TowingBossPro Blog — Towing Software

Keeping Police and Municipal Calls Organized Under One Account

Police and municipal work is a different animal from private calls. The calls come at all hours, the vehicles often go to your yard instead of a shop, the paperwork expectations are higher, and the customer paying the bill may be the vehicle owner days later, the agency, or both, depending on your arrangement. Every agency and every city does it a little differently.

In Managing Commercial Accounts at a Towing Company, we covered commercial accounts in general. This article focuses on one of the most demanding kinds. One note up front: the rules for law enforcement and municipal towing vary widely by state, county and city. Nothing here is legal advice — check the requirements that apply to you and to each agency you work with.

Why These Calls Need Extra Care

A police-initiated tow carries more scrutiny than a breakdown. The vehicle might be evidence, might be released to someone other than the driver, might sit in your yard for weeks, and might be the subject of questions from an owner, an insurer or the agency months later. A sloppy record on a private call is an annoyance. A sloppy record on an agency call can put a contract at risk.

The fix isn't fancy. It is recording the same core details on every call, every time, and keeping them where anyone in the office can find them.

It also has to survive shift changes. An agency call taken at 3 a.m. by the on-call driver gets asked about at 10 a.m. by someone at the front counter who wasn't there. If the details live on a call record instead of in the driver's memory or a text on his phone, the counter can answer without waking anybody up.

Put the Agency Under an Account

In TowingBossPro, police and municipal customers can be set up as commercial accounts, with their calls and invoices kept under the account. When dispatch takes a call from an agency, it goes under that account from the start. Months later, you can pull up every call for that department in one place instead of searching through a year of call sheets.

TowingBossPro does not connect to police rotation or agency dispatch systems. Calls are entered by your dispatcher like any other. What the software gives you is organization once the call exists.

The Details to Capture Every Time

Whatever your agency requires, a few details belong on every one of these calls:

• Pickup address, as precisely as possible — mile marker, direction, cross road.
• Drop-off, which for many agency tows is your own yard.
• Year, make, model, color, plate and VIN.
• Notes with whatever reference the agency gives you and anything unusual about the scene.
• Vehicle photos at pickup and at drop-off.

If your agency expects additional information, put it in the call notes consistently so it is there when someone asks. Consistency matters more than any particular field.

When the Vehicle Goes to Storage

Many police and municipal tows end in your yard. In TowingBossPro, a vehicle in storage carries a storage start date and a daily rate, and storage days get added to the invoice. That way, when the owner or the agency comes to settle up, the storage charges reflect the actual time in the yard rather than a guess.

What you can charge for storage, how notice works and how vehicles get released are exactly the kinds of things that vary by jurisdiction and by contract. Set your rates and your release process to match what applies to you.

Answering Questions Later

The real test of your records comes weeks after the tow. An owner disputes the damage. An insurer asks when the vehicle came in. An agency asks for a list of everything you towed for them last quarter. With calls under the account, photos on the call and storage dates recorded, each of those questions takes minutes instead of an afternoon.

That responsiveness is part of being an operator agencies want to keep working with. Being the company that always has the answer is a quiet competitive advantage.

Billing Agency Work Cleanly

Depending on your arrangement, agency-related charges may be billed to the agency, to the vehicle owner or split between them. Either way, completed calls turn into invoices with the vehicle, the service and any storage days already on them. Payment follow-ups chase invoices that sit, and owners picking up a vehicle can pay online or at the counter.

Police and municipal work rewards operators who are organized. To see how agency calls connect with dispatch, storage and invoicing, read the towing software overview.