DumpsterBossPro Blog — Dumpster Rental Software

From Request to Paid: The Full Life of a Roll-Off Rental in One System

The easiest way to understand what dumpster rental software is for is to follow one can through one rental. Every hand-off along the way is a spot where information can drop on the floor, and every dropped piece of information is either a wasted trip or an unbilled charge.

In Moving a Dumpster Rental Company Off Paper, Whiteboards and Spreadsheets, we covered how to make the move. Here is what a single rental looks like once you have.

The Request Comes In

A homeowner fills out the web request form on your site on a Sunday night. They are redoing a bathroom and a bedroom and want a 20-yard delivered Wednesday. The request lands on the Waiting List with their name, phone, email and the site address. Monday morning, your office person opens the map and sees the new pin.

Before anything else, she calls or texts to fill in what a web form never captures: where exactly the can goes on the property, whether there is a gate, what kind of debris it will be, and whether anybody will be home. A quote goes out for the 20-yard with seven days included, a daily rate after that and an included weight with a per-ton rate over it. The customer approves the quote online from their phone.

Delivery Day

Tuesday afternoon, the office circles Wednesday's deliveries on the map and assigns them to a driver and truck in one step. The jobs land on the dispatch board under that truck for Wednesday, and auto-routing puts them in order. Wednesday morning, the driver opens his app and sees the delivery in sequence, with the site address, the dumpster size and unit number, the debris type and the note that says "set on the left side of the driveway, boards under the rails."

He taps on-the-way and the customer gets a text. He arrives, sets the can, takes a photo of the placement, and taps complete. The delivery date is now on the job. The rental clock has started without anybody writing it on a board.

The Swap

Five days in, the customer realizes the 20 is full and the bedroom is not even half done. They open the customer app and request a service. The swap request lands on the Waiting List. The office assigns it to the next day's route. The driver pulls the full can, sets an empty, and hauls the full one to the transfer station listed as the haul-to address on the job.

At the scale, the driver gets the ticket. The weight in tons goes on the job. If it is over the included weight, the tons over will be billed per ton. Nobody has to remember to look at the ticket again at the end of the month.

The Final Pickup

Twelve days after delivery, the customer is done and requests a pickup. The driver pulls the can and hauls it to the landfill. The pickup date goes on the job. DumpsterBossPro compares it to the delivery date and the days included, and the extra days at the daily rate are added to the invoice automatically. The second scale ticket goes on the job too.

This is the moment most paper systems fail. The can is back, the driver is on to the next job, and the five extra days only exist if somebody does the math. Here, nobody has to.

The Invoice and the Payment

The completed rental becomes an invoice with the rental, the swap, the extra days, any weight overage and sales tax already on it. The customer gets it, opens the customer app and pays online, or the card on file is charged if they set one up. If they let it sit, payment follow-ups go out so your office is not making awkward phone calls.

Notice what did not happen. Nobody re-typed the address. Nobody called the driver to ask what size was out there. Nobody added up days on a calculator. Nobody dug through a door pocket for a scale ticket.

Where the Gaps Usually Are

Run through your own last month and count the places a rental like this could have leaked. The quote that was verbal, so the customer remembered a lower price. The swap that was done but never billed. The extra days nobody counted. The overweight load nobody charged. Each one is small. Together they are often the difference between a good month and a thin one.

The rest of this series takes each of these steps in turn, starting with what to capture when the order is taken. To see every step together, visit the DumpsterBossPro dumpster rental software page.