Jan-san customers often have the same problem from two sides. The people who need supplies, custodians, crew leads and night supervisors, are spread across many buildings and work odd hours. The people who control the budget, facility directors, school business managers and contractor owners, need to keep spending in check. If only one person can order, the closets run dry. If everyone can order freely, spending runs wild.
The app lets you give both sides what they need.
Managers approve
Any user on an account can be a manager, and an account can require approval. When a custodian places an order that needs approval, it's held as Awaiting approval and the manager gets an email or a text with the order details. The manager approves or declines from the link, and approved orders go straight through. Approval links can only be used once and expire after a set time.
That means a night crew lead at an office tower can order liners and hand soap at 11 p.m., and the contractor's operations manager approves it in the morning. Nobody waits for the office to open, and nothing goes out unreviewed.
Budgets, order modes and restricted items
Each user can have a monthly budget, which keeps each building or crew inside the limit the manager sets. You can also choose how each user orders: orders only, quotes only with no direct ordering, or both. A new custodian might be on quotes only, so they can build their list and have it priced while the head custodian places the order.
Restricted items let you block an item and, if you want, name what the buyer should order instead. The buyer sees it at checkout. In jan-san, that's very useful:
- Block ready-to-use spray bottles and point to the concentrate that runs through the dilution system.
- Block towels and tissue that don't fit the building's dispensers and name the right ones.
- Block a disinfectant not approved by a hospital's infection prevention team.
- Steer every building to the standard liner size so stock and storage stay simple.
Master accounts for districts and contractors
A school district with 25 schools, a property management company with 40 buildings, or a contractor cleaning a dozen sites is really one customer with many locations. A master account holds the price file, the customer's part numbers and the terms for all its locations. No orders are placed on the master. Each location inherits its master's price file, discount and cross-references, and anything set on the location overrides the master.
Set restricted items on the master account, and they apply to every building underneath. When you load shelf labels on the master with a location column, each building sees only its own bins. The district's director of facilities sets the approved product list once, and every school follows it.
This is a strong selling point, especially for multi-building prospects. Facility directors and contractor owners have often tried to control supply spending with spreadsheets, memos and locked closets. Show them how the approval flow, budgets and approved product lists work, and you're offering them control they've wanted for years. That's a good reason to bring all their buildings to one distributor, and it's a reason that has nothing to do with being the cheapest bid.
Want to walk through it with your accounts in mind? Book a demo.