Your budget is the key to success in janitorial management. But with so many variables, how can you get a handle on your budget?
To work in the field of janitorial management, you need a comprehensive set of skills, especially if you are both a business owner and manager. You need people skills to work with customers, leadership skills to work with your team of employees, marketing skills to find new contracts, business skills to keep things organized and running, and administrative skills to ensure your bills are paid. In short, you’re a person of many and varied talents.
But one skill that brings everything together is your skill in financial matters; specifically, budgeting. Your budget is the scale on which your janitorial management success is measured. You can be a great leader, but if you don’t pay your bills, your business will close. You can be a superstar at landing new contracts, but unless you price them appropriately, those contracts do you little good.
Why software, though? How will that help you meet your budget goals? Can’t you just track your budget with an old-fashioned pencil and paper and calculator?
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Get your janitorial management budget in line with the right tools to do the job
You don’t have to be a business whiz to understand that a lot is going on in your janitorial management budget. Even the most basic of janitorial businesses have to budget for supplies, transportation costs, and equipment maintenance. They need to track invoices, outstanding accounts, and other incoming funds.
Add in a few employees, and you’re looking at expanding your budget to account for payroll and taxes, plus additional incoming funds from more clients. Let’s be clear, too, that there’s more to a janitorial management budget than just balancing your incoming and outgoing money. A budget will help you enormously in determining things like how much you need to charge for a job to be profitable. It will help you decide what services you can afford to offer, how frequently to order supplies, and what the future of your business looks like.
Over time, your budget will tell you how much your business has grown, if you have busier times of the year, and if it’s worth the expense to expand. But to figure all that out, without looking through piles of handwritten notes and gobs of paperwork, you’ll need to invest in janitorial management software. Here are just some areas where software can help with your budget:
Time tracking
In almost any business, payroll is one of the most significant expenses. It’s essential and necessary, of course, but it’s still a large percentage of your budget. As such, you want to know that you’re charging appropriately for the work your team is doing. With location-specific time tracking, you can determine if your budget for hours at any given facility is accurate.
Job bidding calculator
One of the most critical parts of your budget is bidding correctly on jobs. Too little and you could lose money, too much and you could price yourself out of a job. With a built-in bidding calculator, janitorial management software can help you offer competitive bids while also giving you an estimate of your labor and supply costs, and the revenue you can expect to generate.
Work orders
Using janitorial management software for work orders will make your life easy. And you can see your ROI immediately because the software will break down your labor and supply costs, and give you a profit or loss statement. From there, you can schedule the work and track the progress of the job.
Supply tracking
Outside of labor costs, supplies can easily be one of your most substantial budget items. That’s why it’s essential to track your usage. If you don’t track your supplies, you have no way to tell how much you’re going through, or if there’s a sudden uptick in usage. Supply tracking is also a customer service issue. If you run out, you can’t do the job you’ve been hired to do. And with high-quality janitorial management software, you can even set a monthly supply budget for individual locations.
Equipment maintenance tracking
How much do you spend replacing belts on vacuum cleaners or changing pads on your floor scrubbers? Could you be spending less? Should you be spending more? Tracking your maintenance can help you keep your equipment in good running order and plan appropriately for necessary expenses.
Access the information you need from anywhere
We all know how vital new clients are to our budget. When you can access your bidding tools from anywhere, you can offer a proposal on the spot. You don’t have to wait until you can get back to the office.
Billing
The bottom line to all your work is billing. You need to send timely invoices, and you need to make sure your clients are paying you. A few lost invoices could sink your budget and maybe your business. With janitorial management software, integrated billing makes it easy to send, track, and follow up on invoices.
Save money on office supplies
How much do you spend on paper, printer ink, pens, pencils, and copy toner? You can almost eliminate that expense (never mind the storage space) using software and going paperless.
Reporting
How is your business really doing? What is the trend for quality control? Are your inspections on schedule? Are you actually busy, or do you just feel busy? A few clicks and you can find out.
Indeed, there is a lot more to running a janitorial business than getting the right janitorial management software. Still, there’s no question that when it comes to your budget, the old-fashioned paper and pencil just doesn’t cut it anymore. Run your business more effectively, more efficiently, and more profitably.
Make sure your cleaning team has the information they need to complete their job accurately and thoroughly. Implementing a janitorial software like Janitorial Manager can effectively transform your cleaning operation!