WindowBossPro Blog — Recurring Cleanings

Moving Recurring Window Cleaning Customers Off Spreadsheets and Paper

Almost every window cleaning company starts its recurring customers on something simple. A spreadsheet with a “last cleaned” column. A box of index cards sorted by month. A notes app full of addresses and gate codes. A phone full of calendar reminders. It works until it does not, usually around the time you hire your first tech or pass a hundred plan customers. This guide walks through moving off that setup without losing anyone along the way.

Signs It Is Time to Move

Online sign-ups, covered in Signing Up Window Cleaning Maintenance Plan Customers Online, are much harder to handle when the rest of your customers live in a spreadsheet. That is usually one of several signs it is time to switch:

• Plan customers are calling to ask when you are coming, because the spreadsheet did not tell anyone.
• A storefront went two months without a cleaning before anyone noticed.
• Gate codes live in one person's head or a group text.
• Billing means a stack of invoices every Friday and a list of who has not paid.
• A new tech cannot run a route without the owner riding along.

Step 1: Clean Up the List

Before importing anything, spend an afternoon cleaning up what you have. It pays off for years. Go through your spreadsheet or cards and:

• Remove duplicates and customers who moved away long ago.
• Fix addresses so they are complete, with city and zip code.
• Mark which customers are on which plan, and when each was last cleaned.
• Pull window counts, stories and notes into their own columns if you can.

Do not try to make it perfect. Get it clean enough that the import is mostly right.

Step 2: Import by CSV

WindowBossPro imports clients from a CSV file, which any spreadsheet can save as. One client can have many addresses, so a property manager with several buildings comes in as one client with each building as an address. Custom fields can hold anything your spreadsheet tracked that does not have its own place.

After the import, look at the map. Every address should have a pin. If any are missing or in the wrong place, fix the address so the Waiting List and auto-routing work correctly.

Step 3: Set the Plans and Window Details

With clients in, set up the recurring work on each address:

• Plan. Set the minimum days between visits: 14 for every two weeks, 30 for monthly, 90 for quarterly, 180 for twice a year.
• Window details. Window count, stories, sides and extras, so each job shows something like “28 windows · 2-story · Inside & Outside · Screens.”
• Access notes. Gate codes, dogs, ladder spots and skylights, moved from the group text to the address.
• Tags. Residential, Storefront, Commercial, plus the plan type.

For setting up tags in a way that helps later, see Using Quarterly and Storefront Tags to Run Recurring Window Cleaning.

Step 4: Your First Weeks on the Waiting List

Plans count from the last completed visit. In your first weeks, use your spreadsheet's last-cleaned dates to decide which customers are due now and put those on routes first. As each visit is completed in WindowBossPro, that address starts counting on its own, and the next visit comes due on the Waiting List without anyone checking the spreadsheet.

Expect a crowded Waiting List at first. Customers your spreadsheet already showed as late will appear as overdue, and that is useful: it is the first honest look at who slipped. Work through the overdue pins over the first couple of weeks, grouping them by neighborhood so the vans are not crossing town for one house.

Keep the old spreadsheet for a cycle as a backup. Once every plan customer has had one visit completed in the new system, you can stop opening it.

Step 5: Move Billing and Customers Over

The last step is billing. Ask plan customers to put a card on file, either through the customer app or a sign-up link, so each visit can be charged on completion. Set property managers and multi-location businesses to Monthly so they get one statement covering every location. Turn on reminders so customers hear from you before each visit.

Tell customers about the change with a short text through two-way texting: “We have moved to a new system. You will now get a reminder before each visit and can see your invoices and update your card in our app.” Most plan customers welcome it.

Out of the Spreadsheet for Good

Moving recurring customers off paper is a few days of work that pays back every week after. Clean the list, import it, set the plans and details, and let the Waiting List take over. For the full set of recurring tools in WindowBossPro, visit the recurring window cleaning software page.