[Walter Mitty]

I have a customer at the moment who lives in a large house in the sticks.  She spends much of her time abroad.  When I clean, I email her the bill and she sorts it out by BACS.  I've always been paid within 48 hours.
Technology makes it so much easer to run a window cleaning business these days.  When I started (1991), I used to get cards and bills printed by a machine at the stationery shop for extortionate rates, any pre-arranging had to be done by voice over a landline and was very hit and miss about whether they were in or had an answering machine (one of the reasons I still have few pre-arranged jobs - it just became a habit) and written communication was by post.  The (very few) BACS payments had to be set up by telephone banking because internet banking just wasn't around.  Record keeping was hand-written and even when I first did it by computer, I needed an ancient Amstrad PCW spreadsheet called "Rocket" (ha ha).  Only 6 months income could fit on a floppy disc (it had no hard drive) so that was six discs for each year - two for income details and one for expenditure (x2 for back-ups) and it took an eternity to load.
Additionally, I used to have a metal thing which consisted of two long lengths of metal joined by many shorter lengths and had to climb up it.

And you try telling the young people of today that and they won't believe ya.

[Smudger]

Yes that side of things is great, using cleaner planner with go cardless and all the lads having their own tablet makes the end of day so easy! Don't think we would cope without it!!

Ahh, the old amstrad, cutting edge in their day (not!) I had a cpc something then a Sinclair QL 🤓 I even used to go n the for runner to the Internet... Prestel 😎 With a dial up modem that had rubber gaiters so you put the hand set in 😮 .. No cheap rates either even after 6pm used to cost 5p a minute (1988)

Darran

[Cookie]

Technology is great when it works and when you think back 20+ years it's incredible how it has progressed. However when it breaks or slows down you begin to realise how much you, and everyone else, relies upon it.

We had slow broadband in our local area for several days the week before last & everybody was talking about it. The local shop couldn't place orders for new stock, people couldn't run their online businesses from home etc... etc ...

This is why cyber-terrorism is now a real threat....

[CleanClear]

I have a customer at the moment who lives in a large house in the sticks.  She spends much of her time abroad.  When I clean, I email her the bill and she sorts it out by BACS.  I've always been paid within 48 hours.
Technology makes it so much easer to run a window cleaning business these days.  When I started (1991), I used to get cards and bills printed by a machine at the stationery shop for extortionate rates, any pre-arranging had to be done by voice over a landline and was very hit and miss about whether they were in or had an answering machine (one of the reasons I still have few pre-arranged jobs - it just became a habit) and written communication was by post.  The (very few) BACS payments had to be set up by telephone banking because internet banking just wasn't around.  Record keeping was hand-written and even when I first did it by computer, I needed an ancient Amstrad PCW spreadsheet called "Rocket" (ha ha).  Only 6 months income could fit on a floppy disc (it had no hard drive) so that was six discs for each year - two for income details and one for expenditure (x2 for back-ups) and it took an eternity to load.
Additionally, I used to have a metal thing which consisted of two long lengths of metal joined by many shorter lengths and had to climb up it.

And you try telling the young people of today that and they won't believe ya.

I hear you brother. Long gone are the days we need to be messing about all evening invoicing, scheduling etc. Technology takes care of this for us now. So we can be finished and home, have our tea and relax, then come on here all eveining talking about how much time it saves us not having to be at a computer sorting things out. I love technology.
 Tell anyone with a brain what you're doing and they really won't believe ya !!!