Recurring Plans in Trash Can Cleaning Software: Weekly, Every Other Week and Monthly
One-time cleanings pay for gas. Recurring plans pay for the trailer. A bin cleaning company with a few hundred customers on monthly plans has steady income it can count on, as long as nobody gets forgotten. That is the job of recurring plans in your software.
Plans and Trash Day Work Together
In Why Your Trash Can Cleaning Software Needs to Know Every Address's Trash Day, we covered when a cleaning can happen. Plans answer the other question: how often. Put them together and you know which customers are due, and which day of the week to clean them.
The Three Common Plans
Most bin cleaning companies sell some mix of three plans:
- Weekly. For restaurants, dumpster pads, some HOAs, and homeowners who really hate the smell in summer.
- Every other week. A middle option, popular in hot months.
- Monthly. The backbone of most residential routes.
Many companies also sell one-time cleanings on the side. The pricing is yours. A company might charge, for example, $35 a month for two cans on a monthly plan and a little more for each extra can. The software's job is to make sure each customer comes back around on schedule.
Days Between Visits, Not Dates on a Calendar
TrashCanBossPro sets plans by the minimum number of days between visits: 7 for weekly, 14 for every other week, 28 for monthly. When that many days have passed since the last cleaning, the next one comes due.
Why not just put "the second Tuesday of every month" on a calendar? Because bin cleaning does not run on a perfect calendar. Weather pushes a route back. A holiday moves trash day. A tech is out sick. With fixed dates, every slip has to be fixed by hand, and the next month's date is still wrong.
With days between visits, the plan counts from the last actual cleaning. If the Garcias were cleaned three days late this month, next month's cleaning comes due 28 days after that, not on a date that no longer makes sense. The schedule corrects itself.
Where Due Plans Show Up
Due cleanings show up on the Waiting List, a live map and list of every cleaning that came due. Pins are colored by status: not due yet, due now, and overdue once a cleaning is more than seven days past due.
This is the core of the system. Plans come due on their own, and the office's job is to look at the map and route what is due. Nobody keeps a separate list of who is next. More on this in The Waiting List: How Bin Cleanings Come Due on Their Own.
Tagging Plans
Tags make plans easy to find and sort. TrashCanBossPro clients can carry tags like Monthly, Every-Other-Week, HOA and Commercial. Filter by tag to see all your weekly customers, or all your HOA accounts, in one list. That helps when you want to text all your monthly customers about a price change or check how many every-other-week customers you have heading into summer.
Plans and Billing
A plan is only steady income if it gets paid. When the tech completes a cleaning, the invoice is created and the card on file can be charged. Some companies prefer to auto-charge plans on a schedule instead. Either way, the money follows the plan without anyone sending invoices by hand. Customers who don't have a card on file can pay from the customer app, and past-due follow-up handles the rest.
Changing a Plan
Customers switch plans. A monthly customer goes every other week for the summer. An HOA adds weekly service for its dumpster pad. When that happens, change the plan on the address and the next due date follows the new number of days. The customer can also request service or sign up for additional services through the customer app, and the office takes it from there.
Plans in Practice
A simple way to run plans week to week:
- Open the Waiting List and look for due and overdue pins.
- Group due addresses by trash day.
- Assign each group to the day after its trash day, on a trailer.
- Let reminders, the tech app and auto-charge handle the rest.
Overdue pins are the ones to watch. If they keep showing up in the same neighborhood, that trailer may need another day.
The Takeaway
Recurring plans set by days between visits keep your customers coming back on schedule, even when a week goes sideways. For how plans connect to routes, the tech app and billing, visit the trash can cleaning software page.
Let Plans Come Due on Their Own
Weekly, every-other-week and monthly cleanings set by 7, 14 or 28 days between visits.
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