My wife and I just took over her parents window cleaning company in October of 15. Her parents definitely did it the old fashioned way. All pen and paper, There was not ONE thing they had on the computer. This company has been in business for over 35 years, and its very successful. The problem we are having is trying to keep track of our Monthly, Bi-monthly, quarterly, etc… It is overwhelming and sometimes I feel like I am forgetting some. When we took over we were handed about 10 yearly planners with scribbling everywhere. I would like to be able to schedule from my Ipad or phone when we are out in the field. Also, is there a software that sends the customer like a automated email, text or something like a day ahead? Any thoughts or ideas I Greatly appreciate. Thanks. Eddie
We use quick books for taxes, invoices, customer info etc… As far as scheduling we are still trying a few different programs but for now we use google calendar so it links to all of our devices automatically. Including my employees to help him know when and where the jobs are.
Def work in progress though!
We have recently started using quikbooks also. Does it talk to google calendars?
Customer Factor all the way!
Excell spread sheet is a good way to keep track of all your Monthly , bi-weekly , an quarterly accounts.
You can print out these accounts for your guy an he can mark them off when there done .
I print out all my monthly an Bi-weekly every month mark them off when done so I remember .
I second The Customer Factor. It has automated emails that you can set up as reminders before service and whatever you need. Its web based so you can access it from anywhere. It also syncs with google calendar and quickbooks
House Call Pro. Really good program. We have been using for months. Prior we were kind like you except, huge magnetic white boards on our office walls. Program has many great features, a few we have not even used yet. But for you: scheduler (in whatever frequency you can imagine), automation of any sequence of reminders, follow up with ty cards or email, receive customer credit card payments, calander pushes to your Google calander automatically, pushes to QB too.
I don’t have anything to do with them other than being a happy customer. They are a young, small growing company. When I hit them with a question or a short coming (imo), they address my concern or tell me were they are at with that upgrade. They constantly make the product better.
I think I would be giving House Call Pro a try if I got back into it. The features seem great.
You can schedule with Google Calendar and It can send e-Mail reminders to the customer as well to yourself and crew. You can also use it on a droid phone for Google GPS right from the calendar. I personally use Quikbooks Desktop with Google Calendars. They don’t talk to each other, but because they don’t I always have 2 separate records of appointment times, addresses and customer names in the event that one had a glitch. It could happen. I have heard of people having a one system set up and it goes down. 3 days no work because they did not have access to anything.
We use service ceo
Hi Eddie,
I use the George Window Cleaners Assistant program ( UK based but many guys in US also use ). You can set up for any frequency and it will automatically come up when due. We do about $75k in commercial route work that can be a huge headache unless you have an organized way to track. You can set and identify the routes by name and assign frequencies, and when you print the route sheet, each job will have a section that will print the job details and notes for that job. It will also print the invoice and tack receivables. Many of the programs I considered were way too comprehensive for our needs ( K.I.S.S. ). This is a very brief explanation but used it since 2004 when we switched from an old DOS based program. Before that. 3x5 index cards, so I feel your pain. Good luck.
Jeff
Honestly, I have not attempted to look for that feature yet but I did not see the option during set up. I will look this week and get back to you with that answer. For now we have been keeping them separate.
Jeff, thanks for letting me know about George. I checked it out. Do they have any type of demo I can try or is there a support number?
Hey Las Vegas (sorry I don’t know your first name ) ,
Here is a link and yes they have a full working demo that you can go ahead and begin playing with. If my memory serves me correctly, if you decide to purchase it, you don’t have to redo the data you already entered.I have used it since 2004, and can attest that the support, which is essentially the developer, is very good. The biggest shortcoming : not cloud or web based and only one user at a time which would extremely limit a larger company. For me, it has worked very sufficiently for our needs. Let me know if I can help any further. There is also a George Yahoo community group that is helpful.
http://www.georgesystems.co.uk/index.html
Jeff
