TowingBossPro Blog — Accounts & Customers

Setting Up a Tow Account Record: What Belongs on It From Day One

An account record is only as useful as what was put on it the first time. A record that just says "Main Avenue Collision" with a phone number is barely better than a sticky note. A record that knows the shop's two locations, the after-hours key drop, the manager who approves invoices and the tag that says it is a body shop will save your dispatchers minutes on every call for years.

After sorting your work by type in The Six Commercial Account Types That Keep a Tow Company Busy, the next step is building each account properly. Here is what belongs on it from day one.

Use the Name Your Dispatchers Use

Enter the account under the name your team actually says on the radio. If everyone calls it "Hillside Ford," do not file it as "Hillside Automotive Holdings LLC." Search should work the way people think. If the legal name matters for invoicing, keep it in a custom field or the notes.

Search also needs to survive turnover. The dispatcher who knows that "the Ford store" means Hillside will eventually leave, and the new hire will type whatever the caller says. Put common nicknames in the notes so a search on any of them finds the account.

Decide on a naming rule before you build a long list. Dealer groups with several stores, for example, can be one account with multiple locations rather than five separate accounts with similar names. That keeps the history together and makes reports by account meaningful.

Contacts and How to Reach Them

Commercial accounts rarely have one person. There is the person who calls for tows, the person who gets the invoices and sometimes a manager who handles disputes. Record the main phone and email, and use notes or custom fields for the other people your office needs.

If the account wants texts, make sure the mobile number is right. Automated texts and emails, and two-way texting, all depend on accurate contact information, and a wrong number on a commercial account means updates that never arrive.

Locations Before the First Call

Add the account's regular locations when you set it up, not during a call at 2 a.m. A body shop's bay, a dealer's back lot, a fleet yard, the buildings a property manager covers. Each one becomes a location under the customer, ready to pick as the pickup or drop-off on the next call.

Include the details that matter to a driver: which entrance, gate codes if the account shares them, where keys go after hours, where not to park. Those notes are what make a saved location better than a typed address.

Tags and Custom Fields

Tag the account by type — motor club, police, body shop, dealer, property manager, fleet — and by anything else you sort by, like service area or priority. Tags are what turn a long customer list into lists you can act on.

Custom fields hold the account-specific details that do not fit a standard box. Common ones for tow companies:

• Purchase order or reference number format the account wants on invoices
• Preferred drop-off yard or shop for the account's vehicles
• Who approves invoices and how they want them sent
• Account start date or where the relationship came from

Keep the list of custom fields short. Every field you add is one more thing someone has to fill in, so add only what you will actually use.

Billing Preferences

Decide up front how each account pays. Some pay per call with a card, some want an invoice per job, some pay on a schedule. TowingBossPro supports invoicing, card on file, auto-billing, online payments and sales tax, plus payment follow-ups for invoices that go unpaid.

Writing down how an account pays on the account itself — in notes or a custom field — means the person invoicing does not have to ask the owner every time.

Review the Record After the First Few Calls

The first week with a new account always teaches you something. The shop prefers the side gate, the fleet manager wants unit numbers on invoices, the property manager wants a text when a car is removed. Update the record as you learn, so the knowledge lives in the system instead of one dispatcher's head.

A well-built account record is the foundation for everything else in the towing account management software series: saved locations, account history, texting and reports all depend on it. Next, we look closer at customers with more than one location.