THANK you for the responses.
I've often thought about how the software we use (eg. Cleaner Planner / George / Aworka) we use could be improved and here are my ideas:
1) All Debt chasing texts and emails to be sent out automatically. And for the system to stop sending out these chase texts / emails when the customers account is settled.
2) To have the ability to work out how much each customer is contributing to profit from the software. How we have refined our rounds is that we've a) worked out how much it costs to run each van per minute, and then we've b) timed the jobs and c) worked out profit margin on each job d) increased prices for customers so that they are ALL profitable.
It is a hassle doing this, because you are working with excel spreadsheets, and manually inputting timings on each job into an excel spreadsheet so you can work out how profitable each job is.
If the software had a functionality wherby it could calculate how much it was costing to run the vans per minute from the ‘acccounts’ part of the software, then you could input the timing for each job, and the software would then calculate how profitable each job was, and you would have some solid data for making business decisions about 'contribution to profit' by each customer.
From this data (profit margin on each job / contribution to profit by each customer) you would be able to sort your customer list into ‘A-grade’, ‘B-grade’ and ‘C-grade’ customers, depending on their contribution to profit.
Over time you could increase the prices of the B-Grade and C-Grade customers to increase the profitability of your business.
3) Be able to run it on a mobile device. The apps that the software providers supply work well on a mobile device, but if you need to do anything on the ‘main’ software website, it is difficult to make the main software site work from a mobile device (but the app works well for the worksheets).
4) Be able to take card payments direct, using an app, without faffing about with a card reader, I'm talking about something like 'apple pay', where YOUR phone camera scans the card, and payment is made.
5) Your payment card reader is be linked directly to the books, so you are not manually inputting payment.
6) The round software's ‘accounts’ are linked directly to acccounting software like Zero / Quickbooks, so you don't need to check your accounts in the software are the same as your bank statements.
7) New customers can input their data directly into the software from the your website. So you don’t need to manually input customers data for new customers.
EIGHT) Route optimisation of: a) worksheets and b) rounds, using a ‘route optimiser’ that orders the jobs on the worksheets and in the rounds automatically, to save on travel time and van fuel costs.
Of the above features, which ones (eg. 1,3 and 5) are of interest to you?
