Window Cleaning Resources

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Organising Your Window Cleaning Round

By being organised you can improve your reputation for reliabilty and professionalism and receive the full potential earnings from your work.

Scheduling and frequency

Much of your success in being organised and reliable depends on the arrangements and commitments that you make with your customers.

Scenario 1:
Let’s say you have a domestic window cleaning round with the majority of customers being 4 weekly in frequency. One or two customers feel that 4 weekly is a little too often and ask that you call every 6 weeks instead. If you agree to this you will find that your round becomes disjointed and to keep your commitment you will need to make a special trip just for the sake of a couple of houses.
Solution:
Explain that you come to this street every four weeks so the choice would have to be 4 weekly or 8 weekly. It is likely that if they have asked for every 6 weeks then they would choose 8 weekly. Perhaps the customer is asking you to come less often because they feel the price is too high.

Scenario 2:
You are getting more work all of the time and are now finding it difficult to get around your work on time. You go through a period of being continuously late and are setting a pattern of going every 6 weeks instead of every 4 as planned. If you continue like this for long your customers will be trained into a 6 week schedule and it will be difficult to go back to a 4 week schedule in the future without some customers feeling that you are back too soon.
Solution:
If you have too much work to get around on time then you need to either refine your work and prioritise or consider taking somebody on. The latter solution may require taking even more work on and depending on how much more work you need, it could be a good time to buy a round rather than time consumingly canvass it.

Conclusion:
Be organised! Look at the example below to see how you may wish to organise your work.

Notice that the round is organised into a 4 week cycle. This gives you allowance for holiday time or catch up time at the end of the month. Label each round and have a set day of each week when you intend to do the work. Take note of how much work you do each day and set a realistic target of what you want to achieve on each day of the schedule. each day. Try to organise it so that 8 weekly work is equally balanced. In other words if on Round 1A you have 6 jobs that are 8 weekly, split them equally as regards time (perhaps 3 the first time and 3 the next time) rather than doing all 6 at the same time. True, the example may be a little idealistic and if inclement weather or sickness disrupts your schedule you may find that reality is very different.
Rather than having to write it all out again, try using a software program or spreadsheet to keep track of your round. For excellent value for money Round Tracker 2007 enables you to do just that as well as keeping on top of your bookeeping.

Refining and organising

If your round is 4 weekly and you consistently get round in 6 weeks then you are carrying 2 weeks of excess baggage. As noted above your reputation will suffer initially as being unreliable and your customers will likely start saying things like “I would have left the gate open but we never know when you are coming!” Sound familiar?

Rather than allow a 4 weekly round to settle into a pattern of being 6 weekly, take a good look at your schedule. Are you going backwards and forwards to the same streets or areas to accomodate customers with access issues? Do you regularly get a late start in the morning meaning that you fall behind for the rest of the day and week? Then maybe it’s time to refine your round and organise your schedule.

Take a look at your work. Where do you earn the most and where do you earn the least for each hour that you work? (Round Tracker 2007 has a feature of telling you your average hourly earnings to help you in refining your work).
Could you sell off the poor work leaving just the cream of the work to get around in 4 weeks instead of 6? Those 2 extra weeks just mean that the houses are getting more dirty creating more work for you and slowing you down.
Window cleaners that work alone may find motivation to be a problem from time to time and this can lead to getting behind with your work. Why not make an appointment each day with customers that have access issues for first thing in the morning, perhaps before they leave to go to work. Not only will this avoid you having problems with access issues but having a commitment early in the morning will give you that extra push to get out of bed on those dull, cold winter mornings.

Having a fixed time to start work each day is essential to maintain your schedule.

By following a schedule similar to the one shown above you will know exactly what you need to acheive each day. Setting such targets is another motivating force to keep you going once you get out to work.
Your round has a potential monthly average value if all jobs are done on time. Do you reach that potential value or when the end of the month comes have you missed quite a few jobs meaning lost earnings?

Prioritising

The key to successful time management boils down to this one word -PRIORITISING.

To make the most of your time at work try to organise your work so that you do your best work first and your worst work gets left until last. If you don’t manage to finish your work by the end of the month start again with the best work and leave the poor work until next time or use the next available catch up day to mop it up.
If you have a large commercial job that takes the most part of a day, could you slot one or two of these jobs in to just fnish off the day and boost the days earnings?

Time set aside to organise your work is also a prority in your work schedule. At the end of each working day set aside half an hour to get organised. Recharge the battery, fill the tank, make routine checks, wipe the van down, do your scheduling and accounts etc.

Even if it means finishing half an hour earlier, this time is an investment. Obviously if your battery is flat or the tank is not filled then you will suffer a loss of earnings the next day. Think too about your accounting. If you leave all that to the end of the year, you’ll likely end up having to take time off from your schedule to sort it out. If you don’t have accurate records then you could be missing out on tax deductable expenses that will lessen your tax bill. Plus, by having neat orderly records on a spreadsheet you will make your accountant’s life a lot easier and that will be reflected in his bill.
(Round Tracker 2007 allows you to quickly organise and schedule your work. It uses a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to record and itemise your expenses and earnings so at the end of the year you can just hand the spreadsheet to your accountant.)

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