Internal Notes on Renters

Internal Notes on Renters

Some information belongs on a renter's record but absolutely should not be visible to the renter themselves — a billing quirk, a warning from a prior interaction, a VIP preference. Internal Notes are the right home for anything like that, and TrailerBase structures them so your team can find the right note at the right moment.

Adding a note

Open any renter profile and switch to the Notes tab. Click + New Note. A composer opens with:

• A category dropdown (see below)
• A title (optional) so the note is scannable without expanding
• A body field that supports rich text, @mentions, and inline links to other records

Click Save and the note appears at the top of the timeline stamped with your name and the current time.

Categories

Every note carries a category to help you scan and filter:

• General — catch-all for day-to-day context. Preferences, minor details, small anecdotes.
• Warning — red flag category. Late fees disputed aggressively, property damage history, confrontations at pickup. Warning notes display with a red border and a flag icon.
• VIP — positive context. High-value customer, referred a friend, always returns early. VIP notes display with a gold ribbon.
• Billing — specific to invoicing and payments. Net-30 terms negotiated, tax-exempt status, PO reference requirements. These notes also appear in the Financials tab for convenience.

Categories drive styling and filtering, so use them deliberately.

Pinning important notes

Any note can be pinned. Click the pin icon and the note floats to the top of the Notes tab and also surfaces a compact preview on the Overview tab. Pinned notes are the right tool for information a staff member must see before starting a call or preparing a trailer — for example, "Trailer must be cleaned to food-safety standards" or "Has gate code access concerns."

Limit pins to two or three per renter. Pin too many and their visibility is diluted.

Searchable

The global search bar (Cmd+K / Ctrl+K) indexes every internal note. Search for "commercial haul" and you will get hits across any renter notes where those words appear. This is particularly useful when you remember a detail but not the renter.

The Notes tab itself has a filter bar for category, author, and date range, so you can answer questions like "what warning notes did my team log in the last 30 days?" without opening individual records.

Audit stamping

Every note is stamped with:

• Who wrote it
• When it was written
• When it was last edited, and by whom
• The staff member who pinned or unpinned it

You cannot anonymize a note or remove the author stamp. This keeps the record trustworthy when you need to review a staff interaction or defend a decision.

Deleting

Notes can be soft-deleted — they disappear from the tab but remain in the audit log for 90 days, after which they are purged. Deletion itself is logged with the reason you provide. If you find you need a deleted note back inside the 90-day window, open the audit log and restore.

Never customer-facing

Internal notes never appear on invoices, contracts, emails, SMS messages, or the booking portal. This is a staff-only space by design.

Combined with Renter Tags and the Activity log, internal notes keep institutional memory intact as your team grows.