MaidBossPro Blog — House Cleaning Software

CSV Import: Moving Your Client List Into House Cleaning Software

The scariest part of new software is usually not learning it. It is the thought of typing in every client you have. For a maid service with dozens or hundreds of homes, that could be days of work. CSV import means you do not have to.

Your Clients Are Already Somewhere

In Monthly Statements for Office Accounts: One Bill Covering Every Location, we looked at clients with many addresses. Before any of that works, your clients need to be in the system. Most companies already have them in a spreadsheet, an address book or another program that can export a file.

A CSV file is the common way to move that list. It is a plain spreadsheet saved in a simple format that almost every program can open and save.

What CSV Import Does

MaidBossPro imports your client list from a CSV file. Each row becomes a client with their address and contact details. Imported addresses are placed on the map automatically, so once the import is done, your clients show up as pins and are ready for Recurring Cleanings and the dispatch board.

That map placement is a bigger deal than it sounds. Without it, somebody would have to look up and pin every address by hand before any routing could happen.

Getting the File Ready

A clean file makes a clean import. Before you import, spend some time on the spreadsheet:

• One client per row. If a client has several addresses, decide how you want them set up before importing.
• Separate columns. Street, city, state or province, and postal code in their own columns import more reliably than one long address field.
• Remove duplicates. The same client listed twice with slightly different spellings will import as two clients.
• Check phone numbers and emails. These drive your texts and invoices, so they need to be right.
• Clear out old clients. Anyone you have not cleaned for in a long time may be better left out, or tagged so you can find them later.

If you are exporting from another program, export the client list, open it in a spreadsheet, clean it up and save it as CSV.

After the Import: Adding Cleaning Details

A client list usually holds names, addresses and contact details. It rarely holds everything a cleaning team needs. After the import, add the cleaning details to each home:

• Cleaning type and recurring plan: weekly, every two weeks or monthly.
• Bedrooms, bathrooms and square feet.
• Pets.
• Extras.
• Entry and notes: lockbox or door code, alarm, rooms to skip, products to use.

You do not have to do it all in one sitting. A practical approach is to fill in the homes on next week's schedule first, then work forward. Because each new job fills in from the home's last job, once a home has its details, they carry forward.

Tags and Custom Fields

Tags and custom fields help you sort clients the way you think about them. Some ideas:

• Tags for areas of town, like “North” and “Downtown”.
• Tags for how a client found you, like “Referral”.
• A custom field for anything specific to your business that does not fit elsewhere.

Keep it simple at first. A few tags you use are worth more than many you forget about.

Check the Map

Once the import is done, look at the map. Pins should be where you expect your clients to be. A pin in the wrong town usually means a typo in the address. Fix it on the client and the pin moves. This is also a good moment to see your client base laid out, which can be eye-opening if you have never seen it on a map before.

Run the Old System and the New One Briefly

For a week or two, many owners keep their old calendar handy while the new system fills in. Once each recurring client is added on Recurring Cleanings with their usual day, time and team, their visits are already on the schedule, and the old calendar can go. Switching is covered in more depth in Switching House Cleaning Software Without Missing a Cleaning.

Bringing in Your Team

Clients are only half of the setup. Add your employees, give each one a personal PIN and assign them to a team. Then they can log into the team app and see their day. With clients imported and teams set up, you are ready to build your first week. To see how the import fits into the rest of the system, visit the house cleaning software page.