MaidBossPro Blog — Team App

Start, Skip, Complete: The Three Buttons That Run a Cleaning Team's Day

A cleaning team app can have a hundred screens, but the day really comes down to three moments at each home: we are here and working, we could not do this one, and we are done. MaidBossPro gives each of those moments one button. Start, Skip, Complete. If a cleaner learns nothing else on their first day, they should learn these three.

Three Buttons, Three Messages to the Office

Past notes and the home's history, covered in Past Notes and Customer Preferences: How the Maid Service App Remembers Each Home, tell the team what to expect. The three buttons tell the office what actually happened.

Each tap updates the job for everyone at once. The office does not need a text that says “we're at the Garcias'”, because the job already says it. That alone takes a surprising amount of noise out of an owner's phone.

Start

Tap Start when the team is inside and the clean is underway. Not in the car, not at the door while the lockbox is still giving trouble. Inside and working.

Start does a few useful things:

• The office sees the home is in progress, which answers “did they make it in?” without a call.
• It is a natural moment for the before photos, while the team takes a quick walk through the home.
• The office can see at a glance which home each team is working in right now.

Make tapping Start part of the walk-in routine: door, alarm, Start, before photos, then supplies in. If the team forgets and remembers twenty minutes later, tap it then. A late Start is far better than none, because the office will otherwise assume the team is still on the road.

Skip

Skip is for a home where the clean is not going to happen today. Common reasons in cleaning:

• The lockbox is empty or the code does not work and the customer cannot be reached.
• The customer is home sick and asks the team to come back another day.
• The customer cancels at the door.
• The home is not safe to work in: no power, a water leak, an aggressive dog loose inside.

Every skip should come with a note. The note is what turns a skip from a mystery into something the office can fix. Compare:

• Unhelpful: “Couldn't get in.”
• Helpful: “Lockbox on back door was empty. Knocked, no answer. Waited 15 min, texted office 9:40.”

The office sees the skip with the reason, contacts the customer, and either reschedules or updates the entry notes so it does not happen again. For a recurring home, the office decides whether to put the clean on another day this week or let the next regular visit cover it.

Complete

Complete is the most important tap of the visit, because it closes the loop on everything:

• The job is marked done for the office.
• After photos and notes are saved with it.
• The invoice is created from the job's line items, including any extras.
• If the customer has a card on file and the account charges on completion, the card is charged.
• For recurring homes, the next visit is already on the schedule in the home's fixed slot, so nothing needs booking.

Because so much hangs on it, Complete should be the last thing the team does, after the final walkthrough, the after photos and a glance at the extras on the card. More on the billing side is in Charging the Card on File When the Cleaning Team Taps Complete.

Habits That Keep the Buttons Honest

The buttons only work if teams tap them at the right time. A few house rules help:

• Tap it when it happens. Not five Completes in a row at the end of the day from a parking lot.
• One person taps per home. Usually the team lead, so two phones do not fight over the same job.
• Never Complete a job you did not finish. If the team ran out of time on a deep clean, write what was left in the notes and tell the office before tapping anything.
• Skip with a reason, always. No reason means a phone call later.

The Day From the Office Chair

Watch a board full of teams tapping these buttons and the day tells its own story: Team 1 has started its third home, Team 2 completed the move-out early, Team 3 skipped a home with a note about a sick customer. The office reacts to facts instead of chasing them. To see how these three buttons connect to photos, texts and payment, visit the MaidBossPro maid service app page.