Location Naming Best Practices

[AlexPhylactou]

We are trying to create a standard naming procedure for locations and wanted to see what everyone else is doing.

Right now we create a tenant and location with the same name but that throws it off when "Jason's vacation home" gets sold and has a new owner. What would normally happen is our team would end up creating a new location with a different name but the same address.

Moving forward: we are planning on naming every location with the unique address and just changing the bill-to account attached. Just looking to see how you all are naming your locations 🙂

The worry I have here is: does all the previous invoice and customer work done on this location transfer over to the new customer profile? Does it just live in the location? I'd hate to accidentally give out information to a new homeowner/property manager for work performed by the previous owner. But also think it's helpful to have all that location info available for our tech to have the most information possible when on a call.

We also run into the issue of "APT" being added to the unit field. During dispatch the tech gets a text message with the address but when they click on it, the address is wrong because the iPhone/iPad starts the address at after the APT letters in the unit field. Our team is pretty good about removing the APT from the unit field but this is just unnecessary work I think that could be avoided.

[BradleyShaffer]

Has anyone else found a better way to do this?... Creating a new profile with a fake address, assigning existing location to new profile, changing location name, making note of change in the history notes (which should be shown automatically, in my opinion, at the bottom of the location page as a full history log). Then opening and 'deactivating' the fake address place holder.                

This is a huge waste of time and confusing in tracking this a few weeks/months/years later. 

[jimmypatterson]

What has been successful in our line of business has been to use the Customer Name as the "title" for example HOA Policy Work, and under the location enter the customers name, address & info. It does work, as long as that same HOA is the billing party responsible for payment. 

In reporting it is easy to filter / find.  The customer name being the designated umbrella such as an organization with all the customers under them. 

[RandiThompson]

We stet up Jason Smith customer and Jason Smith Vacation home location. When Bob buys the vacation home (assuming Bob is a new customer) we would set up BOB customer, this will automatically add a new location, then we change the customer in Jason Smith Vacation home to Bob, then merge the locations. The service history for the location will remain with the location but when you click on Bob the customer it will only have the invoices and jobs that have billed to Bob.