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Organisiation apps

HWCS

Well-known member
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1,130
Location
North Norfolk
Ive seen some of you guys use cleaner planner, some use squeegee and other just use spreadsheets.

Im going back on 11th May and before i go back i want to organise all my work into close proximity days with as little travelling as possible.

Ive been just using a pen and diary since i started and im pretty sure ive 'lost' 'missed' a few cleans due to poor admin over the last year.

I know its been covered alot but could anybody give me an idea of which ways is most idiot proof as im a real technophobe and struggle to work technology.

Is it worth investing money in an app when im not sure if ill even be able to get my head round it?

 
Ive seen some of you guys use cleaner planner, some use squeegee and other just use spreadsheets.

Im going back on 11th May and before i go back i want to organise all my work into close proximity days with as little travelling as possible.

Ive been just using a pen and diary since i started and im pretty sure ive 'lost' 'missed' a few cleans due to poor admin over the last year.

I know its been covered alot but could anybody give me an idea of which ways is most idiot proof as im a real technophobe and struggle to work technology.

Is it worth investing money in an app when im not sure if ill even be able to get my head round it?
We use a page a day A4 diary which is kept at home. Each job to be done is recorded on a daily work sheet which we carry on a clip board in the van. Each job is recorded as done or not with a tick or an X while we work and moved forward to the appropriate page 6 weeks later in the diary when we get home.  Each work week is numbered in the diary. So, for instance the jobs on a Tuesday in work week 10 will be moved to the page for Tuesday WW16. This way it's very rare to miss a job.

We try to co-ordinate the jobs so that we can keep the round as tight as possible between jobs that are close together. Sometimes a bit of juggling has to be done around holidays and stuff but we get them back into line as soon as we can.

If we haven't been paid for any reason that's recorded on the day sheet as OSC for outstanding, card left.

As a job is moved forward in the diary it's colour marked in the page it's moved from. That way a simple back scan on the page will show if one has been missed as it won't be colour marked.

I can't give an opinion on apps or digital planners as I've no experience of them. We manage fine as is. I try to stay as independent of third party companies as possible. That way we don't have to worry about prices , hacking, or system problems. I don't like handing power of any aspects of my life to third parties when I have a choice not to.  Also, like you, I'm a bit of a technophobe. The only exception being I'm quite handy with my smartphone.

Again, each to their own. ?

 
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Get cleaner planner, its simple to use calendar view and drag and drop to organise. easy to track jobs and payments through the day with the app and also log expenses.

i also use routexl.com to help plan my days, its useful to be able to see 20 jobs plotted out. i like to start at my furthest jobs and work my home so hopefully if anything gets left over its easy to pick up.

 
Get cleaner planner, its simple to use calendar view and drag and drop to organise. easy to track jobs and payments through the day with the app and also log expenses.

i also use routexl.com to help plan my days, its useful to be able to see 20 jobs plotted out. i like to start at my furthest jobs and work my home so hopefully if anything gets left over its easy to pick up.
We work our way back as well, for the same reason. ?

 
Cheers for input folks, just inputted all my customers onto a spreadsheet took me a few hours 

Logged them by

Name- Address- Town- Tel- Frequency- Price- Add ons

Thought id got about 160 but was well chuffed to total up 213 customers

 
If you don't want to pay CP prices then http://www.aworka.com is well priced at £12 it has been going longest over the other two and is well tried and tested I never had an issue all the time I used it and never heard any complaints about for years and you get all the bells and whistles GC intergration and free texts via your mobile plan for texting jobs rather than paying extra which you have to with CP as they use textlocal. 

 
Cheers for input folks, just inputted all my customers onto a spreadsheet took me a few hours 

Logged them by

Name- Address- Town- Tel- Frequency- Price- Add ons

Thought id got about 160 but was well chuffed to total up 213 customers
I use spread sheets or rather my wife does it for me ??? they dont crash , doesn’t cost a monthly subscription, easy to use ,not reliant of a third party to keep my buisness running , and doesn’t go wrong or freeze ??

 
For a one off cost of £50 that's it. It works for us and still use Pocket George on an old PDA.
Have you got a Palm Spruce? I’ve been running George over 4 years on my desktop but keep thinking of getting rid of the paper diary and going all digital. 

 
Have you got a Palm Spruce? I’ve been running George over 4 years on my desktop but keep thinking of getting rid of the paper diary and going all digital. 
I still use a Palm Tungsten E2. I had to replace the battery a year or so ago as it wasn't holding a charge. We started off with a couple of Zires. The one my son uses also needs a new battery.  He hasn't used it for years as we work together. However that could well change and I might have to replace that battery so he can work on his own like we did in the old days.

The disadvantage with Pocket George is that you can only update what is there. If you get a new customer you can't add those details to Pocket George in the field. I carry a pad around for that and update the computer when I get home.

Another disadvantage is that I haven't been able to get Pocket George to update using Windows 10. So I have a separate harddrive on my computer using Windows xp for George.

Several on the forums use George on a Windows tablet. This could be a consideration in the future. The downside is security of info on a tablet in the van.

I have a pay as you go phone without internet access (with wifi at home). Having all your records on the cloud is a great idea in some ways but I can't justify the monthly cost of renting the program and a contract phone to run it. Some have also experienced the cloud system being down and unable to access their window cleaning program.

We have asked Paul at George if he will do an app for us to use on our phones instead of a Pda but he has said there is no demand for it.

Now I understand where he is coming from as a one time cost of £50 with updates isn't earning him money on a monthly basis, but some of us still using George were with him from the beginning and helped him develop the software that he used in his cloud program.

We have managed these past 14? years this way so a couple more won't kill us. I'm not making major upgrade decisions to the business now. I reckon I've used up 95% of my manual working life. Any upgrades will be forced upgrades.

 
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