JunkBossPro Blog — Property Managers & Commercial

Importing a Property List by CSV: Loading a Manager's Whole Portfolio at Once

A property manager who trusts you will eventually say, “Here's our list, we have about sixty doors.” Typing sixty addresses one at a time is an afternoon nobody wants. A CSV import brings them in at once, and the imported addresses are placed on the map automatically.

Why Load the Whole List

The client-and-address structure that the import fills is laid out in One Client, Many Addresses: How Commercial Junk Removal Accounts Are Organized. The import is just a faster way to build the bottom layer.

Having every address loaded before the requests arrive pays off three ways. The office does not have to stop and create an address while the manager is on the phone. The address is already on the map, so the next trash-out lands in the right spot on the Waiting List. And you can start adding access notes to each one before the first crew shows up.

Ask for the Right Spreadsheet

Most management companies can export a list of their units from whatever they use to run the buildings. Ask for a spreadsheet with, at minimum:

• Street address
• Unit number, if any
• City, state or province, and postal code
• The property or community name, if they group units that way

Do not ask for tenant names, phone numbers or lease details. You do not need them to haul junk, and the manager should not have to send them. The client is the management company; the units are places.

Clean It Before You Import

Ten minutes of cleanup saves an hour of fixing later. Open the spreadsheet and check:

• One row per address. No merged cells, no subtotals, no blank rows in the middle.
• Consistent unit format. “Unit 214,” “#214” and “Apt 214” should all be the same thing. Pick one.
• Full street addresses. “Oakridge Bldg C” will not find a spot on the map. “1200 Oak Ridge Dr” will.
• No duplicates. Sort by address and look for doubles.
• Postal codes intact. Spreadsheets love to drop leading zeros. Check a few.

Save it as a CSV. Then do the import.

After the Import

Check the map. Every address should have landed where it belongs. If one sits in the wrong town, the street was probably misspelled or the city was missing; fix that address by hand.

Then fill in what the spreadsheet could not carry. Access notes are the big one: which complexes use the leasing office for keys, which use lockboxes, where the truck can park. You may not know these yet, and that is fine. Add them as you learn them, ideally the day before the first job at each place. The details are in Lockboxes, Leasing Offices and Gate Codes: Access Notes for Property Manager Junk Jobs.

Measurements can be added later too. If you price off haul miles or keep a typical cubic-yard count for a unit type, add it to the property as you go.

Spot-Check With the Crew

The map tells you the pin is in the right place. It does not tell you the pin is at the right door. Big complexes often have one street address for the leasing office and buildings spread across a long driveway. The first time a crew works each complex, ask them to note in the job notes where the truck actually parked and which building was which. The office then copies that into the access notes on the address, so the next crew drives straight to building C instead of circling the lot.

This is also a good time to tag the account. If the manager runs both apartments and scattered rental houses, a custom field for the community name lets the office pull up every unit at one property in a few seconds when the manager calls about it.

When the List Changes

Managers gain and lose buildings. When they pick up a new complex, they can send a short spreadsheet of just the new units, and you import those. When they lose one, the addresses can stay where they are; the job history is still useful if the building ever comes back.

If you take on a second management company, the same process works again under a new client. Each client's addresses stay under that client, even if two companies manage buildings on the same street.

Importing Homeowners Too

The same CSV import works for any customer list, not just property managers. If you are moving from spreadsheets and paper, you can bring in your homeowner customers the same way, and their addresses land on the map with everyone else. That means your commercial units and your residential customers show up on one map from the start, which makes mixing the two on one route easy.

For everything else about running commercial accounts, visit the JunkBossPro commercial junk removal software page.