MaidBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Teams

Filtering the Schedule by Team: One Cleaning Team's Day on One Screen

A full board is useful for seeing the whole day. But when you are trying to answer a specific question, like “can Team 2 take one more home on Thursday?”, the whole board is too much. You want one team's day, on one screen, and nothing else.

From Teams to a Filter

Teams are set up once, as described in Setting Up Cleaning Teams: Team 1, Team 2 and Who Rides Where. Once they exist, they become a filter on the dispatch board.

In MaidBossPro, filter the board by team and you see only that team's homes for the day, in route order, with the cleaning type, bedrooms, bathrooms, square feet, pets and extras under each address. It is the office's version of what the team will see on the phone.

Checking the Load

The first reason to filter is to see how heavy the day is. Looking at one team's list, ask yourself whether you would want to work it. A few things to look for:

• Number of homes. Five recurring maintenance cleans is a different day from three.
• Big cleans. A Deep Clean or Move-In / Move-Out on the list changes everything around it.
• Extras. “+ Inside Oven, Inside Fridge, Inside Cabinets” on one home is a real chunk of time.
• Pets and special notes. A home with three cats and a “use only the customer's products” note takes longer than one without.

It also helps to read the list the way the team lead will. Picture the morning: load the car, drive to the first home, clean, pack up, drive to the next. If you find yourself thinking “that's going to be a scramble after lunch,” trust that feeling. It is much easier to move one home tonight than to apologize to a customer at 4:30 tomorrow because the team never made it.

Your teams know their own pace better than any number on a screen. Over time you will learn what a comfortable day looks like for each team, and the filtered view is where you check it.

Checking the Route

The second reason is the route. With only one team's homes showing, the order is easy to read. Does it start close to the office or out at the far end? Does it jump back and forth across town? Is the customer who wanted the team gone by noon early enough in the list?

If the order looks wrong, auto-route the team Closest First or Furthest First from the office, then move any fixed-time stops by hand. The team's phone shows the same order. Routing is covered in Auto-Route for Cleaning Teams: Closest First vs. Furthest First.

Comparing Two Teams

Filtering one team, then the next, is the quickest way to spot an uneven day. If Team 1 has six homes on the north side and Team 2 has three homes spread across town, something is off. Maybe one of Team 1's homes is closer to Team 2's route. Maybe Team 2 can take the deep clean so Team 1 can keep their regulars.

The fix is usually small: move one job from one team to the other. The thing to protect while you do it is the customer who is used to a certain team. If a home has had Team 1 every two weeks for a year, think twice before moving it just to even out the numbers. Move a one-time job instead, if you can.

Answering the Phone

The filtered view is also the fastest answer when a customer calls. “Can you come Thursday instead of Friday?” Filter Thursday by the team that usually cleans their home and you can see in a few seconds whether there is room. If there is, move the job and route the day again. If there is not, you can offer another day honestly instead of saying yes and hoping.

The same goes for add-ons. A customer who texts “could they do the inside of the fridge this time?” is asking for extra time on a day that is already planned. A quick look at the team's filtered day tells you whether that is easy or whether it will push the last home late.

Before the Team Leaves

Many owners make filtering by team the last step of building tomorrow's schedule. Go team by team, read each list once from top to bottom, and fix anything that looks wrong. It is a short habit that catches most problems while they are still easy to fix. If you look at the same filtered views every day, save them so the board opens that way.

The full set of scheduling tools, from teams and routes to recurring homes and customer texts, is on the MaidBossPro cleaning scheduling software page.