🗂️ One Teams Account Per Customer: How a Service Company Can Run Its Customers in Equipment Tracker

If you run a service company, or you are a maintenance contractor who looks after other people’s properties, you have a choice about how to keep their records. You can pour every customer into one big account, or you can give each customer an account of their own. After a few years of servicing other people’s equipment, I would pick the second one.

This post is about that arrangement as a business setup: one Teams account for each customer. It uses two features that I have written about on their own, customer logins and quick account switching, and shows how they fit together. If you want the detail on either, the two posts are linked below.

Why one account per customer

The reason is that a customer is not just a building. Each customer has their own buildings, their own equipment, their own service history, their own work orders and PM schedules, and their own invoices. When all of that sits in one account of its own, you can answer a question about that customer without sorting past anyone else’s records.

• ▸ Clean records for each customer. Their units, logs, photos and invoices are in their account and nowhere else. Nothing of theirs shows up in the next customer’s list, and nothing you add to one account goes to another.
• ▸ Easy to end. When you stop servicing a customer, you sign their account out of your phone. Their records are not tangled up with anybody else’s, so there is nothing to pull apart.
• ▸ Easy to hand over. Because everything for that customer is in one account, the question of what belongs to them has a simple answer: all of it.
• ▸ The customer sees only their own. Their people log in to their account and see what you allow, and there is no way for them to wander into another customer’s information, because it is not in their account to begin with.

What lives in each customer’s account

The same things you already keep: locations and the equipment at each one, with nameplate details and photos; service logs; work orders; PM schedules; and invoices. The difference is only that these belong to one customer. If you are new to keeping equipment records this way, the property management equipment log post is a good starting point.

How the customer’s own people log in

Inside each customer’s Teams account, you invite their people with the Customer role: a read-only login where they see only the locations and kinds of records you choose, never your costs or other customers, and can pay the invoices you send. Everything they see and never see is in the customer logins post.

Each Customer login takes one of your seats. Each person on the customer’s side needs their own free Equipment Tracker account. They join with the invite code you give them, and they don’t need a plan of their own.

Switching between customers on one phone

Keeping ten accounts is only practical if getting from one to the next is quick. Since app version 6.38.0, every customer account lives on the same phone: tap the account name at the top of the home screen, pick the customer, and you are in, with no signing out and no signal needed. How it works, step by step, is in the quick account switching post.

What it costs

Every customer account is its own Teams account, so each one has its own plan. A Teams plan is $39.99 a month for 5 seats. Each further block of 5 seats adds $40.00 a month, up to 50 seats. Each new customer account is a new account, so its first Teams plan comes with its own 7-day free trial.

Remember that your own login takes one seat on each customer’s account, and each Customer login takes another. A customer with a bookkeeper and a building superintendent who both log in uses two.

Plans are optional where you want them to be. Free accounts can be kept on the phone and switched to just like paid ones, so you can keep an account for a customer on the free tier. The Customer login is the part that needs a Teams plan. Current prices are always on the pricing page.

How to set it up, one customer at a time

Do these steps once for each customer.

• ▸ Make the customer’s account. Give it its own sign-in, so use a separate email address (or a separate Google sign-in) for each customer. Add their locations and equipment.
• ▸ Put it on a Teams plan. Signed in to the customer’s account, tap GO PRO on the home screen, choose UPGRADE TO TEAM, pick the number of seats, and tap START TEAM 7-DAY TRIAL.
• ▸ Invite the customer. On the home screen open BILLING, PLANS & TEAM and tap Team. Under SELECT ROLE FOR NEW INVITE choose Customer and tap GENERATE INVITE CODE. The first time, the app may tell you to turn cloud backup on first. Tap Turn On And Continue.
• ▸ The customer joins. Each person on their side makes their own free Equipment Tracker account, in the app or at equipment-tracker.com, with no plan needed. On the website, a new account lands on the plans page: they tap Join a team with an invite code and enter your code. In the app, they open Team, tap JOIN TEAM WORKSPACE and enter it.
• ▸ Choose what they see. On your Team screen, tap their role. Under LOCATIONS THIS CUSTOMER SEES tick the locations, then set the switches under WHAT THIS CUSTOMER SEES.
• ▸ Keep the account on your phone. In Settings, under ACCOUNTS ON THIS PHONE, tap Add an account and sign in to the customer’s account. When the app asks whether to keep the account you were in, tap Keep. Then tap and hold an account in the list and choose Rename.

What this is not

It is one account for each customer, kept on one phone. There is no single combined list across all of your customers, because the point is that each customer’s records stay apart. And a customer cannot change anything: if they want something done, they still call you.

Do I need a separate Teams account for every customer?

That is the setup this post recommends: one Teams account per customer, so each customer’s buildings, equipment, history, work orders, PM schedules and invoices stay in their own account. Customer logins need a Teams plan on the account they are invited to.

What does a Teams plan cost?

$39.99 a month for 5 seats, plus $40.00 a month for each further block of 5 seats, up to 50 seats. Every new account’s first plan has a 7-day free trial. Your own login counts as one of the seats.

Does each customer login use a seat?

Yes. Each Customer login takes one seat on that account’s Teams plan, the same as your own login does. Each person on the customer’s side signs up for their own free Equipment Tracker account and joins with your invite code. They don’t need a plan of their own.

What do customers see?

Only the locations you tick for them, and only what the six switches allow: Equipment, Work Orders, PM Schedules, Service history, Invoices and Site contacts. They never see costs, labor rates, other customers, or who a job is assigned to.

Can I keep all the customer accounts on one phone?

Yes. With app version 6.38.0, keep each account under ACCOUNTS ON THIS PHONE and switch from the account name at the top of the home screen, with no sign-out and no signal needed.

Are unsent changes sent automatically when I switch?

No. They stay on the phone with their account. On Pro and Team accounts the list shows Send now for them.

Jonathan Curtis

HVAC Technician & Founder · Equipment Tracker Pro

Jonathan Curtis is an HVAC technician and the founder of Equipment Tracker Pro. He built the app to solve real problems he encountered in the field, including the daily frustration of faded nameplates and administrative double-entry.