[Mike #1]

Not bothered about mobile apps , I just save the web address on my iPhone then just open up planner to double check work schedule and mark off jobs whilst at work and check debts .

So I assume this can be done on CP if so I'm sold getting do forgetful lately that the more automated stuff is as well is a big plus for me .

[Clever Forum Name]

Yes that can be done but you must be mad not to want to use the app bud.

It's great!

Customer stops you.

Pays you.

Pull out phone. Load app. Click round. Click debt. Done !

[Soupy]

Yes that can be done but you must be mad not to want to use the app bud.

It's great!

Customer stops you.

Pays you.

Pull out phone. Load app. Click round. Click debt. Done !

+1

You could use the browser but that would be like being married to Angelina Jolie and having an affair with Angela Merkel.

[Mike #1]

Thanks for the replies No23 & Soupy aside from the increase to £25 a month it was a few things wasn't sure about as well as working through the transition of the switch .

[Clever Forum Name]

Thanks for the replies No23 & Soupy aside from the increase to £25 a month it was a few things wasn't sure about as well as working through the transition of the switch .

I used George and wasn't keen on swapping at all. But George was kinda holding the business back. It was so embarrassing for a customer to stop me in the street and say when are you next round and i would literally have no idea. Now i load phone, give her exact date then she says leave it  I kid i kid.

I don't see it as losing £25 a month i see it as gaining HOURS of my life back. I don't charge extra for locked gates even tho we textd etc. So i am making more now anyway as gates are generally always open!

The biggest thing for me is automated texts. To be able to set them up and be sent at 7pm on a Sunday night, means i can enjoy my evening. Doesn't mean i have to get my phone out on a Sunday and start texting people. I have had FANTASTIC feedback on it as well! Customers love the fact they know they will get a text at 7pm. Not 3pm 4 pm 5pm 5.32pm 6.24pm its 7pm! Since switching over to CP. Locked gates has gone down from around 3 in 10 being locked to i would say now almost zero. Texting a customer at 3pm on a sunday for a gate monday never goes down well. At 7pm. Most tasks are done and customer doesn't forget.

As for the swap over, you are lucky. CP has had lots of changes and updates and it now so easy to use.

[Susan Dean (1stclean)]

had a it tech that does all the sercity for hsbc in London look at the terms and cons and told me to stay well away from it as once you had sign up you had no control over your work and if some bought it out i.e. a window cleaning company the had the rights of all your details

also I thought it was clucky , the grafix were poor and it was to hard to use

running two van I find w.p, much better

[Rich Wilts]

You asked someone who's proficient in IT their opinion on a legal issue?

[p1w1]

had a it tech that does all the sercity for hsbc in London look at the terms and cons and told me to stay well away from it as once you had sign up you had no control over your work and if some bought it out i.e. a window cleaning company the had the rights of all your details

also I thought it was clucky , the grafix were poor and it was to hard to use

running two van I find w.p, much better

weird, i had Richard Bransons legal team look over it and he rang me to say all is good.

[Clever Forum Name]

Thanks for the replies No23 & Soupy aside from the increase to £25 a month it was a few things wasn't sure about as well as working through the transition of the switch .

Mike - Looking at your website i know CP will be the right move for you Professional website and professional system. It goes hand in hand 

[Clever Forum Name]

Yes that can be done but you must be mad not to want to use the app bud.

It's great!

Customer stops you.

Pays you.

Pull out phone. Load app. Click round. Click debt. Done !

+1

You could use the browser but that would be like being married to Angelina Jolie and having an affair with Angela Merkel.

HAHA I missed this, yeah couldn't agree more. Angelina Jolie is my Unicorn. Something i will never have lol

[Susan Dean (1stclean)]

You asked someone who's proficient in IT their opinion on a legal issue?

our good friend was sorting it all out for us to use on our lab top , and being a guy that runs a massive team in the city and on more money aday then most window cleaners earn a week we value his views on it , and because hes not like the rest on here full of bum lickers that jump on and off bang wagons because they want to be in with the cool crowd we will take his views over the bum lickers

[Rob @ Cleaner Planner]

Hi All,

What a fantastic thread (of course I am a tad biased ) many thanks for taking the time to post your detailed thoughts, comments and questions.

To respond to a few points which jumped out at me:

DD setup by phone/paper - interestingly GoCardless do have this capability under their "Pro" package (https://gocardless.com/pro). However, it costs £200 per month (their fee) plus transaction fees, and is only available to merchants taking more than 500 payments a month. I did ask GC if it would be possible to spread this cost/limit (i.e. over all CP's users) but they said unfortunately not. However, they did say that they have a new API (system by which CP uses to integrate with GC's systems) coming out later this year which may support phone/paper signups. I'll get in touch with them on Monday and see if I can get some further specifics on this because it would certainly be fantastic if there was a bit more flexibility in terms of how you can sign up DD customers (many of whom either don't have/do email or would prefer phone/paper based setup). Will let you know what I find out.

Richard - How much do Smart Debit charge if you don't mind me asking? I can't see any pricing info on their website.

Drag & drop planner - Just to reiterate we've had D&D capability on the planner for some time now. You can drag individual jobs, check and drag multiple jobs, and even move whole rounds at a time. There's also a setting that will "retain" your underlying round order, so if you do drag jobs from one day to another it only changes the due date and doesn't mess with the overall round order/route (which you may have spent a long time getting right!)

Auto worksheets / 8weekly - I've been thinking (for a while now) about adding an "auto worksheets" feature which would automatically create worksheets and keep them in sync with your planner. Idea being (if you rely on the planner, many prefer to work from the jobs tab) that you could set the system to say create the next 7 or 14 days worth of worksheets automatically and keep them in sync with the planner, so if you move a job on the planner it also moves it to the correct (day) worksheet, but while still giving you the full power and flexibility of "proper worksheets" which is where a lot of the good stuff happens such as being able to send/receive notes to/from the lads (or yourself), send SMS reminders, send invoices, print payment slips and also have that crucial (for employers) opportunity to check everything through (i.e. tally cash/cheques in hand with done/paid totals on worksheet) before submitting as final (which you don't have in one view if you're working directly from the planner). The great thing about worksheets is they give you a way of "batching" things (such as creating invoices, sending texts in one go) rather than having to click each job individually on the planner. If we had "auto worksheets" then I think CP would be the best of both worlds for people who prefer a "drag and drop" style of working Let me know what you think!

Cheers,

Rob

[Clever Forum Name]

Rob

^ Thought i would use bold to

When you email GoCardless try and get some info on the API application. They did have an APP around 6 months ago that was basically gocardless but in APP form. It disappeared from the apple store.

What GC really needs is a application where we can sign up customer there and then via our phones.

[Rob @ Cleaner Planner]

Hi Damo,

If you have a phone or tablet with 3/4G then I see no reason why you can't use that to sign up the customer there and then - i.e. go through it with them, fill the form in for them while they watch (or let them do it if they prefer) then perhaps hand the device to them to check through the details before *they* tap the sign up button (so it's them that authorises the DD agreement).

The standard API (which Cleaner Planner integrates with) doesn't currently allow you to sign up a customer directly (i.e. if they give you their sort code and account number) but I suspect this may change (I will try and get more info) and if it did then potentially we could enable you to sign customers up to GoCardless directly from the Cleaner Planner mobile app, but this is all very hypothetical at this stage! I'll have a chat with them and let you know what if anything I find out, but they do tend to be a bit cagey about future plans and timescales

Rob

[Clever Forum Name]

Hi Damo,

If you have a phone or tablet with 3/4G then I see no reason why you can't use that to sign up the customer there and then - i.e. go through it with them, fill the form in for them while they watch (or let them do it if they prefer) then perhaps hand the device to them to check through the details before *they* tap the sign up button (so it's them that authorises the DD arrangement).

The standard API (which Cleaner Planner integrates with) doesn't currently allow you to sign up a customer directly (i.e. if they give you their sort code and account number) but I suspect this may change (I will try and get more info) and if it did then potentially we could enable you to sign customers up to GoCardless directly from the Cleaner Planner mobile app, but this is all very hypothetical at this stage! I'll have a chat with them and let you know what if anything I find out, but they do tend to be a bit cagey about future plans and timescales

Rob

DOH! How easy is that! I never thought of that. As i now have an iphone 6 plus it feels a little bit easier than crowding round a smaller screen lol. Yeah why on earth didn't i think of that. I have been taking ipad in and trying that out but some customers dont even know what a wifi password is! Nice one!

[chris turner]

Cleaner planner is great, made my life a whole lot easier.
Iv been inputting my customers details over the past few weeks, finally finished today.
Being more organised iv managed to compress my working week down to 4 days a week for 4 weeks out of my 6 weekly schedule, whilst still earning the same money 
It's something I just couldn't do working from a diary, mainly because I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of reorganising and re-writing everything out again but was so easy organising work on c.p.
Those 4 days iv opened up I plan on leaving free for add on work or just have a well deserved break!

I'm only on the basic package to start, currently getting customer feedback on go cardless before I decide to upgrade, so far the response has been good so I think il be upgrading by summertime.

Excellent job rob@cleaner planner!!

[Rich Wilts]

You asked someone who's proficient in IT their opinion on a legal issue?

our good friend was sorting it all out for us to use on our lab top , and being a guy that runs a massive team in the city and on more money aday then most window cleaners earn a week we value his views on it , and because hes not like the rest on here full of bum lickers that jump on and off bang wagons because they want to be in with the cool crowd we will take his views over the bum lickers

That's a different way of looking at it I suppose. I guess it says more about you than anything else.

[Mike #1]

Thanks for the replies No23 & Soupy aside from the increase to £25 a month it was a few things wasn't sure about as well as working through the transition of the switch .

Mike - Looking at your website i know CP will be the right move for you Professional website and professional system. It goes hand in hand 

Thanks for the comments on my website very appreciated , I will defo give the app a good go as well on a daily basis i generally just work from the planner and have no need for a worksheet .


Just emailed my customers over to Rob so fingers crossed i will get my head round the change pretty quick .

[Walter Mitty]

You asked someone who's proficient in IT their opinion on a legal issue?

our good friend was sorting it all out for us to use on our lab top , and being a guy that runs a massive team in the city and on more money aday then most window cleaners earn a week we value his views on it , and because hes not like the rest on here full of bum lickers that jump on and off bang wagons because they want to be in with the cool crowd we will take his views over the bum lickers

A harsh way of putting it though I do understand the concerns.

My own view is that I prefer to adapt existing spreadsheet/database software to my own needs.  Once set up it worked fine after a few tweaks.  It is free as well and has free worldwide support.  Because I've set it up myself, I generally know how to adapt it and make adjustments where required.
The downsides are that it is very clunky to operate and takes longer to do things; as a sole trader who is only paid by cash, cheques or BACS though, I'm probably only referring to an extra 5-10 minutes some days.  Someone walking in on my way of doing it would struggle badly - it works best for me because it's grown around me and I've got used to it as it's grown.
My main reservations about relying on more specialised software (not just CP) are (1) more expensive - though this may be cost effective for a more complex business than mine (2)  issues around importing/exporting data (some seem to allow import without re-typing in order to draw you in but have no viable export facility if you wish to use other software).  I don't know where CP is with this issue but I have seen it with other software  (3)  ongoing support does depend upon the wellbeing of the software author.  Although software support would only be a minor reason for wishing the author (Rob?) good health and a long life, there's no denying that the effective running of a number of other businesses would depend upon his health and immortality .

[Rob @ Cleaner Planner]

Hi Chris - thanks for the kind words Really pleased to hear Cleaner Planner is making such a positive impact on your business and saving you so much time. Feel free to drop me a note when you're ready to look at the GoCardless and I can walk you through the ins and outs.

Hi Mike - thanks for signing up! Just emailed you back about the import and switchover. Looking forward to getting you up and running. Let's talk about worksheets when we get a mo. Sure you can tick jobs off on the planner on CP now just like Aworka, but personally I think this is a very inefficient way of working on the domestic side. Great for ticking off and invoicing the odd commercial job or two, but for the volume domestic work I just don't think it makes sense clicking into each job one by one on the planner. Get the jobs onto a worksheet and you can create invoices, print payment slips etc all in one shot! You can also download a worksheet to the mobile app tick it off while out and about so you don't have to waste time sitting and ticking when you get home. App runs offline so it's super fast and no 3G required so you can run it from a WiFi tablet.

ALSO - we've just released a major update to the mobile app so you can now add new customers and extras (e.g. gutter clear, con roof) for existing customers without having to reenter their details. You can insert the new job at a specific place on the worksheet and when you upload at end of day it will insert it in that position in the round so you don't have to reorder it later.