MaidBossPro Blog — Recurring Cleanings

Moving Recurring Cleaning Clients Off a Spreadsheet and Into Software

Plenty of maid services run on a spreadsheet: one row per client, columns for address, frequency, price, door code and notes, plus a calendar with repeating events and a notebook for whatever does not fit. It works, mostly, until the business grows past what one person can hold in their head. Moving to software sounds like a big project. With recurring clients, it is mostly about getting a few columns right.

Why Move

Tracking recurring clients well, covered in Tracking Recurring Cleaning Clients in Reports, is hard to do from a spreadsheet that does not know what actually happened. The spreadsheet holds the client list. It does not tell you who is on which team this Tuesday, whose standing schedule is about to run out, or which team is closest. It does not send reminders, charge cards or put the door code on the team's phone.

Common signs it is time:

• A regular client gets missed and nobody notices until they call.
• Door codes live in a group text.
• The owner is the only one who knows the full schedule.
• Billing takes a whole evening every week.

Clean Up the List First

Before importing anything, spend an hour cleaning up your spreadsheet. It is much easier than fixing things after:

• Remove former clients or move them to a separate sheet. Keep them for win-back, but do not import them as active.
• Fix addresses. Full street address, city, state or province, and postal code. A good address is what puts the pin in the right spot on the map.
• Split names and contacts. One column each for name, phone and email.
• Standardize frequency. Use the same words for every row: Weekly, Every Two Weeks, Monthly.
• Find duplicates. The same client entered twice under two spellings will cause confusion later.

CSV Import

MaidBossPro brings clients in with a CSV import. Save your cleaned-up spreadsheet as a CSV file and import it. Imported addresses are placed on the map automatically, so your recurring homes appear as pins without you placing them one by one.

One client can have many addresses. If a client owns a home and a rental you clean, both addresses can sit under the same client, which matters later for billing and history.

After the import, spot-check a handful of clients. Make sure names, phones and emails landed in the right fields and that pins are where the houses are.

Set Each Client's Slot

This is the step that makes recurring work run. For each recurring client, go to Recurring Cleanings and click Add Recurring Cleaning. Pick the home, the service and price, the frequency (weekly, every 2 weeks, every 4 weeks or monthly on the same date), the first cleaning date, the time and the team, then schedule 3, 6 or 12 months ahead. Every visit goes straight onto the schedule.

The most important piece of information in your old system is each client's real slot: which day, what time, which team, and for every-two-weeks clients, which week. Pull those from your calendar before you switch, and pick each first date so it lands on the client's next real visit.

The background on choosing a slot is in Setting a Client's Fixed Slot: Choosing the Day, Time and Team for a Recurring Cleaning.

Move the Home Details

Your spreadsheet probably has door codes and notes scattered across columns. Move them into the cleaning details and entry notes on each client's first job: cleaning type, bedrooms, bathrooms, square feet, pets, extras, and entry and notes like lockbox, alarm, rooms to skip and products to use.

It is a bit of work, but you only do it once. When you set up the series, the home's details from its last cleaning are copied onto every visit, so get them right before you add the series, and nobody types those details again.

Set Up Teams and the Team App

Add your employees with their own personal PINs and assign them to teams, “Team 1,” “Team 2.” The team app runs in the browser on iPhone and Android and can be installed to the home screen, with no app store. A short walkthrough on day one is usually enough: log in, read the card, tap Start, take photos, tap Complete.

Cards and Reminders

Invite recurring clients to the customer app to add a card on file and choose their alerts. A short text or email explaining the change helps: “We've moved to a new system. You'll get reminders before each cleaning, and you can see invoices and update your card in the app.” Clients without a card on file yet can still pay invoices online.

The First Week

Run your first week from the Scheduled List. Your standing clients are already on it, so check each team's day, route it, book any one-off jobs from the Waiting List into the gaps, and let the team app carry the day. Keep the old spreadsheet handy for a week or two in case something is missing, then retire it. To see how the whole recurring system fits together, visit the MaidBossPro recurring cleaning software page.