CarpetBossPro Blog — Running a Carpet Cleaning Business

Switching Carpet Cleaning Business Software: Importing Customers and Your First Week Live

Switching software feels risky. Your customers, your schedule and your billing all live in the old system, and moving them sounds like a week of lost work. In practice, the switch goes smoothly when you plan it in a few clear steps: get your data out, clean it up, set up the new system, test it, then go live on a normal week with a backup plan.

Paper or Software, the Steps Are Similar

Moving off paper is covered in Moving a Carpet Cleaning Business Off Paper, Whiteboards and Spreadsheets. Switching from generic field-service software or a spreadsheet you have outgrown follows the same order: customers first, then services and repeat cleanings, then the schedule, then billing.

The main difference is that your data is already digital, so getting it out is usually an export instead of typing.

Step One: Get Your Customer List Out

Most software and spreadsheets can export customers to a CSV file. Export names, phone numbers, emails and addresses at a minimum. If your old system has notes, tags or service dates, export those too if you can.

Then clean it. Open the file and look for duplicates, old customers with no contact information, addresses missing a city or postal code, and phone numbers in different formats. A cleaner import makes the new system cleaner from day one. This is also a good time to remove customers you never want to hear from again.

Step Two: Import and Set Up

In CarpetBossPro, bring your customers in with CSV import. Imported addresses are placed on the map automatically, so they are ready for routing and the Waiting List. One client can have many addresses, which is useful for property managers and customers with rentals.

Then set up the pieces that make the system yours:

• Your service list. Per room, whole house, stairs, hallway, upholstery, area rugs, mattresses, tile & grout, add-ons, move-outs and office maintenance, at your prices. Covered in Building a Carpet Cleaning Service List: Rooms, Stairs, Upholstery, Rugs and Tile.
• Estimate templates for your common jobs.
• Repeat cleanings for customers on yearly or every-six-months schedules, and monthly maintenance for offices.
• Monthly accounts for property managers and offices that want one statement.
• Employees with personal PINs and van assignments, and office users with their roles.
• Tags and custom fields for anything you track, like referral source or pet homes.

Step Three: Practice Before You Go Live

Before you switch your real business, click around. The live demo at my.carpetbosspro.com/demo.html is a fully stocked sample carpet cleaning company you can explore with no signup. Look at the Waiting List, the dispatch board, a job's carpet details, the tech app checklist and an invoice.

Then, in your own account, run a test job from start to finish. Create an estimate from your service list, approve it, schedule it, open it on a phone in the tech app, work through the checklist, take a photo and tap Complete. Check the invoice. Doing it once yourself answers most questions before your crew asks them.

Step Four: Your First Week Live

Pick a normal week to go live, not the week before a holiday. A few tips for the first week:

• Enter upcoming jobs fresh. Put the next week or two of jobs on the dispatch board with their carpet job details and access notes.
• Keep the old system read-only. Look things up there for a while, but stop adding to it. Two live systems cause double-bookings.
• Get the techs set up on day one. They log in to the tech app in the browser on their iPhone or Android phone with your company login and their PIN. No app store download.
• Print route sheets as a backup for the first few days if it helps the crew feel comfortable.
• Collect cards as you go. Ask customers to add a card on file when you confirm their jobs, or to update it in the customer app.

After the First Week

At the end of the first week, sit down with your techs and office person. What was confusing? What notes are missing? Which access notes need fixing? Adjust the service list and templates based on what came up. Within a few weeks, the job history starts building on its own, and each new job at a home fills in from its last one.

If you are still deciding which system to switch to, the last guide in this series covers what to check before you commit. For every guide on running the business, go back to the carpet cleaning business software page.