TrashCanBossPro Blog — Recurring Plans

Not Due, Due Now, Overdue: Reading the Waiting List Colors for Recurring Bin Cleaning

A map full of pins is only useful if you can read it at a glance. On the TrashCanBossPro Waiting List, the color of each pin tells you where that address stands on its plan. Learn the three colors and you can plan a week of bin cleaning in a few minutes.

Where the Colors Come From

The colors are the visible side of what is described in How Recurring Trash Can Cleanings Come Due on Their Own on the Waiting List. Every recurring address has a minimum number of days between visits. Every completed cleaning restarts the count. The color simply shows where the count is right now.

There are three statuses, and each one has a different job for the office.

Not Due Yet

The address has been cleaned recently and the minimum days have not passed. A monthly customer cleaned twelve days ago is not due yet. Neither is a weekly customer cleaned yesterday.

You do not need to schedule these addresses. But they are still worth seeing on the map. A not-due pin is a customer you will visit soon, which makes the street they live on a good place to find new customers. If you are knocking doors, hanging flyers or asking for referrals, the not-due pins show you where your trailer already goes.

Not-due addresses can also be scheduled early when it makes sense. If a customer is a few days short of due but sits right in the middle of tomorrow's route, some owners pick it up with the rest of the street. That is a judgment call, and the color tells you exactly how early you would be.

Due Now

The minimum days have passed. This is the work you are supposed to be scheduling. On a healthy schedule, most of the routes you build each week come from due-now addresses.

The best practice is to schedule due-now cleanings on or right after the address's trash pickup day. The trash day is stored on the address and shows on the list, so you can group the due pins by pickup day and route them together. A customer who comes due on a Friday with a Tuesday trash day is usually best cleaned the following Tuesday, when the cans are empty and already at the curb.

Overdue

An address turns overdue when its cleaning has been due for more than seven days. That 7-day grace is there on purpose. It gives you room to wait for the right trash day without the map shouting at you. Past that, though, the customer is getting less service than they are paying for.

Overdue pins should be treated as the first thing to schedule. They usually come from one of a few causes:

• A skipped cleaning that was never rescheduled
• A route that ran out of daylight and pushed stops off
• A customer who asked you to hold off for a week or two
• Weather or a breakdown that cost a whole day

If you see the same customer go overdue twice, look at why. A customer whose cans are never out may need a reminder setting changed, a different cleaning day, or a conversation. For more, read Handling Skipped Visits on a Trash Can Cleaning Plan.

A Weekly Routine Using the Colors

Many owners use a simple routine at the start of each week:

• Open the Waiting List and look for overdue pins first. Schedule every one of them.
• Then group the due-now pins by trash day and assign each group to that day's trailer.
• Look at what is left. If a route is light, pull in nearby not-due addresses that are close to their date.
• Auto-route each day from the shop and check the order.

Done that way, the overdue color should stay rare. When it starts showing up more often, it is an early sign that you have more subscribers than your current crew can clean, which is a good problem to know about early.

Colors Are a Health Check

At a glance, the Waiting List tells you how your recurring business is doing. Mostly not-due pins means the routes are keeping up. A wall of due-now pins means a busy week ahead. A spreading patch of overdue means you are falling behind and customers may start to notice. To see how the Waiting List fits with the rest of your recurring plans, visit the trash can cleaning subscription software page.