TowingBossPro Blog — Impound & Storage

Tags and Custom Fields for Impound Holds and Lot Notes

Every lot has information that does not fit in a standard form. This car is on a police hold. That one has the keys in the office. The truck in row C needs a jump to move. The case number for the accident on the highway. The property manager who only allows tows after 10 p.m. If that information lives only in someone's head, it disappears when they go home.

Vehicle Storage for Body Shops and Dealers: Holding Cars Between Moves covered account storage. This article is about the small details that keep a lot running safely.

Tags vs. Custom Fields

TowingBossPro has both tags and custom fields. They do slightly different jobs.

Tags are quick labels for filtering and sorting: Police Hold, Keys in Office, Waiting on Adjuster, Private Property. You can look at everything with a given tag in seconds.

Custom fields hold specific values: a case number, an officer's name, a lot row, an authorization contact. They are for details you need to look up, not just categories.

A simple rule of thumb: if you want to see a list of every vehicle that has it, use a tag. If you want to know the specific value for one vehicle, use a custom field. "Police Hold" is a tag. "Case number 24-11873" is a custom field.

Tags Worth Setting Up

Start with a short list. A typical lot might use:

• Police Hold, for vehicles that cannot be released without agency approval.
• Keys in Office and No Keys.
• Does Not Run, for vehicles that need equipment to move.
• Private Property and Police, if you want to sort by work type.
• Waiting on Adjuster, for account vehicles in insurance limbo.

Resist adding a tag for every situation. A list of forty tags nobody remembers is worse than a list of eight everybody uses.

Agree on exact names before anyone starts tagging. "Police Hold," "PD Hold" and "Hold - Police" are three different tags to the software and one thing to a human. Pick one, and remove the others when they appear.

Custom Fields Worth Setting Up

Custom fields work well for the specific information your accounts and local rules expect you to record. Police agencies may want a case or incident number and an officer's name. Private property work may need the name of the person who authorized the tow. Some lots record the row or space where each vehicle is parked so the yard person can find it quickly.

Set these up based on what you actually need, and check your local rules for anything you are required to keep. TowingBossPro does not map your lot spaces for you, but a simple row or space field gets most of the benefit.

Keep custom fields to what someone will actually look up later. If nobody has ever asked for a piece of information, you probably do not need a field for it. Fields that are always empty teach your team that fields do not matter, and then the important ones get skipped too.

Holds Need Discipline

The most important tag on the lot is the hold. Releasing a vehicle under a hold is the kind of mistake that can damage your relationship with an agency. Make it a rule that a hold tag is added when the call is created, and that only a manager removes it, with a note on who authorized the release and when.

Train release staff to check for the tag before collecting payment, not after.

Account-Level Notes

Some details belong on the account, not the vehicle. A property manager's authorization rules, a body shop's agreed storage rate, a dealer's preferred contact. Put those on the account so they show up for every call under it.

Account notes are also where you keep the history of the relationship: when the contract started, the agreed rates and any special instructions. A new dispatcher or office manager can read the account and understand how to work with that customer without asking around the office.

Keep It Clean

Once a month, look at your tags and fields. Remove the ones nobody uses. Merge ones that mean the same thing. Make sure tags come off when the situation changes, so the hold list is actual holds, not cars released months ago.

Good tags make a lot feel organized even when it is full. See how they support the storage workflow on the Impound & Storage Software page. Next: reports that show what the lot earns.

Assign one person to own the tag list. When someone wants a new tag, they ask that person. It sounds bureaucratic, but it is the only way a tag list stays short enough to be useful after a year.