Window Cleaning App - Description
This description may
seem complicated at first. But keep in mind that I've tried to
describe all of the special situations that may come up while
dealing with different functions. Under normal circumstances,
you will only need about 20-30% of this description in order to
sucessfully use the App to its full extent. For example, logging today's service for one
existing customer including logging the payment and next
appointment takes only 30 seconds to 1 minute on average.
When using this application, please use the provided buttons to
navigate the pages. If you press the Back button on your
phone or browser, it may lead to unexpected results or errors, and
you could mess up your database. The only exception is the
Calendar View. See the relevant section of this description for
more details.
Overview
1. Main menu
2. Top navigation bar
3. Contacting
customers through the App
4. The Today button
5. Customer Status
6. Quotes
Help Section
1. How to add a new customer
2. How to edit
existing customer details
3. How to add a
new service record for a customer
4. How to log a payment
5. How to check your
turnover
OVERVIEW
1. Main menu
This is the current view of the main menu - pretty much
self-explanatory. Here you find the Today function with
tasks planned for today. Customers button leads to a
sub-menu for adding new customers and editing existing customer
details. Upcoming or Overdue Tasks will open a sub-menu for
planned cleanings and other tasks as well as overdue contacts and
open payments. Statistics lets you keep track of your
earnings and spendings. Settings allows to edit your
personal detais, shows your subscription details and lets you edit
your date and time format preferences. Feedback allows the
users to send their input about the app to the developer.
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2. Top navigation
bar
The Home button will lead you back to the Main Menu,
no matter which page of the App you are currently on.
If you tap on the date at the top of the page, a calender list will
open with all of your planned cleanings.
The Menu button on the navigation bar opens up a short
sub-menu with a list of functions related to the page you are on.
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3.
Contacting customers through the App
Most of the App pages contain a brief summary of customer details on
top of the screen. You will see small symbols of a telephone or a
letter next to phone numbers or email addresses. If you tap on these
symbols, you will be taken straight to the phone, text messaging or
default email application on your device. Customer's contact details
will automatically get transferred into the relevant application
allowing you to make a phone call or write a message without the
need to write down or copy phone numbers or email addresses. And for
your convenience, the first zero in a phone number is automatically
replaced with the UK international country code (+44), so you can
make calls and send messages with ease even from abroad.
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4. The Today
button
The Today button brings you to a list of actions planned for
today. You will see up to four categories of actions on this screen:
payment collections, cleanings, contacts and incomplete records.
Tapping a gray button in any category will lead you to the page
where you will find more information about this task or can log
relevant action.
Cleanings and Other Jobs is a list of all the cleaning jobs
you have scheduled for today as well as special services you offer
to your customers, such as gutter cleaning or fixing something or
anything else.
Contact Today will show you all the customers you wanted to
contact today to arrange a cleaning appointment and also customers
who already have an appointment with you but need to be reminded
about that appointment.
The category Please Complete Records refers to entries that
miss some important data.
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5. Customer Status
The App allows you to assign different statuses to your customers.
By default, there are three options: active, inactive or dead.
However, you can also add any other status to the database, like
"sold" or any other desired status.
It is important to know that the "active" status is used in many
other functions of this App, like Overdue Tasks or Calendar
and even Open Payments. So, please be sure to mark active
customers as "active" when adding them to the database or editing
customer details in order to have them show up in different other
lists of the system.
I personally assign "active" status to customers that are either
regular or not regular, but no troubles with payment. In essense,
where everything is okay and they are happy with me cleaning their
windows.
"Inactive" status is for customers, who I've serviced before, but
who have cancelled the service due to some personal reason (sickness
or moving house), and also customers, who call me from time to time,
but I have no means to contact them myself.
"Dead" is assigned to customers who either don't pay or in general
present too much trouble and therefore are time-wasters.
The customer status will be indicated by different button colours in
certain lists (as in the picture above). Active status is green,
inactive is yellow, dead is red and everything else is gray.
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6. Quotes
It is important to log a quote you gave to the customer right after
you've added a new customer to the database or as soon as you gave
the quote. Fill out the quote details and don't forget to log the
usual price, frequency of cleaning, schedule status and other
relevant fields. The reason for this is that the system will take
this information and automatically display the regular price and
other details in your Today tasks and also will include the
customer into the Calendar schedule based on the frequency
you've set up.
There are two ways to log a quote or relevant details. First one:
you will be prompted to log a quote when adding a new customer to
the database. Second: by using the Edit Customer Details
button. In this case, you will see the fields from the picture above
in the lower part of the Edit Customer Details form.
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HELP SECTION
1. How to add a new
customer
To add a new customer to your database, go to Main Menu
and tap on the Customers button. The following screen will
come up:
Tap the Add New Customer button.
On this screen, you will be prompted to check if the customer is
already in the database. It can happen that a customer has contacted
you a long time ago and never got back to you after a quote and now
is contacting you again, and you might have forgotten about it. If
you input an existing customer into the database again as a new
customer, a double customer entry will be created that may mess up
your records and make it harder for you to keep track of
appointments.
Input the house name or number and street name. Once
you tap the Check button, the system will quickly check if
there is already a customer at that address.
If yes, the next screen will have a list of all existing customers
at that address. You can either tap on the relevant customer button,
look through all the customer details and previous agreements and
edit them as necessary, or, if no such customer exists yet,
you can tap the Add New Customer button to go to the New
Customer form.
If no existing customers were found at the address you've
input, you will be forwarded straight to the New Customer
form.
This is the New Customer form where you can enter all
the relevant details for a new customer. Add as many details as
possible, most importantly the address and at least one telephone
number.
In order to help you to find the correct postcode, there is a link Look
It Up that leads to the Royal Mail postcode Checker (see next
picture).
Fields Telephone Name are there so you can give a name to
the number, like "office" or "home". If you have two mobile numbers,
one for the husband and one for the wife in the same household, you
can use these fields to assign their names to relevant telephone
numbers. If no name is entered, the App will use the default Telephone
1 as a description.
The field Contact Source lets you specify how you got the
customer: a leaflet, a referral, etc. You can leave it empty if you
are not interested in this informtion.
The last field Customer Status is important (as explained in
the section "Overview - Customer Status"), so please don't leave it
empty. Once done, press Save Customer's Details.
Here you can input the address and check the postcode for that
address. Then copy and paste the postcode into the New Customer
form. This page will open in a new tab to ensure that the details
you've already added into the customer form are not lost. Do not
press the Back button on your phone or browser after checking the
postcode, but simply close the tab instead.
After pressing Save Customer's Details button, you will
see one of the screens pictured either above or below. If you see
the above page, you have missed some vital information while
inputting customer details, so the App is asking you to review it.
You can either add missing information or leave it as it is (if you
don't have any more details) and press Save Details Now.
This is the screen with a confirmation that a new customer was
successfully added to the database. You will be forwarded to this
screen if you either input all relevant customer details into the New
Customer form or if you press Save Details Now after
correcting customer information.
Choose one of the three options given on this page that best
describes the action you've performed in regards to this customer.
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2.
How to edit existing customer details
This is very similar to adding a new customer to the database.
Go to Main Menu and tap on the Customers button.
Choose option Edit Customer Details. On the next screen,
input search criteria and find the customer you want to edit. If you
don't enter any customer details into the search form, you will get
a list of ALL your customers. To avoid that, enter one or two search
criteria.
Once you start typing in any field, a drop-down list of all entries
already in the database will come up. Press Search and choose
the customer you want to edit from the list on the next page.
The Edit Customer form is very similar to the New
Customer form. The only difference is that it additionally
contains information about quotes and scheduling.
Change any necessary details and press Save Changes.
You will also find the button Edit Customer Details on
different pages in the sub-menu in top right corner of the screen
(usually, on pages where you can see a box with customer details).
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3. How
to add a new service record for a customer
There are a few different ways to come to a form to add a new
service record for a customer:
- Go to Main Menu, press Customers, then tap on Show
Customer Details. Fill in 1-2 search criteria and find the
customer you need. Tap on the relevant customer in the list of
search results and you will see a page with customer info box on top
and all past service records. Press Menu in the top right
corner of the page and choose option Add New Record For This
Customer.
- Same method works with the button Edit Customer Details
accessed from Main Menu - Customers. On the page where you
would usually edit customer details, you will also find the option Add
New Record For This Customer in the Menu in the top
right corner.
- You can also find the button Add New Record For This Customer
on several other pages in the Menu in the top right
corner of the page.
- The button Log Today`s Sevice will show up when you tap on
a customer in Today menu. This button will lead you to the
page where you can create a new service record.
The top box contains the customer details.
Section This Time refers to the service you've delivered
today or, if you forgot to log it, to the last time you have been
with the customer.
Don't forget to specify if the service is paid for or free (for
example, a quote or a contact).
Fill out this form and press Save.
If there are any inconsistencies in the information (for example,
the service is "to be paid for", but no payment was entered), the
form will come up again and the relevant fields will be marked red.
Please look through these fields carefully and correct anything
necessary. Sometimes one wrong entry may lead to errors in other
fields. For that reason, at the bottom of the page you will find the
button Check For Errors. Once you have corrected an obvious
mistake, press that button and check if the other fields are okay
now.
When done, press Save.
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4. How to log a payment
Usually you would log a payment right away when logging a service.
This section refers to payments that weren't made right on the spot.
There are several ways to come to the page that lets you log a
payment. Most commonly, it will show up in your Today list
on the day when the money collection is scheduled. The other common
way to access this option is to go to Main Menu - Upcoming or
Overdue Tasks - Open Payments.
Once you are on the Log Payment page (see the example
above), you will see all basic customer details, the type and date
of service you delivered and an option to log payment for this
service. The amount due will automatically be there when you open
this page. In order to log the payment, choose Yes in the
line "Paid?" and enter the payment date and method. Once done, press
Save. You will then be taken back to Today page.
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5. How to check
your turnover
To check your earnings for a certain period of time, go to Main
Menu - Statistics - Turnover by Date. You will land on the
following page:
Enter start and end dates and press Next.
An income report will come up where you can see different income
categories and amounts for each as well as special expenses you
logged when delivering your services. See the above picture as an
example.
Please note that a payment will count into this report on the date
it was actually received, not on the date you did the job. Same
applies to expenses.
If you press Details buttons, you will see a list of
all the services that were included into the report.
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