I don't have any commercial clients calling on the weekends (3-6 beers in?) because the internet/cable went out or they got a new phone/tablet. Switched from Resi to Commercial a few years back and never going back. Occasionally missing playing with the fancy toys though.

so no sports bars?? I think their phones only work on Saturday after 6PM - Sunday at 2am

Legal, Legal, Legal....
Most states have specific rules for commercial including requiring additional licenses, bond, and insurance. Most have specific definitions for commercial and what a resi license will and wont cover.
Oregon for instance:
Residential GC license allows commercial work on 'small commercial structure'. That means 10,000sf or less and not more than 20ft high, some specific leased areas, or construction projects under $250,000 for all contruction work done on the on structure.  Not your contract, the entire project(including your part) has to under $250k. Link
Anything outside of this requires a commercial endorsement. Commercial endorsement requires a separate bond and much higher insurance coverage.

Electrical licensing also varies. You many be fine running low-voltage speaker cables without a license in residential, but commercial typically requires that any techs running cables carry some form electrical licensing.

Keep in mind that some commercial clients may have licensing, insurance, or safety requirements above and beyond the legal minimums.  This also goes for landlords.  The tenant may want to hire you, but the landlord(who owns the building) may require that you carry certain insurance, licensing, or follow specific safety protocols.  Always best to get TI work signed off on by the landlord or representative before starting work.

Be prepared to get more safety gear.  Most commercial sites(even small ones) require hard hats, steel toes, and pants to be onsite(even for meetings or walk-throughs).  Most also require eye and ear protection when on the site.  A good plan is to make sure you have a full set of all potentially required safety gear for each of your techs.  Also make sure you have your required first-aid kits, fire extinguishers, etc.  OSHA seems to spend a lot more time inspecting commercial jobs than they do on residential.  I think that I have been carded 5 or 6 times in my career and most of those were on commercial jobs.

Permits and inspections are a way of life.  Don't shortcut or assume anything.  Cover your own butt and make sure you have all permits before starting work.  Even on remodel.  Don't rely on the GC to do it.  If they tell you they pulled the permits, do a site inspection before beginning work and collect/sign the permits then.  Rule of thumb, if a wire gets run inside a wall for any distance(other than an existing raceway) you will need to pull a permit and have it inspected.  Be prepared with proper wire types and ratings.  Even a simple speaker wire in remodel needs to be permitted, of the right designation, and inspected.  Once again, slop that you got away with on residential won't fly on commercial.  Commercial buildings, especially leased TI spaces, may have tenants moving in and out a lot.  This means lots of remodels and trades having work done and inspected.  Eventually, an inspector will ask about all those low-voltage cables....  Don't be that guy that gets busted doing work without a permit.  Make sure you have budgeted time for inspections and waiting around for the inspector.  Some of these are worse than DirecTV....

Take the time to learn your local rules and regs and be prepared to bill for dealing with these things.  A simple 4 hour installation may have an additional 4 hours of dealing with permits, inspectors, landlords, and other legal issues.

Good point and accurate. Having a bad flashback of working on a component video matrix during Friday night dance-hours to rescue a system prior to LSU first game of the season; prior to passage of the smoking ban...new TV's, cabling, etc covered in a sticky black tar after just a couple months on-site...brb I need to go wash my hands.

What crawled up your a**crack?

Not everyone on here is going to know what a Point of Sale device is. That was my one and only point! The "little joke" was because somebody might have actually thought that's what you meant - even without having to take it out of context. Substitute "piece of $hit" for "point of sale' and it almost works.

If CI's dont know what POS is, they aren't real CI's.

I would venture a guess that the majority of people on here (who primarily do residential) didn’t know that PoS also stood for Point of Sale. I only knew because I’ve had the pleasure of using Micros and Aloha far more than I’d like. Quick...do you know which is more widely used, Micros or Aloha, in Las Vegas without looking it up? If not you ain’t no CI !

Thank you.

Right. Because there's a bar code scanner and cash register in every house.

In NY residential work, low voltage never gets a look from inspectors (except in so far as electrical inspectors will want to see separation from low voltage.) So, forgive my ignorance here, but I am not clear what authority has jurisdiction when it comes to inspecting low voltage in a commercial environment?

Is this what local building code says, or just the accepted norm? Locally, less than a third of techs in town are licensed, but they still pull cable and almost no one pulls permits for residential. They just get away with it because no one notices. Doesn’t make it right. Commercial seems to get noticed more due to more inspections taking place. Best to contact your local AHJ and ask a few questions. Please post what you find. I am curious about your codes versus ours.

I will have to dig deeper into this, but I came across an interesting thing the last time I looked into codes for doing LV in NYC. The code says that unless you are an electrician, you need special certification to do any LV work. However, there is actually no way to get this certification. In other words, the only lawful way to do low voltage in NYC is to be a licensed electrician.

AFAIK, the reason tons of CIs get away with doing LV without having an electrical license is because the city does not conduct LV inspections. So, there is no governance, and therefore there is no compliance. It's kind of crazy.

Have the electricians pull your cable. You will never again care what the inspectors say/do/think. Provide a plan, sell the wire, check up on their work periodically, test your cables before sheetrock, show up after the painters and install your gear.

True that. It definitely is a plus. But there still are those occasions, far from what a resident client would do though.

You, of all people, are hemorrhaging bunnies because someone said something with an attitude that you thought was misplaced or just plain wrong? If that's so, you should read some of the posts by that davidcasemore guy.