Window cleaning is the most route-sensitive work in the cleaning trade. The job at a single house is short, the money is made by doing eight of them in a street rather than four across a county, and the whole schedule can be undone by a morning of rain. Software that treats a window round like a series of independent appointments will let you build a day that cannot pay, and rescheduling a wet Tuesday into an already full Thursday is the specific thing that has to be easy.
Pricing by pane, by storey and by frequency
A window quote is built from counts and access: how many panes, how many storeys, whether frames and sills are included, whether a pole reaches or a ladder is needed. It is then modified by frequency, because a house cleaned every six weeks is faster each time than one cleaned once a year. Software that cannot hold a per-property price with a frequency attached will have you re-quoting the same house every visit.
The round, and why density is the whole business
Two window cleaners charging the same price can have completely different businesses depending on how tight their rounds are. Every minute between jobs is paid time that nobody bills, so a scheduler for this trade should make it obvious when a new customer sits badly against an existing day. That is not route optimisation in the fleet sense; it is a simple question of whether the new address is on a round you already run.
Weather, and rescheduling without losing the round
Rain moves a day, and the day it moves into is usually already full. What you need is the ability to shift a whole day's visits forward as a block while keeping the round intact, rather than dragging fifteen appointments individually. Ask about that specifically in any demo: it is the single most-used function in this trade and many products handle it badly.
Working at height, and what the record should show
Where ladders and access equipment are used, the employer's duty to assess the hazard and provide suitable protective equipment is a general requirement rather than an optional extra, and the assessment is expected to be a real one. Keeping the equipment checks and the access notes against the property record is both the practical answer and the one you will want if anything goes wrong.
Questions people ask about window cleaning business software
Is window cleaning software different from other cleaning software?
The pricing and the route are different enough to matter. The customer record and the invoicing are the same.
How do I price a first clean against a regular one?
Most rounds charge a higher first visit and a lower recurring price. Hold both on the property so the second visit does not get quoted at the first-visit rate.
What is the biggest scheduling mistake in this trade?
Taking a customer who is twenty minutes off the round because the price looked good. The drive time eats the job.