TrashCanBossPro Blog — Recurring Plans

Every-Other-Week Trash Can Cleaning Plans: When Monthly Isn't Enough

Some cans get dirty faster than others. A family of six, two dogs and a hot July can undo a monthly cleaning in ten days. Those customers are not a problem to manage. They are the people most willing to pay for more frequent service, and the every-other-week plan is built for them.

The Plan Between Monthly and Weekly

Most customers start on the plan covered in Monthly Trash Can Cleaning Plans: The Backbone of a Bin Cleaning Business. Every-other-week is the step up. It doubles the cleanings without asking the customer to commit to a weekly visit they may not need.

In TrashCanBossPro, an every-other-week plan is a recurring service with a minimum of 14 days between visits. After each completed cleaning, the address drops off the Waiting List and comes back as due two weeks later, on the same weekday, right after the same trash day.

Who Buys Every-Other-Week

You will see the same kinds of customers ask for it again and again:

• Large households that fill their cans every week
• Homes with pets, where pet waste goes in the trash
• Families with babies and diapers
• Anyone who cooks a lot of meat or seafood
• Customers in hot climates, especially through the summer
• Small offices and shops that are not quite busy enough for weekly

When a customer mentions any of these on the first call, offer every-other-week alongside monthly. Many will pick monthly anyway. The ones who choose every-other-week usually do so because they already know their cans smell fast.

Pricing It Against Monthly

Every-other-week customers get about twice as many cleanings as monthly customers. That does not mean the price has to double. Most operators charge somewhat less per cleaning on more frequent plans, because the cans have less buildup and the stop takes less time. As an illustration, if your monthly plan is $30 for two cans, an every-other-week plan might be $50 for the same two cans, billed across two cleanings. The customer pays more per month, gets more service, and pays less per visit.

Whatever you charge, make it simple. Customers should be able to compare the plans in one sentence. For a closer look at building a price list, read Pricing Trash Can Cleaning Plans by the Number of Cans.

Routing on a Two-Week Cycle

Every-other-week customers fit neatly into routes built around trash day. Each address in TrashCanBossPro has its city pickup day stored, and the tech sees it on the job card. If a customer's trash is collected Thursday, their cleaning comes due every second Thursday after the last completed visit.

One practical tip: when you have many every-other-week customers in the same neighborhood, try to start them on the same week. If half the street is on “A” weeks and half on “B” weeks, you drive the street twice as often for the same revenue. Pulling them onto the same cycle, when customers agree to it, tightens the route.

The Waiting List makes this easy to see. Due addresses show on the map, so you can tell at a glance which neighbors are due together and which ones are off by a week.

Moving Customers On and Off the Plan

Every-other-week is often a seasonal plan. A customer who is fine on monthly from November to March may want every-other-week from June through September. In TrashCanBossPro, that change is a matter of setting the address's plan to 14 days between visits in late spring and back to 28 in the fall. The next due date follows the new setting.

Some owners reach out to monthly customers before summer starts and offer the upgrade. That message is easy to send with two-way texting from the office, and it often lands better than waiting for the customer to complain about the smell.

Billing Every-Other-Week Plans

The cleanest approach is to charge the card on file each time the tech completes a cleaning. The invoice is created on completion, the charge goes through, and the customer sees it in the customer app. If you prefer, you can charge on a schedule instead. Either way, there is nothing to chase.

If a cleaning is skipped because the cans were not out, it is not completed, so it is not charged on completion. The office sees the skip and the reason, and decides what happens next.

Offer It, Do Not Push It

Every-other-week is the plan your most motivated customers will want. Offer it, price it fairly, route it around trash day and let it run on a 14-day cycle. To see how all three plan types work together, visit the trash can cleaning subscription software page.