Schedule House Cleaning Clients with these 4 easy steps! Scheduling your maid services is not difficult, you just need to keep a few things in mind when doing so.
Scheduling clients is an important factor in making money cleaning houses. With proper scheduling for your maid service, you can save time and clean more houses in a day.
The best part is, once you know the tricks in scheduling your house cleaning clients you can do it on auto pilot.
Mistakes to avoid when you schedule house cleaning clients
Let’s first talk about the mistakes in filling your Maid Service Appointments.
- Avoid Gaps in between house cleaning jobs. Like, cleaning a client from 8am – 10am and then scheduling your next client at 11:00am. You will waste a whole hour where you can be brining in the dough cleaning more houses.
- Limit driving long distances between appointments.
- Avoid cleaning many small homes in one day. Small homes are best to be schedule in between larger homes.
These mistakes with your maid service scheduling will cost you un-paid down time. Time spent not cleaning, is time that you are not getting paid for. The goal of scheduling your house cleaning clients is to maximize the number of hours you are cleaning homes.
Checkout other resources on my Blog
- Haven’t started your business yet and need help? Visit my Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Cleaning Business
- Need help pricing your cleaning services? Hop on over to my blog post What to Charge for Cleaning Services
- Need help with how to clean a house professionally, visit my post on 5 Professional Tools for Speed Cleaning
6 Steps to Schedule House Cleaning Clients
#1. Have Pre-defined Hours of Operation
You have to have a clear set hours of operation before you can start building your maid service schedule. Set a pre-defined hours of operation window you are able to work.
Quick Note: These hours of operations should also be in your Client Procedures.
The best times to clean houses for you clients is between 8am – 4pm, you can change it as you go if you notice more clients can be serviced earlier or later. But these times give you a base of the time frames you want to schedule your services.
The goal is to fill this time mostly with cleaning and as little travel time as possible.
Another thing to consider when setting your hours of operations for your cleaning business is when do your clients usually want you to clean their house?
The majority of clients who hire a maid service are not home during the day. And therefore, will not be home for the house cleaning service and would prefer you clean their home during their working hours.
For most companies a start time of 8 am should be good, and you usually want to aim to be done by 4 pm, possibly 5 pm. This will vary by geographic location. You know your areas best
#2. Schedule in geographic clusters
Schedule in similar geographic areas. The more clients you have the easier this will be. If you are just starting out this will not be as easy.
As you begin marketing your cleaning business, target a smaller geographic area. As you grow, you can expand your service area. Try to stick to less than 20 minute travel times each day. Depending on where you live this can vary greatly if you live in a rural area versus a more densely populated city.
Schedule homes in the same or neighboring communities on the same day. The less travel time you have, the more time you will have to clean homes. Which means more Revenue…WooHoo!
#3. Only offer Weekly, Bi-Weekly and 4-Week services
Schedule clients on a weekly, every other week or every 4 week basis. This will keep clients on a consistent cleaning rotation through out the year.
You will also want to spread out your 4 week clients. For example, if you have 4 clients who signed up for cleanings every 4 weeks, you would not want to schedule them all on the same day and week. The optimal scheduling would be to put them on the same day and time each on a different week. This way you have a time slot that will be full, meaning ever Tuesday from 8 – 10 is full.
When a client asks for a monthly cleaning, put them on the 4 week cleaning plan. Do not schedule them the 1st of each month, or 2nd Tuesday. What will happen is they will inevitably fall on an off week and through off your entire schedule. It will become impossible to keep a schedule.
#4. Mix your days with both large and small homes
When scheduling house cleaning clients, schedule larger homes with smaller homes, if you can. You will be able to schedule in smaller homes in between larger homes to help fill up your day to maximize your revenue. This will also save you some energy by not having to clean several large homes in one day.
It takes a lot of effort to clean large homes, breaking up the cleaning with a small condo will help keep your energy levels up. I tried to limit our schedule to 1 large home a day and then mid to smaller homes for the remainder of the day. This worked really well for us.
#5. Get a scheduling software that works for your cleaning business
A few things to keep in mind when choosing a scheduling product is you want it to be easy to use, make your life more organized and fall within your budget.
There are some really fancy tools out there that not only offer scheduling, but they keep your clients info, offer communication reminders, and also online bookkeeping forms. But as a new maid service owner there are plenty of things to spend your hard earned cash on! There are some note worthy FREE variations that you can use to help organize your schedule.
FREE Options
Google Suit & Calendar
Google has come a long way. They have really developed many FREE tools for small business owners. updated lately to be more visually easy to manage.
The combination of using Contacts and the Calendar would suite any small Cleaning Business with one or two cleaners. You can build your client list in contacts and make recurring appointments The best part is, it’s FREE!!
The down side to Google Calendar is it does not have the bells and whistles that paid for programs offer. But as you continue to grow that is something that you can strive for!
ZenMaid
Zenmaid was created for Maid Services, by Maid Services. It was built for residential maid services. This is actually what I used in my maid service.
What I loved about this software is the automated email reminders that go out to clients. This was a HUGE timesaver for me.
All I had to do do was type in my client email reminders and set them up on automatic delivery. My house cleaning clients would get an email reminder the day before the cleaning. This avoided clients forgetting we were coming and us being locked out!
- Calendar with recurring scheduling ability. That means you enter in a client for bi-weekly cleaning service, then that client will be automatically added every 2 weeks for the same time.
- Client contact management. Store all of your client information in the software. You’ll be able to easily communicate with clients this way.
- Email communications. If you set it up, your clients will receive email messages before and after each cleaning service.
- Employee Management. Assign house cleaning jobs to your employees. Track employee information.
Another great benefit to ZenMaid is their customer support. And remember these folks have or still do run maid services, so they know what you may be going through as a house cleaning company. The customer support starts when you first sign up for the program.
When you sign up for Zenmaid you will receive a call from one of their team members. During this call they will walk you through the software and how to use it.
Moving forward, if you ever have any questions about the maid service software you can contact their support via email.
PickTime
PickTime is the most sophisticated free scheduling and booking tool out there right now. It is a newly developed web based software that is currently being offered for FREE. But this will not last for long. It is a newer program and they are enlisting users to try it out and spread the word! Those that sign up now will get the software FREE for life…not a bad gig!
I have been testing and using the product and I highly recommend signing up for this software while it is still FREE. I love the sleek look and ease of use with the program. It is very versatile and can work great for your cleaning business with a little set up.
Here is a Sneak Peak into the Program, and all of it is FREE for now.
Here is a list of what is included in the program
- Customer Profile
- Allows you to build in your services and customize for time and cost
- Color Coded calendar with Daily, Weekly, or Monthly views.
- Home Page that shows projected revenue and total appointments. You can watch your revenue grow as your business does!
- Online booking forms you can integrate with your Face Book page or your Website. Allows clients to book right on your website or Face Book.
- Integrates with Google Calendar so that you can view on your phone
- Automatic emails when you book an appointment
To find out more about the program, click here ——–> PickTime Software
#6. Send appointment reminders to your clients the day before the appointment
Send your clients a reminder message the day before each appointment! This little trick will help you to avoid no shows or lock outs, get a heads up if your client will want an extra task, and improve customer service.
No show and lock out’s are when you arrive to your clients home, only to find you are not able to get into the home because your client forgot it was cleaning day. When that happens you don’t get paid!
Following up the day before every cleaning gives your client that friendly reminder that you will be there the next day. They are way less likely forget and leave you locked out with no house to clean.
Ever get to a home only to find out they wanted their oven cleaned, but you did not bring the proper cleaning supplies? In your email reminder, ask you client if there are any extras they would want you to do the next day. You will be prepared and is a nice shuttle way to up charge and make a little extra money.
In my Client Email packet I have created simple reminder emails for you to use. Just copy and paste them into your email client or scheduling software.
If you skipped down to the bottom. Here is what you need to be doing to maximize your maid service schedule and schedule house cleaning clients!
- Set your defined hours of operation.
- Schedule in geographic clusters
- Only schedule weekly, bi-weekly, and every 4 week cleaning services.
- Schedule both large and small homes in a day.
- Get a scheduling software that works for your business.
- Send appointment reminders to your clients the day before the appointment.
I made you a printable planner you can use to keep your schedule mobile. Print it out and put on your fridge, in your car, post it by the front door, or keep a copy on your desk! To download the planner, sign up for access to the FREE Resource Library.
I hope this blog post was super helpful for you! If you liked this post please share the pretty picture at the top of the form, I’d really appreciate it!
Very helpful information!