[LWC]

Come on sunshine windows, lol? How would that work.

Why not fit a water meter after pump and workout roughly how much you think youll use. This is something youll never be able to monitor the way you want to properly.

[sunshine windows]

I reckon with all the modern technology available to us now, this is something that can easily be achieved.

Fair enough, it might cost a bit of money to develop, but the benefits of having a system like this in place when you employ would be we'll worth the cost.

[LWC]

You couldnt monitor water the way you want to...what about the extra water used when theres a stubborn mark, bird poo...first cleans? Dusty windows...you going to accuse them of doing extra houses every time?

[sunshine windows]

Negative, negative, negative! That's all that comes from too many people on here.

Of course you can monitor it. If it's a new clean they're doing, then they tell me first before they commence working on it. If I turn up unexpected and find them doing a job that's not on the list, they're sacked, simple as.

A few stubborn marks wouldn't amount to an extra jobs worth of water.

[dave0123]

how you going to link that to a pump though? so u can monitor how much water used? what you going to plug into it? even if rob was able to make  software to do.. what you going to plug into your pump or into your computer ipad or laptop?

[sunshine windows]

That's why I'm not a programmer. There must be tech out there that could allow all of these things. It's just a case of piecing it all together to make an all singing and dancing, tracking/monitoring round software package.

[dave0123]

thats electronics mate not software programming first of all..ud b better off speaking to ian @ spring

[Paul H]

Source is a good idea

But what about coupling it with a total of new work gained per week / month

Then looking back you can see what worked wel in a particular week / month

I did have a spread sheet but got out the habit with so any different systems etx...

Like everyone says one system to fit all needs

[Richard iSparkle]

I'm keen to have some new software as i dont find WCPro ideal.


i really need some thing that can handle multiple users accessing the same DB

I would prefer something cloud based as i could access it from a moibile device

as we schedule in cleans i would like to be able to give a due date to a clean and the clean appear on the relavent day (on WCPro you assign a due date, but you still ahve to drag and drop any cleans onto the worklist for a day

other than these things WCPro is mostly good enough as software, tho the lack of updates for new platforms is slowly killing it

[Rob @ Cleaner Planner]

Good to see some healthy debate

Sunshine Windows - thanks for the novel ideas. One or two other window cleaners have suggested similar "monitoring" related features, such as being able to look back and see which lad(s) worked on a specific job / day, so if there'a a complaint (or praise!) you can track it back to who was on the job. Your ideas for recording actual job duration and location (via GPS) would compliment this nicely, and would be very feasible when we have a native mobile app.

The idea of monitoring pump output is brilliant, though as Dave fairly (and thankfully!) pointed out, the electronics side would be a bit outside by area of expertise. That said, never say never. It would certainly be an "icing on the cake" feature to look at well down the line, but if it's something others would benefit from, then I imagine a mobile electronics whiz could design a monitoring unit that beams usage data (e.g. via Bluetooth) to the iPhone app.

Or another low-tech approach - get the lads to manually check and input the tank level (if it's visible?) into the app after each job?

[Rob @ Cleaner Planner]

Paul and Richard - thanks for your input. Please check your inboxes - just popped you both emails to follow up on your situations / needs and ask if you'd like to be in on the beta.

Anyone - if you stumble across this thread and you're curious - don't be shy Drop me a quick email and I'll pop you on the beta list so you can take the new software for a spin when it's ready.

rob@cleanerplanner.com

I'm aiming for end of October. Made a strong start this week and will probably have something to show (e.g. screenshots) over the next couple of weeks, but I'd better not over-promise

[PAUL ERITH]

I don't know if it is possible but what would be nice is to be able to tick boxes for 20 to 30 customers on the worksheet to send emails or sms but be able to send different messages Eg

before clean email/sms

Your windows are due tomorrow and your cleaners will be jim & john leave gate unlocked

after clean email/sms


Your windows were cleaned click here to pay your bill ect.


Just a thought  



Paul

[Smudger]

hi richard,

we schedule all our work in for set dates too, and do not have to drag and drop on WCP, we scedule a date adn it appears on the planner ? We don't drop and drag on WCP at all? Perhaps I can help, or perhaps I have mis-understood your post.

Mrs Smudger

[Rob @ Cleaner Planner]

Paul - thanks for the excellent suggestion. Makes perfect sense and I think there's a fair bit of flexibility / automation we can build in to the SMS functionality when I get to implementing it. Will happily take your and other users' input on board at that point so we can make this much needed feature as useful and powerful as possible (without overcomplicating it!)

Richard / Smudger - I've been mulling this over myself. As far as I understand it the issue here is that WCP *forces* you to allocate every job to a round, and the round then automatically takes on the *earliest* date of all jobs on that round. While I can see how this works well for residential / area rounds, I imagine it's less than ideal for one off and perhaps larger commercial jobs?

I wonder if the solution here would be to allow you to create jobs that aren't allocated to a specific round, and are simply scheduled for their due date. In a sense, each of these jobs would work like a "one job round", so you'd see these jobs pop up on the scheduling page when they're due so you can pull them into your next days worksheet along with any (multi-job) rounds you also need to cover.

Does that make sense?

[Smudger]

Rob,

On wcp we have simply named one round commercial, we name another gutters all our regular rounds are listed by area. This allows us to see our commercial all on one round. You can put whatever clean date u want against each job, obviously all our jobs on area 1 have next clean dates the same as all other jobs in area 1, if however one job in that roundis away one the due date and they want to be cleaned say the following day, assuming we are happy to do that we just change the due date to one day later for that job. It's very easy. And when we have done that rogue job when we do our end of day on wcp we just make sure it's next due date is set to where it should be.

[Swcs]

Paul - thanks for the excellent suggestion. Makes perfect sense and I think there's a fair bit of flexibility / automation we can build in to the SMS functionality when I get to implementing it. Will happily take your and other users' input on board at that point so we can make this much needed feature as useful and powerful as possible (without overcomplicating it!)

Richard / Smudger - I've been mulling this over myself. As far as I understand it the issue here is that WCP *forces* you to allocate every job to a round, and the round then automatically takes on the *earliest* date of all jobs on that round. While I can see how this works well for residential / area rounds, I imagine it's less than ideal for one off and perhaps larger commercial jobs?

I wonder if the solution here would be to allow you to create jobs that aren't allocated to a specific round, and are simply scheduled for their due date. In a sense, each of these jobs would work like a "one job round", so you'd see these jobs pop up on the scheduling page when they're due so you can pull them into your next days worksheet along with any (multi-job) rounds you also need to cover.

Does that make sense?

I do the same as Smudger.

Most of the time WCP workd perfectly letting me know when the jobs are due again, 4 weekly etc. However there are times when people schedule cleans in.

For that I have just made up a round called 'scheduled' which works perfectly well.

[CLAPHAM]

I would like a native android app. Most my work is in rural Lincolnshire and there is very little coverage of 3g.
I currently use George and print outs, tried everything else but cloud based doesn't work out this way.

[Rob @ Cleaner Planner]

Clapham - Thanks for the input - just popped you an email. Native apps will definitely be in the pipeline, though my initial priority will be to get the core web / cloud app right. If there is sufficient interest (and custom ) for the web app, then I will definitely build native iOS and Android apps as well (most likely as a free download for subscribers to the cloud service). These apps will need to be capable of working in offline mode where there's no signal, and automatically upload / sync to the cloud when signal returns.

Paul / Richard / Smudger - Thanks for the clarification. I have a feeling WCP might still be lacking a bit of flexibility here (and it's just that you've found a clever workaround ) but the last thing I want to do is mess with what works and stuff features in people don't need, so... I think I'll adhere to the "proven" scheduling workflow that you're used to as a starting point, and if (after trying the beta) it still looks like an extra feature / setting is required here to accommodate Paul and other window cleaner's needs, I will be more than happy to accommodate.

[Carl@Cwc]

when do you think we get to play with the beta version?

aworka is doing my head in.
shifted all work forward by one day and it bunched together 4 days work in a weeks time.

[Rob @ Cleaner Planner]

Hi Carl,

Short answer - I'm shooting for 1st October, so just under 2 weeks time.

I had said end of October, but I'm making really good progress, and I think it's going to make sense to get this in front of you guys to kick the tyres and feedback sooner rather than later.

It's also become very clear (and your comment about aworka backs this up) that the planner (in particular) has to be absolutely spot on.

Consensus is that WCP has the best planner on the market at the moment, so I'm following its lead as a starting point for feedback / improvement.

Once we've ironed out any niggles like the one you're seeing with aworka, or Richard's seeing with WCP, we can crack on with the new and exciting features such as bulk SMS

I'll be in touch...

In the meantime if anyone else fancies being on the beta list, just drop me an email: rob@cleanerplanner.com