A cleaner does thirty houses on a Tuesday. Eleven are out. Nine of those pay within a week, one pays in March and one has owed for two rounds and is quietly avoiding him.
He is doing the work. Collecting for it is the second job nobody mentions.
The checklist
Publish and set these up and the collection problem largely disappears.
1. Publish how to pay
Every method accepted, with the detail needed. Customers who cannot find bank details do not transfer money.
2. Offer a recurring arrangement
An automatic payment matching the round frequency. It is the single change that transforms collection and most customers prefer it.
3. Leave a note that works
Date cleaned, amount, how to pay and the reference to use. A card saying cleaned today with a name on it is not enough.
4. Send a message instead of a card
With the amount and a payment link. It reaches people at work and it converts far better than paper through a door.
5. Publish the price per clean
For each property, so nobody is guessing. Customers pay the wrong amount because they are remembering last year.
6. Publish the frequency and schedule
Which week, roughly which day and what happens if it moves. Customers who know when you are coming leave the gate open and the money ready, which is the ground in regular round questions window cleaners answer weekly.
7. Explain what happens if they are out
That the work is still done, that payment is expected afterwards and how. Ambiguity here is where most of the debt originates.
8. Send an automatic reminder
A few days after the clean, then once more. Two prompts recover most of what would otherwise drift, without any awkwardness.
9. Publish what happens with arrears
How many cleans before the round pauses, and how it is communicated. Applied consistently and published, it stops being personal.
10. Make skipping easy
A way to skip a clean, pause for a period or change frequency. Customers who cannot skip simply stop answering the door, which is the retention point in billing questions that turn into cancellations.
11. Confirm the day before
A short message with the date and the amount. It reduces no access, reduces disputes and increases same day payment.
12. Publish the weather policy
What happens when a round is postponed and when it will be done. Customers assume they have been forgotten.
13. Capture new customers properly
Address, property, frequency, access and payment method, set up at the start rather than improvised, which is the quoting problem in window cleaning quotes without knowing the house size.
13b. Say what happens when you take over a round
Rounds change hands and customers suddenly receive messages from a name they do not recognise asking for money. Explaining the handover properly, including who you are and what has changed, prevents a wave of suspicion and cancellations in the first month.
13c. Publish what the price covers
Frames, sills, doors, conservatory roofs and whether anything at the back is included. Customers who think they are paying for all of it and receive some of it decide quietly that the service is poor rather than asking what was agreed.
14. Treat the round as a subscription
Because that is what it is, and it should be run like one, which is the model in an AI assistant for a subscription business.
Getting started
Publish payment methods and prices, set up recurring payments and automatic reminders, and capture new customers at any hour. SpideyChat for cleaning businesses answers from your published pages. Try SpideyChat on your own site, or read about reminders on the features page.