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How do you organise your cleaning days?

J.Kelly

New member
Messages
6
Location
Cheshire
Hi all

I'm thinking about starting my own business. I've already got a van start up capital, however I want to explore some of the finer points before I go any further.

How do you guys organise the days you go to a house? Do you clean the windows then write down on a calendar 'come back in 2 weeks' or something?

And a simple way of collecting money. DD or cash... cheques seem complicated as does invoicing people.

Thankyou!

 
I use Squeegee for organising my round. it has tons of great features and their customer support is brilliant! It also auto generates invoices if you need them. 
 

https://squeeg.ee
 

as far as collecting, I started as bacs only or cash if they are in. Don’t go out collecting, you’ll be a lot better for it. A lot on here use go cardless which allows you to collect DD. I don’t use it myself though so can’t really comment, though it’s my understand you can link it to software like Squeegee to automatically take the payments when you’ve marked the work as done. 
 

https://gocardless.com
 

Finally, you didn’t ask but probably will, equipment most of us use Gardiner. Best customer service I’ve personally come across and that includes more ‘consumer’ focussed companies. 

https://gardinerpolesystems.co.uk

Check out the software for round organising.  https://cleanerplanner.com
Wow, the ghost of Greenpro appears! ??

 
If just starting out you don’t want to be paying a subscription just use spread sheets , it’s free , cannot crash, and you arnt relying on a 3rd party to store your cousin go with and potential problems 

 
If just starting out you don’t want to be paying a subscription just use spread sheets , it’s free , cannot crash, and you arnt relying on a 3rd party to store your cousin go with and potential problems 
Why not pay a subscription ? £25.00 a month for cleanerplanner is the best money you can spend in this business, he might only have to clean1,2 houses to make that money back ?
A spereadsheet will take up his time more and im sure an App would help him keep on top of everything better then a basic spreadsheet, cleanerplanner has allowed me to grow my business, if i was stuck on a spreadsheet then i dont think i would of been able to grow my business as such.

An app such as cleanerplanner is very important to any business, £25.00 a month is good value for money and i recommend you start using this even though if you only have 40 customers as you will continue to grow and grow.

I do rely on 3rd party but i also backup my database every week so if anything happens to the server we have a backup file ?

 
Why not pay a subscription ? £25.00 a month for cleanerplanner is the best money you can spend in this business, he might only have to clean1,2 houses to make that money back ?
A spereadsheet will take up his time more and im sure an App would help him keep on top of everything better then a basic spreadsheet, cleanerplanner has allowed me to grow my business, if i was stuck on a spreadsheet then i dont think i would of been able to grow my business as such.

An app such as cleanerplanner is very important to any business, £25.00 a month is good value for money and i recommend you start using this even though if you only have 40 customers as you will continue to grow and grow.

I do rely on 3rd party but i also backup my database every week so if anything happens to the server we have a backup file ?


Ime old fashioned but run several vans using spread sheets they are never wrong , don’t crash and I don’t personally want to be reliant on a 3 rd party for my daily work , how many times have ones who have all theses software programmes get issues ? Quite a bit of the time by the posts on hear and other forums , each to there own but it’s not for me , the op has just started out he might not want software or be able to afford it anyway. 

 
Thanks for all the replies everyone. Very helpful!
Have a look at aworka.com first 6weeks are free then £12 month , no harm giving it a run out see how it goes ,

like pjj says spreadsheets will work fine , specially with low amount of customers then in the future you could move over to a software or get some organisation with spreadsheets 

 
If just starting out you don’t want to be paying a subscription just use spread sheets , it’s free , cannot crash, and you arnt relying on a 3rd party to store your cousin go with and potential problems 


Ime old fashioned but run several vans using spread sheets they are never wrong , don’t crash and I don’t personally want to be reliant on a 3 rd party for my daily work , how many times have ones who have all theses software programmes get issues ? Quite a bit of the time by the posts on hear and other forums , each to there own but it’s not for me , the op has just started out he might not want software or be able to afford it anyway. 


Thanks for all the replies everyone. Very helpful!


Squeegee is free for your first 100 customers then £10 a month after that (or £100 per year), so more than enough time for the OP to try it out. 
 

The apps can have issues, like everything on computers, so it’s good practice to download a spreadsheet version of your work regularly as backup. Squeegee lets you do this and I assume others do also. I’ll add they’re getting a lot better and I wouldn’t go back to just spreadsheets myself. 

 
I would also recommend cleaner planner, I have been using it for a few years, and it has made a huge difference for me. But back to that in a moment.

I post all my jobs for the week, on to worksheets which I then download to my phone. The work my way through them, Uploading them at the end of the week.

I let my customers know its every 4 to 5 weeks, so they are not expecting me on a specific day.

As for cash collection, I accept cash, cheque, paypal and DD. Although I am seriously considering only taking on customers who are going to pay by DD next year.

For me Cleaner planner saves me hours of work updating a spreadsheet from paper worksheets every week. It gives me a cheap way to connect with all my customers through txt local, and allows me to accept DD payments. It also cuts down on clerical errors.

If its not something your willing to pay for right now, I would highly recommend considering it further down the line.

 
If you're planning to only use it for a few customers, then you can use Google calendar. It's easy to edit the frequency of jobs and to keep on top of it by dragging and dropping on the screen, if needed. It'd do you well if you're planning to have only a few customers.

I use Squeegee btw and I would highly recommend it. I used Aworka before that and I would recommend that too.

Or just buy a diary and when you get a job, go through the diary writing in the frequency when it's due. And tell your customers that you will see them in "roughly 4 (or 8 ) weeks". I'd never advise that you give them an exact date, unless you're making an appointment for interiors. Too many factors that can affect that exact date ?

 
I need to sort out my invoicing. Getting paid by folk and I can't remember their name.

Now I see why Gocashless is such a bonus. Trying to buy a 10" Liquidator channel but none left. Had to buy a 10" plus handle just to get one. Wanted a 16" Liquidator blade and don't sell them so had to buy an 18" and cut it down, fantastic. Only use a 10" and a 16" from now on.

 
We do it old school.

A4 size page-a-day diary for the office (Da wife) , A4 work sheets on a clipboard for each day (van). Customers notified the day before to make sure that the gates are unlocked and payment (cheque or cash) left somewhere safe out the back. We don't take on new customers unless they agree to our method of payment.

We supply each customer with a a small Ziplock sandwich bag in which we put one of our business cards for them to leave the payment in on the morning of the clean (no need to call back to collect). The price and frequency (mostly 6 weekly) is written on the back of the card.

We don't feel any need to complicate things by involving a third party.

We have a very few customers that we took on in the early days that pay in to the bank but we don't take on any more.

Our system works well for us and our close to six hundred customers.

 
We do it old school.

A4 size page-a-day diary for the office (Da wife) , A4 work sheets on a clipboard for each day (van). Customers notified the day before to make sure that the gates are unlocked and payment (cheque or cash) left somewhere safe out the back. We don't take on new customers unless they agree to our method of payment.

We supply each customer with a a small Ziplock sandwich bag in which we put one of our business cards for them to leave the payment in on the morning of the clean (no need to call back to collect). The price and frequency (mostly 6 weekly) is written on the back of the card.

We don't feel any need to complicate things by involving a third party.

We have a very few customers that we took on in the early days that pay in to the bank but we don't take on any more.

Our system works well for us and our close to six hundred customers.
That's a very efficient method as far as I can see! Sometimes keeping it standard is best!

Also thanks everyone else really good advice!

 
We do it old school.

A4 size page-a-day diary for the office (Da wife) , A4 work sheets on a clipboard for each day (van). Customers notified the day before to make sure that the gates are unlocked and payment (cheque or cash) left somewhere safe out the back. We don't take on new customers unless they agree to our method of payment.

We supply each customer with a a small Ziplock sandwich bag in which we put one of our business cards for them to leave the payment in on the morning of the clean (no need to call back to collect). The price and frequency (mostly 6 weekly) is written on the back of the card.

We don't feel any need to complicate things by involving a third party.

We have a very few customers that we took on in the early days that pay in to the bank but we don't take on any more.

Our system works well for us and our close to six hundred customers.
600 cash customers. Lovely jubly! 

 
Thanks guys really helpful so far. I've come across another snag...

I get that I need to run a hose pipe from my tap outside (I'm not on a water meter which is apparently a good thing) straight into the RO Machine and that goes into the static tank awaiting to be pumped into the vans static tank. What would anyone recommend for a submersible pump? I get the function it's just narrowing it down. And also I've looked at loads of tanks but none of them seem to have a hatch/opening to allow a pump to go inside. Anybody got any ideas on that too? Lol. Thanks!

Okay as you can see by the time I've been up late researching! So my next question what sort of system do you guys install for water containers in the back of your van? I've just watched a YouTube video where a guy had a tank and some fancy electrics that hooked up directly to pipes..  i assumed you had a tank which emptied into a 20blitre back back and you went on your way but I take it that's no how it's done? Thanks

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I need to sort out my invoicing. Getting paid by folk and I can't remember their name.

Now I see why Gocashless is such a bonus. Trying to buy a 10" Liquidator channel but none left. Had to buy a 10" plus handle just to get one. Wanted a 16" Liquidator blade and don't sell them so had to buy an 18" and cut it down, fantastic. Only use a 10" and a 16" from now on.
The 10inch is my channel of choice, for larger I use the 14inch, and have customised channels to make a 6inch and a 8inch. They do me nicely.

 
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