If you run a commercial cleaning company, scheduling software can help you streamline your workflow and keep your teams on track
Jigsaw puzzles can be fun. Working on that 500-piece city skyline is a nice way to relax and focus your mind. But when that puzzle is your cleaning company scheduling, software can help you put all the pieces in place.
Even if you only have a few employees or contractors and a handful of contracts, keeping up with everything can take a lot of time. You may have one person going to several small sites during a shift and other people working at the same larger facility every day. You’re tracking supplies and orders, contract renewals, and walkthroughs for new clients. It really is like a giant puzzle with lots of moving parts. And that’s all multiplied if you have a more established business.
Keeping it all together is vital. That’s obvious, of course. It’s the only way your business can run. But under the hood and just out of sight, there are some excellent reasons to stay on top of your scheduling.
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9 Reasons you should be using cleaning company scheduling software
When you’re managing a cleaning company, scheduling software may not be the first thing on your mind. Understandably, you’re more concerned with whether or not you have the people you need to serve your clients if your invoices are all getting paid, and how soon you need to reorder supplies.
But did you know that the right cleaning company scheduling software can help you with all of these facets of your business? If it was just a matter of keeping a schedule, you could do that with almost any calendar. Of course, you know there’s a lot more to it than just getting the right people to the right place at the right time. Here are nine ways scheduling software can help your commercial cleaning business run more smoothly – and take a huge weight off your shoulders.
1. Everything is in one place. Honestly, if this were the only thing scheduling software did, it would be worth it. All your job sites, team members, daily or weekly duties, and everything else is in one place. And cloud-based software lets you access the information from wherever you are.
2. More accurate bidding. You can’t separate scheduling and bidding; they go hand in hand. With commercial cleaning company scheduling software, you can more accurately assess how long any given job will take, and adjust your personnel accordingly. By simply adjusting resources, you can negotiate bids and contracts while still keeping your margins where you need them to be.
3. More accurate timekeeping. You can reasonably estimate how long different tasks take, but with scheduling software, you can get into the details. Discover the actual average time it takes your crew to clean a location or find out if you need to dedicate more time to training people to work more efficiently.
4. More accurate resource allocation. Are you scheduling too many people at one location? Not enough people at another? If you shifted a few people, would you have enough payroll hours in your budget to take on a new contract? One easy way to tell is to look at the details of how your weekly schedule compares to the actual time at each job site.
5. Create more efficient schedules. If your team is working at several sites on any given day, travel time can eat into your billable hours if you aren’t careful. It’s one thing to look at Google maps to schedule your route, but it’s another thing altogether to review the departure and arrival times at each location. You may find there’s a better route or that your team is taking a lot of extra time moving between locations.
6. Keep an eye on employee breaks. When you have all the numbers in front of you, it’s a lot easier to see where someone may be taking extra breaks or wasting time. A word of caution, though: Don’t jump to the conclusion that your employees are “stealing” time. There could be very legitimate reasons a job is taking longer than expected. And don’t discount the fact that people do need to take breaks without being micromanaged about time.
7. Track your inventory. What does commercial cleaning company scheduling software have to do with your supplies? More than you might think. If your team doesn’t have the tools they need to do the job right, that job could take much longer than it needs to. Every time your team has to go find the supplies they need or repair a machine, that’s time away from the job you were hired to do. As a bonus, if you have software like Janitorial Manager, inventory tracking and scheduling are all built-in, so you don’t even have to go back and forth between different programs.
8. No more surprises. One thing we can’t get away from in the service industry is the occasional surprise. Some we can’t do much about. We show up and the facility manager tells us a pipe burst and there’s an inch of water in the bathroom. Others? Well… they don’t need to be surprised. That quarterly deep clean or the twice a year task that you forgot about? You can remember and plan for these things with helpful scheduling software.
9. Hire when you’re ready. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you’re busy enough to hire new employees. Are you bringing in enough revenue to afford someone? Do you have enough work to justify hiring? You might. Or you might just need to make a few schedule changes. Either way, a review of your business schedule can tell you. Then you can decide if bringing on new people would also help you bring in more money.
Any time you can make your job easier, you’re also giving yourself more room to make more money. And that always makes it more enjoyable to look at your books.
Manage bids, track inventory, monitor jobs, and more with Janitorial Manager. Get in touch with us for a free demo to see how we can add value to your business!