WindowBossPro Blog — Routes & Scheduling

The Residential Van and the Storefront Van: Two Kinds of Window Cleaning Routes

A window cleaning company that does both homes and storefronts is really running two businesses out of one shop. One is a handful of big, careful jobs a day with ladders, screens and homeowners. The other is dozens of quick stops of street-level glass, often before sunrise. They want different equipment, different hours and different routes. Many owners find the day gets easier the moment they stop mixing them.

Two Kinds of Day

The last article, Closest First or Furthest First: Setting Window Cleaning Route Order From the Shop, covered how to put a van's stops in order. Before ordering, though, you have to decide which jobs belong on which van.

A typical WindowBossPro setup is one van on residential jobs and one on a storefront route. Employees are assigned to vans, and the Scheduled List and dispatch board filter by van. Each van has its own day, its own route order, and each tech's phone shows only their own stops.

The Residential Van

Residential work is fewer stops and bigger ones. A quarterly or twice-a-year home might be 20 to 40 windows, often two stories, sometimes inside and outside with screens and tracks. Each stop takes real time and real ladder work.

That shapes the route. Four to six homes might be a full day, depending on size. Inside cleanings need someone home, so time windows matter. Access notes matter more too: the gate code, the dog, which flower bed not to put the ladder in, the skylight over the kitchen.

The residential van's route usually comes from the Waiting List map, where due homes cluster by neighborhood. Building it is mostly about grouping nearby homes and making sure the total window count fits the day. See How Many Homes a Day? Scheduling Window Cleaning by Window Count and Stories for sizing.

The Storefront Van

Storefront work is the opposite. Many small stops, mostly ground-level glass, often outside only, on a tight recurring schedule of every 14 or 30 days. A storefront route might be a whole string of shops along a main street, a strip center, a few restaurants and an office lobby.

The day often starts early, because many businesses want the glass done before they open. Stops are short, so the drive between them is a bigger share of the day, which makes route order matter even more. A storefront route that zig-zags loses a lot.

Storefront customers also tend to be steady. Once a route is set, the same shops come due on the same rhythm, so the storefront van's week can look much the same month after month.

Why Splitting Helps

Mixing the two on one van creates friction. A 6 a.m. storefront start followed by a 40-window inside cleaning at 9 means the crew is tired by noon and the homeowner is waiting. A residential job that runs long pushes back three shops that wanted to be done before opening.

Separate vans fix that. The storefront van runs early and fast, and can often finish by midday. The residential van starts at a reasonable hour, does careful work, and keeps homeowners happy. Each tech gets good at their kind of work, and each day is predictable enough that the customer texts are accurate.

It also keeps the numbers clear. With tags like Storefront and Residential on clients, and jobs filtered by van, you can see how each side of the business is doing.

When You Only Have One Van

Plenty of companies run one van and do both. The same idea still works by day instead of by van: storefront mornings on certain days, residential days on others. Or storefronts first thing, then a single mid-size home in the afternoon near the last shop.

Even with one van, it helps to set up the storefront work as its own recurring plans on 14 or 30 days, so they come due on a steady rhythm and can be grouped onto the same day each cycle. When the second van arrives, the split is already built in. More on that in Adding a Second Van: Splitting Window Cleaning Routes Between Two Crews.

Setting It Up

The setup is simple. Add your vans, assign employees to them, and tag clients so you can tell residential from storefront at a glance. When you build a day, assign storefront jobs to the storefront van and residential jobs to the residential van, then auto-route each one. The filter on the dispatch board lets you look at one van at a time without the other cluttering the screen.

Two Routes, One System

Residential and storefront work want different days, but they do not need different software. One Waiting List, one dispatch board filtered by van, and each tech's phone showing their own route. To see how the routing tools fit together, visit the WindowBossPro window cleaning route software page.