TrashCanBossPro Blog — Recurring Plans

Minimum Days Between Visits: How 7, 14 and 28 Days Run Your Trash Can Cleaning Plans

Every recurring plan in your business boils down to one question: how long after the last cleaning should the next one happen? Get that number right and the rest of the schedule falls into place. Track it by hand and something always slips. That is why TrashCanBossPro builds plans on one setting: the minimum days between visits.

One Number Per Plan

The three common plans, covered in Weekly Trash Can Cleaning Plans: Who Needs Them and How to Run Them and the articles before it, all come down to a number of days:

• Weekly: 7 days between visits
• Every-other-week: 14 days between visits
• Monthly: 28 days between visits

The number lives on the recurring service at each address. When the tech completes a cleaning, the count starts over. When the days run out, the address comes due again.

Why “Minimum” Matters

The word “minimum” is doing real work here. It means the cleaning will not come due sooner than that number of days after the last completed visit. That protects you from two common mistakes.

First, it keeps you from cleaning a can twice in a short window by accident. If a monthly customer was cleaned late last time, say on day 33, the next cleaning is counted from day 33, not from a fixed calendar date that might be only a few days away.

Second, it keeps the schedule honest. The count is based on what actually happened, the completed job, not on what was supposed to happen. If a cleaning slips, the plan adjusts instead of piling up a backlog of “missed” dates.

Why 28 and Not 30

Owners sometimes ask why the monthly plan is 28 days and not 30 or 31. The answer is trash day. City and hauler pickup runs on a weekly cycle, so the best cleaning day for an address is the same weekday every time, right after the cans are emptied.

Seven, fourteen and twenty-eight are all whole weeks. A plan built on any of them keeps landing on the same weekday. A 30-day plan drifts two days later every month, which means your Tuesday customer slowly becomes a Thursday customer whose cans are already half full again.

Over a year, a 28-day plan gives a customer thirteen cleanings rather than twelve. Many operators price for that, or simply treat it as a bonus that helps keep the customer happy. Either way, decide on purpose and say so in your terms.

From Days to the Waiting List

The days-between-visits number is what feeds the Waiting List. Every address on a plan has a status at all times:

• Not due yet. The minimum days have not passed since the last completed cleaning.
• Due now. The days have passed and the cleaning is ready to be scheduled.
• Overdue. The cleaning has been due for more than a 7-day grace period.

Those statuses show as colors on the Waiting List map and list. The office does not calculate anything. It looks at what is due, picks the addresses for a given trash day and assigns them to a trailer. We cover the colors in detail in Not Due, Due Now, Overdue: Reading the Waiting List Colors for Recurring Bin Cleaning.

Changing the Number

Because the whole plan is one number, changing a plan is simple. A monthly customer who wants more frequent service in summer moves from 28 to 14. A weekly restaurant that cuts back in the slow season moves from 7 to 14. The next due date follows the new setting from the last completed cleaning.

Whatever you change, tell the customer in plain words before the next visit. A quick text from the office, “You're now on every-other-week cleaning through September,” saves a confused phone call when the trailer shows up sooner than they expected.

What You Stop Doing

Once plans run on days between visits, a lot of busywork goes away. You stop keeping a “last cleaned” column. You stop scrolling a calendar to see who is due next week. You stop guessing whether the Garcias were done in March. The completed job sets the clock, the clock sets the status, and the status shows up on the map.

That leaves the office free to do what actually takes judgment: building good routes, answering customers and following up on skips.

Set It Once

Pick the number for each plan, set it on each address and let the completed cleanings do the counting. For the full picture of how TrashCanBossPro handles recurring plans, visit the trash can cleaning subscription software page.