DumpsterBossPro Blog — Dumpster Rental Software

Switching Dumpster Rental Software: Importing Customers by CSV and Going Live

The thought of switching software is enough to keep a lot of dumpster companies on a system they do not like. Re-entering every customer, every open rental, every contractor site. It feels like a month of work. It does not have to be.

Drivers, Trucks and the Time Clock: Adding a Second Roll-Off Truck Without Losing Track covered adding drivers and trucks. This guide covers getting your existing business into a new system.

Export What You Have

Start by getting your customer list out of wherever it lives now. Most software can export to a spreadsheet. If your customers live in a spreadsheet already, you are ahead. If they live on paper, start a spreadsheet with the active ones first.

The core fields are name, phone, email and billing address. Anything else is a bonus. Do not spend days cleaning the list. Remove obvious duplicates and fix the rest as you go.

Pay special attention to phone numbers. Text messages are a big part of how a roll-off company talks to customers, so mobile numbers in a consistent format will save trouble later.

Import by CSV

DumpsterBossPro imports customers by CSV. Save your spreadsheet as a CSV, match the columns and bring them in. A list that would take days to type in arrives in minutes.

After the import, spot check a few customers. Make sure names, phones and emails landed in the right fields. Then set up your contractor and commercial accounts and their job sites, since those customers matter most.

If your old system kept notes on customers, such as gate codes or preferred placements, decide what is worth carrying over. Notes about active sites matter. Notes about a job three years ago probably do not.

Enter Open Rentals

The customers are the easy part. The hard part is the cans that are out right now. Go through your current rentals and enter each one as a job with its real delivery date, size, unit number, site address and terms. That way the rental days are tracked correctly from day one, and the extra days are billed on rentals that started before you switched.

Do this right before you go live. Open rentals change daily, so enter them as close to the switch as possible.

Walk the yard while you do it. A quick count of which cans are home tells you which ones are out, and checking that against your list of open rentals catches the can nobody remembered delivering.

Set Up Drivers, Trucks and Terms

Add your drivers and trucks so jobs can be assigned. Get the driver app on every driver's phone. Write down your standard rental terms for each size, days included, daily rate, included weight and per-ton overage, so the office enters them the same way on every quote and job.

Set up your web request form on your website and tell your regular customers about the customer app. Each of those steps brings more of your business into the system.

Tell your drivers what is changing and why before the switch day. A five-minute talk about how the app makes their day easier goes further than handing them a phone and walking away.

Go Live

Pick a slow day, usually midweek. From that day on, every new request goes into the new system. Every job is assigned there. Every driver works from the app. Run your old system alongside for a few days if you must, but make the new one the source of truth.

Expect a few bumps. Someone will forget and write a job on paper. A driver will call in for an address. Gently push everything back into the system. Within a week or two, the old way will feel strange.

In the first week, check the end of each day: did every completed job get marked complete, did every scale ticket get its weight on the job, did every new request land on the Waiting List? Catching a gap on day three is easy. Catching it at the end of the month is not.

Try It Before You Commit

The best way to know whether a system fits is to run your real work through it. DumpsterBossPro has a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Import your customers, add your trucks and run a few days of real jobs. You will know quickly whether it fits.

During the trial, focus on the parts that make you money: rental days, weight overages and invoices. If those work for your business, the rest is convenience.

The final guide in this series covers choosing software: pricing, per-user fees and the questions to ask. To see the whole system in one place, visit the DumpsterBossPro dumpster rental software page.