Creating My Own Cleaning Software

The Ask a House Cleaner Show and Podcast with Angela Brown

Cleaning software today includes a customer database. Track mileage, time on jobs, and job schedules (even with several cleaners.)

Cleaning software today includes a customer database. Track mileage, time on jobs, and job schedules (even with several cleaners.) Reference quotes you’ve bid and upsells you’ve made.

And keep your invoices and one-click credit card processing all in one place. Send reminder texts to clients for service and get them to rate and review you all from the same app. Does such an app or scheduling software exist?

Listen: Creating My Own Cleaning Software

Watch: Creating My Own Cleaning Software

Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.

I’m Creating My Own Cleaning Software

I’m creating my own cleaning software, can you help me? I got asked this question this week, “I’m in the middle of choosing a software for my residential cleaning business. In the search, we thought there wasn’t any software that did what we wanted it to do so we decided to build one in house. I’m assuming that you’ve come across some of these softwares. Is there anything you can point out that most of these softwares are lacking?”

Cleaning Businesses are Not Software Businesses

The answer to that question is to stop right where you are, take a deep breath. Take a break if you need to and then come back and start researching the softwares all over again. I want to stop for a second and say, if you are in fact in the cleaning business, you’re in the cleaning business, you are not in the software business.

Do not create a piece of software that could already exist. 20 years ago, I heard this same complaint. Oh, the softwares that are out there don’t do what we want them to do. I saw an avalanche of business owners that came to the table and they created software.

House Cleaners Created Booking Software

They created booking software, that customers can go online and they can book themselves a job. How many rooms in your house? How many bathrooms? Stairways? Windows? Yada, yada. And they put together their own package and it spits them out a price.

There were packages on the market that would add qualifiers. That would say, “How messy is your house?” And there’s a little sliding scale and you scale how messy your house is. It’s pretty bad, it’s awful, and then it changes the price.

Software Allows You to Save Your Payment Information

There are other softwares that allow you to add your credit card right there and pay for your cleaning right there online. It stores your credit card information behind a firewall so that even the company that is cleaning your house never knows your credit card number.

At the end of a job, it automatically sends you an invoice. And then with the invoice, you can say, “Yes, this is the invoice I agreed to pay for the service that was provided.” They say, “Yes, I accept this.”

Along with that, the company gets paid. Then they ask please recommend and rate our service, spits out so that you can rate and recommend the service you received.

There are a Ton of Fancy Softwares on the Market

There are so many fancy softwares on the market today that do a plethora of things. But I will tell you this, please do not reinvent the wheel. 20 years ago, yes, but we live in the era of technology right now. There’s an app for the software you’re trying to create right now.

Don’t get sidetracked about creating software that’s going to do something that software on the market will be good enough. I will tell you this if it bothers you and in the back of your mind, you have this aching thing that, “oh, I don’t have the best software ever“.

Then set time on your schedule and once a year, go back through the softwares that are on the market. Do your research one more time. Do comparisons and see if anyone has added new features and if it merits switching.

Try Programs for At Least a Year

My recommendation is that you stay with a program for at least a year because there are all kinds of bells and whistles and upgrades. There are new versions of the software that come out that make it worth staying with one until you get the chance to learn what it is.

While doing that, if you’re going to create your own and I recommend you do it five years down the road, not now. By trying someone else’s product and finding out exactly what it does, exactly how it works. That way when something falls through the cracks, you’ll go, “Aha. I can do one better than that.”

Now, when you go at the end of the year to scan the different products that are out there, you’re going to look for one that solves this problem. You’re going to say, “I want one that doesn’t do this and it doesn’t do this, but it does do this. I liked these features. I want to avoid these features.”

Trying Software Will Help You Create Your Own

It will then help you troubleshoot. If in the event that you decide you’re ever going to go create your own. You will be armed with all the knowledge and the expertise of what your competitors are offering.

You will have seen firsthand how they work, how it sends this stuff to the customers. What the customer receives, how it logs your information, and how quickly it logs your information.

What happens after the information has been in there for a while, does it disappear? Does it stay there? Is it stagnant? Does it update automatically? What happens?

Start With Trying Other Software

Then when you go to create your own, you will know exactly where the gaps are. But to randomly create your own because you don’t think you’re going to be able to find what’s out there. I recommend that you start with something and then give it a try. See, because you can always change.

And I’ll share a secret with you. Most of the softwares on the market offer at least a two-week free trial, at least a two week. And so you can jump in, you can plug all your information in, you can make a few appointments, you can send a few emails. You can have a dummy account where maybe you send your spouse pretending like their email is one of a customer.

You send them a notification, you pretend like you went to do a job. How they pay you, all that kind of stuff, to see how it works through the app. You can do all that within a matter of about two weeks. And within two weeks, you’ll know, yeah, this is a software that I can use or no, it’s not and you’ll be able to move on.

There are a Lot of Good Enough Softwares Out There

But very, very quickly, you’re going to narrow down and whittle down exactly what you need for your circumstance. But we live in an era where there are lots of softwares that are probably good enough.

Can I share with you the ones that have stuff gapping from them and missing? No, that’s not a good use of either of our time. There are so many good programs on the market out today that I recommend you find one and make it work for you.

Resources

ZenMaid – https://get.zenmaid.com/

Jobber – https://getjobber.com/

CleanGuru: https://www.cleanguru.com/

Service Autopilot – https://www.serviceautopilot.com/

HousecallPro – Housecallpro.com/Angela

Launch27 – https://www.launch27.com/software-features/?

ServiceMonster – https://www.servicemonster.net/

Compasswave – https://compasswave.com/

Markate – https://www.markate.com/

Podium10 – https://podiumio.com/

Maidily – https://maidily.com/