PressureWashingBossPro Blog — House Washing & Recurring Plans

Running a Soft Washing Business From One System: Calls, Quotes, Jobs and Payments

Most soft washing companies start the same way: a trailer, a tank, a pump, a phone and a notebook. The notebook works until the phone starts ringing more than the owner can keep up with. Then quotes get lost, a customer gets washed twice in a month while another waits all spring, and the owner spends Sunday night matching payments to jobs. This article follows one residential job through a single system, so you can see where the notebook falls apart and what replaces it.

One Place for the Whole Job

The big picture is covered in House Washing Software: The Complete Guide to Residential Washes and Yearly Plans. Here we get practical and walk one house from call to payment.

The point of putting everything in one system is simple. The customer's name, the address, the house details, the quote, the scheduled job, the photos, the invoice and the payment all belong to the same record. When the customer calls back in a year asking “what did we pay last time?”, the answer is one tap away, not in a shoebox of receipts.

The Call or the Web Request

A homeowner calls about green streaks on the north side of the house. Or they fill out the request form on your website, which lands in Form Responses in PressureWashingBossPro. Either way, the first step is a client record with the address. One client can have many addresses, which matters for the homeowner who also owns a rental across town or a parent's house they look after.

Tags and custom fields let you mark how they found you or anything else you want to track. If you are moving from spreadsheets and paper, a CSV import brings your existing customers in, and imported addresses are placed on the map automatically.

The Quote

Next comes the estimate, built from your own service list. For this house it might be a soft wash of the siding plus the driveway and front walk. The job details go right on the estimate:

• Surfaces: House Wash, Driveway, Sidewalk
• Square feet of the house and of the flatwork
• 2-story, vinyl siding
• Soft wash for the house, surface cleaner for the concrete
• Access notes: spigot on the left side, cover the azaleas, move the truck

If you are quoting from the office, the property map can measure the driveway in square feet from the satellite view, and estimates can price off a property's measurements. The customer gets the estimate and approves it online. If they go quiet, estimate follow-up emails nudge them without you having to remember.

The Scheduled Job

Once approved, the estimate becomes the scheduled job, and every detail from the estimate carries onto it. Nobody retypes the square feet or the siding. The office puts it on a rig and a day on the Scheduled List, which shows jobs by day and can filter by rig. Auto-route sorts the day Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, and you can set the order by hand when you know something the map does not, like which customer works nights and wants you there after ten.

Many soft washing companies run one rig on residential and, if they have commercial work, another on a commercial route early in the morning or after close. Keeping the residential rig's day tidy is the job of the dispatch board.

On the Crew's Phone

The crew logs into the crew app with the company login and a personal PIN. It runs in the browser on iPhone and Android and installs to the home screen, with no app store involved. The day's jobs show in route order, each card showing the job details and access notes: “House Wash, Driveway · 3,800 sq ft · 2-story · Vinyl · Soft Wash.”

The crew taps the navigation button, then Start. The customer gets an automatic on-the-way text, then an arrived text. Before photos go in, the house gets washed, after photos go in, and the crew taps Complete. Past notes from earlier visits are right there too, which helps when the second crew member has never seen the house.

The Invoice and the Payment

Complete creates the invoice, with line items and sales tax. If the customer has a card on file, it can be charged right then. If not, they can pay online from the customer app, and past-due follow-up takes care of the ones who forget. No paper invoice on the door handle, no driving back for a check.

The customer app is also where the homeowner sees their invoices, updates their card, requests more service, and rates the visit or refers a neighbor.

The Part That Pays for Next Year

Here is where one system beats a notebook the most. Before the crew leaves, the house can go on a yearly plan, set at 365 days between visits. Next year it comes due on the Waiting List on its own, and the whole cycle above repeats without a single new phone call. How to make that pitch is covered in Selling the Yearly Plan at the End of the House Wash.

Plans start at $59 a month, with Pro at $89 and Crew at $199, and every plan includes the crew app, estimates, the Waiting List and billing. To see all the residential and recurring features in one place, visit the PressureWashingBossPro house washing software page.