MaidBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Teams

Choosing Cleaning Scheduling Software: What to Check Before You Switch

Choosing scheduling software is a bigger decision than it looks. The software will sit in the middle of every day: how recurring homes hold their slots, how teams get their lists, how customers hear from you. Picking the wrong one means months of workarounds. Picking the right one means the schedule mostly takes care of itself.

Here is what to check, from the point of view of a house cleaning or maid service company.

Know What You're Moving From

If you are coming from spreadsheets and paper, the steps in Moving the Cleaning Schedule Off Paper, Spreadsheets and the Group Text will help after you choose. Before you choose, write down what goes wrong today. That list is your test. Any software you try should fix the problems on it.

Does It Understand Recurring Cleaning?

Most cleaning work is recurring, so this is the first test. Look for:

• Fixed slots for weekly, every-two-weeks and monthly clients: the same day, time and team, with visits placed on the schedule months ahead.
• Easy changes to a series: a new team, day, time or price for all upcoming visits, without rewriting the past.
• One visit at a time: move or skip a single visit without breaking the rest of the series.
• One-time jobs alongside: deep cleans, move-in / move-out, post-construction, held somewhere visible until they are booked.

In MaidBossPro, Add Recurring Cleaning puts every visit for the next 3, 6 or 12 months straight onto the schedule. The Recurring Cleanings list lets you Change, Extend 6 months or Stop a series, and warns when one is running out. One-off work waits on the Waiting List map until it gets a day and a team.

Does It Know What a Cleaning Job Is?

Generic field-service software treats a job as an address and a time. A cleaning job also has a size and a list of extras. Check whether the software can hold, and show on the schedule:

• Cleaning type, bedrooms, bathrooms, square feet and pets.
• Extras like Inside Oven, Inside Fridge, Interior Windows, Baseboards and Change Linens.
• Entry notes: lockbox, key, door code, alarm, rooms to skip, products to use.
• Memory of each home, so the next job fills in from the last one.

If these only live in a free-text notes box, you will be back to reading notes and guessing how big each day is.

Does It Schedule by Team?

Cleaning companies work in teams. Check that you can set up teams, assign people to them, assign jobs to a team, filter the board by team and route each team's day. Auto-routing from your office, with Closest First or Furthest First, plus the ability to set route order by hand, covers most days. Team GPS on an office map helps when things change.

Also check whether there is a board by day, saved views and printable route sheets for leads who want paper.

Then test the bad days, not just the good ones. Pretend a team member called in sick at 6:45am and try to rebuild the day: move homes to another team, re-route, and text the customers who changed. If that takes more than a few minutes, it will be painful every time it happens for real. The routine is laid out in Sick Days and Covering a Team: Rebuilding the Cleaning Schedule Before 8am, and it makes a good test script for any trial.

What Do the Teams Get?

The schedule only works if teams use it. Try the team app yourself, on your own phone:

• Does it need an app store download, or does it run in the browser?
• Does each person get their own login or PIN, so access can be turned off when someone leaves?
• Are the homes in route order, with navigation and cleaning details on each card?
• Can the team Start, Skip with a note and Complete? Take before-and-after photos? Clock in and out?

If your most experienced team lead cannot pick it up in one ride-along, it is probably too complicated.

What Do Customers Get?

Look at the customer side too. Automatic on-the-way and arrived texts, customer-chosen alerts (night before, when they're next, when the team arrives), two-way texting with the office, and a customer app where they can see their place in the route, pay invoices and update their card. These are the features that cut down on phone calls.

Ask how texting is billed. MaidBossPro plans include a monthly allowance of 500, 1,000 or 2,000 segments sent and received on Start, Pro and Crew.

Try It With Your Real Week

A demo shows what the software can do. A trial shows whether it works for you. Import your customers, set up your teams and build one real week. If the trial is too short to do that, or needs a credit card before you can try, take note. MaidBossPro has a live demo and a 14-day free trial with no credit card. Plans are Start at $59/month, Pro at $89/month and Crew at $199/month.

Whatever you choose, choose it with your own customers, your own teams and your own messy Tuesday in front of you. For a full look at how MaidBossPro handles scheduling and teams, see the MaidBossPro cleaning scheduling software page.