CarpetBossPro Blog — Commercial & Property Managers

Importing a Property List by CSV for Commercial Carpet Accounts

You just won a property manager with sixty rentals, or a management company with three complexes. They email you a spreadsheet of addresses. The worst way to start that account is to spend two evenings typing addresses into your software one at a time. The better way is a CSV import.

The Spreadsheet Every Manager Already Has

How clients and addresses fit together is covered in One Client, Many Addresses: How Commercial Carpet Accounts Fit Together. This guide is about getting a long list of those addresses into CarpetBossPro quickly.

Almost every property manager, school district and office building owner keeps a list of their properties somewhere: in their own management system, in a spreadsheet, or in an email to their insurance agent. Ask for it. Most will export it for you, and a spreadsheet can be saved as a CSV file in a couple of clicks.

Clean the List Before You Import

Ten minutes of cleanup before importing saves an hour of fixing afterward. Go through the list and check:

• One row per address. Each suite, unit or property on its own row.
• Full addresses. Street, city, state or province, and postal code, so each one lands in the right place on the map.
• A clear unit column. “Unit 12” or “Suite 300” in a consistent format that matches how the manager talks about the property.
• No duplicates. Managers' lists sometimes repeat a property under two names.
• No properties you will not service. If the list includes commercial lots with no carpet, take them out.

If the manager has square feet or room counts for each property, keep that list handy, because you will want them on each address. Measurements on the property are what services can be priced from later.

Imported Addresses Land on the Map

Once the CSV is imported, the addresses are placed on the map automatically. Nobody has to drop pins by hand or look up each address. That matters because the map is where commercial work gets scheduled: the Waiting List map shows every address that has come due or has a request, and the office fills days by area.

After import, take a quick look at the map. If an address landed somewhere odd, it is usually a typo in the original list. Fix it on the address and move on.

Set Up the Account After Import

With the addresses in, finish setting up the account:

• Billing. Set the client to Monthly so every address bills on one statement, or leave them on card on file if they prefer to pay per job.
• Recurring visits. For common areas, offices and hallways, set the minimum days between visits on each address so they start coming due on their own.
• Carpet job details. Add carpet type, method and access notes as you learn them. Often the first visit to each address is when the details get filled in, and every visit after that fills in from the last job.
• Tags. Tag addresses by complex, owner or region if the account is large.

Importing Your Own Customer List

CSV import is not only for new commercial accounts. If you are moving off spreadsheets and paper, the same tool brings in your existing residential and commercial customers. Export what you have, clean it with the same checklist, and import. Those addresses go on the map too, ready for the Waiting List.

For companies with both residential and commercial customers, this is a good moment to sort out the client-and-address structure: homeowners as one client with one address, commercial accounts as one client with many. The difference shows up later on the dispatch board and the statements. Running both kinds of work together is covered in Commercial and Residential Carpet Jobs on One Schedule.

Adding Addresses Later

Property managers pick up new properties and lose others. When a manager adds a property, add it as a new address under the same client. When they lose one, stop scheduling it. You do not need to re-import the whole list each time; the import is for getting started, and day-to-day changes are quick to make by hand.

If a large batch of new properties comes along at once — a manager takes over a new complex, say — a second CSV import for just those addresses works the same way.

From Spreadsheet to First Visit

The real test of an import is the first week. Can the office see every property on the map? When a request comes in for one of them, is the address already there? When the first statement goes out, does every line match a property on the manager's own list? If yes, the account is set up right. The next guide covers that statement. For the rest of the commercial tools, visit the CarpetBossPro commercial carpet cleaning software page.