PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Construction Site Accounts

Pulling Porta Potties at the End of a Construction Project

The Last Job Matters Most

The end of a project is when contractors are most likely to judge your company. The building is nearly done, the owner is coming for a walkthrough, the landscaper wants the area where your units sit, and the super needs everything temporary gone. A slow pickup at that moment is remembered far longer than the months of on-time service before it.

Relocations, covered in Relocating Porta Potties Between Construction Phases, are about moving units within a project. This article is about getting them off the site for good, and closing the rental so the final bill is right.

Know When the Project Is Ending

Pickups go wrong when you find out about them too late. Ask the super early in the project for a rough end date, and check in as it gets close. Rental tracking helps here: the office lists show how long each site's units have been out, and a site that has been out for many months is a good reason to text the super and ask about the schedule.

Many supers will text you when they are ready. Make it easy. The customer app lets them request a pickup directly, and two-way texting lets them reply to a check-in from the office. Requests land with the office, and the pickup goes on the Waiting List.

Pickups in Stages

Large projects rarely end all at once. High-rise units come down when the upper floors are done. Hand wash stations may go when interior work finishes. Some standards leave when the crew shrinks, and the last unit leaves with the final cleanup crew.

Schedule each stage as its own pickup on the job site, noting which units come off by unit number. Each picked-up date closes that part of the rental, while the units that stay keep counting. The service on the site should then match what is left, so the driver does not go looking for units that are already gone.

Staged pickups are also a chance to save the contractor money, which they notice. If the crew has shrunk and the super has not asked, a text offering to pull two of the five units shows that you are watching their project, not just their bill. Contractors remember the vendor who suggested a smaller invoice.

On the Day of the Pickup

The pickup lands on the driver's phone in route order, with the unit type, quantity, unit numbers and placement notes. The driver services the units before loading if that is your practice, loads them, and takes a photo of the empty spot. That photo is useful if anyone later claims the area was left dirty or a unit was left behind.

If the units are not there, or one is damaged or missing, the driver notes it on the job and the office follows up with the super right away. Job Site Theft and Vandalism: Keeping Notes on Damaged or Missing Porta Potties covers theft and vandalism notes.

The Final Bill

When the last pickup is marked complete, the rental closes with its picked-up date. Rental tracking counts the total days against the days included, and any extra rental days are added to the invoice automatically. Nobody has to dig back through the calendar to work out when the units went out.

For contractors on card on file, the invoice can be charged when the pickup is completed. For contractors on monthly billing, the final charges appear on that month's statement under the site address, along with every other job at every other site. Monthly Statements for Contractor Porta Potty Accounts: One Bill, Every Site explains how the statement is laid out.

Leave the Site Clean

A porta potty company that leaves tire ruts across a finished lawn or a stain on a new slab can undo months of good work. Train drivers to check the spot after loading, clean up anything left behind, and photograph it. Put any special instructions in the placement notes before the pickup, such as "New sod in front, use the side gate."

Before the last pickup, check the site's record against the units on the ground. If the record says five units and the driver finds four, find out now, while the super is still on site and can tell you what happened. Once the crews leave, the answer gets much harder to find.

Ask About the Next Project

The best time to ask a contractor about their next project is right after a clean pickup. A short text to the super or the project manager thanking them for the work and asking what is coming next keeps your name in front of them. Tags and reports by account help you track which builders have work coming up.

When the next project breaks ground, add it as a new site on the same account and the cycle starts again. To see how pickups and rental tracking fit into contractor accounts, visit PortaPottyBossPro construction porta potty rental software.