a long wall of doors. Dock doors on one side, a drive-in sectional or two on the end, a rolling door into the parts cage, maybe a gate opener at the yard entrance. Every one of those doors can fail on its own schedule, and the warehouse wants to know which ones you have touched and what they cost.

One Address, Many Doors

Dock doors in particular are covered in Loading Dock Door Service: Tracking Every Dock Door at a Distribution Building. A warehouse account pulls docks together with everything else at the building.

In GarageDoorBossPro, the warehouse address keeps a list of all its doors and hardware. Each one is a separate item — commercial rolling door, commercial sectional door, garage door opener, gate opener, safety sensors and so on — with brand, model #, serial #, size, material, year installed and a bay label. When the office opens the address, the whole building is there in one list. When a new job is made, the “From House” picker lets the office choose which door the job is about, and that door's details carry onto the job.

A History That Follows Each Door

Because jobs are attached to the address and the door details carry onto each job, the job history at a warehouse tells a story door by door. The office can look back and see that the drive-in door on the east end had a cable job last winter and a roller job this spring. Notes from past visits show on the tech's card too, so the tech heading to the east door knows what was done before.

That history is what makes a warehouse manager trust a door company. When they ask, “How many times have you been out for that door this year?” the answer is a quick look, not a guess.

Setting a Maintenance Cycle

Warehouses that run their doors hard often want them checked on a regular cycle. In GarageDoorBossPro, recurring work is set by minimum days between visits. A warehouse door maintenance plan is often set to 90 days. When the visit comes due, it appears on the Waiting List map as due now, and if nobody schedules it within a 7-day grace, it turns to overdue.

The tech can work the door safety inspection checklist on each door during the visit and record a condition and recommendations for each. Doors marked Repair recommended become the start of an estimate, and the facility manager gets a clear printed report of what was checked.

For the details on maintenance cycles, see Commercial Door Maintenance Every 90 Days: Recurring Visits That Come Due on Their Own.

Who to Call and How to Get In

Warehouses usually have more than one person a tech might deal with: a facility manager who approves the work, a shift lead who knows which door is acting up, a guard at the gate. Access notes stored on the address keep those details on the job card:

• “Sign in at the guard shack, mention the door company.”
• “Facility manager approves anything over the maintenance visit.”
• “Ask for the shift lead on the dock for which doors are sticking.”
• “Forklift traffic heavy before 10am.”

The office can also text the contact from the office through two-way texting, and automatic alerts can let them know the tech is on the way.

Emergency Calls at a Busy Building

A warehouse door that won't close at the end of a shift can leave a building open overnight. A door that won't open can hold up a truck. When that call comes in, the office adds the job, picks the door from the list, and assigns it to the van that makes sense. Crew GPS on the office map shows where every van is, and the tech sees the door record and access notes as soon as the job lands on their phone.

If the company charges an after-hours rate, set it up as its own service on the service list, such as after-hours emergency, so it shows as a clear line item on the invoice or the monthly statement.

Billing a Warehouse

Some warehouses pay per job with a card on file. Others want everything on one monthly statement. Both work in GarageDoorBossPro. Invoices carry line items and sales tax, a card on file can be charged on completion or on a schedule, and past-due follow-up goes out on unpaid invoices.

If the warehouse is part of a company with several buildings, set the account to Monthly. Every job at every address lands on one statement each month, and each line is labeled with its address. The accounts payable office sees one bill and can still tell which building each charge belongs to.

Making the Warehouse an Easy Account

A warehouse account looks complicated on day one and simple by month three. Record every door the first time a tech is on site, label them the way the building does, set the maintenance cycle and pick how the account is billed. After that, the system remembers what the tech used to have to.

For how warehouse work fits with property managers, HOAs, storage facilities and the rest of your commercial accounts, see the commercial garage door software overview.