CarpetBossPro Blog — Carpet Cleaning Software

Testing Carpet Cleaning Software With the Live Demo Before You Sign Up

Screenshots and feature lists only tell you so much. The real question about any carpet cleaning software is how it feels to use on a Tuesday morning with three vans heading out. The fastest way to find out is to click around a company that is already set up. That is what the live demo is for.

Before You Import Anything

Importing your own customers, covered in Importing Your Customer List Into Carpet Cleaning Software With a CSV, is a commitment of an afternoon. The demo lets you look first. It is a fully-stocked sample carpet cleaning company at my.carpetbosspro.com/demo.html, and you can open it with no signup — no email, no card, nothing to fill in.

What to Look At First: A Job

Open any job and look at the carpet job details. Do the checkboxes match how you think about a job? Bedrooms, living room, hallway, stairs, whole house, upholstery, area rug, mattress, tile & grout; pet odor treatment, stain protector, deodorizer; square feet and number of rooms; carpet type and method; access notes for pets, gate codes, parking and the hose.

Then imagine reading that card in a driveway. Is it clear what the job is? That is the test that matters for your techs.

The Waiting List

Open the Waiting List and look at the map. Pins are colored by status: not due yet, due now, and overdue past a 7-day grace, plus new requests. Zoom into an area and imagine filling a day from it. This is the part of the software that brings repeat customers back, so it is worth a few minutes. The idea is explained in The Waiting List: Filling Carpet Cleaning Days With Repeat Customers Who Came Due.

The Dispatch Board

Look at the Scheduled List or dispatch board. Filter by van. Look at how a day is laid out and how route order works, Closest First or Furthest First from the shop. Check that the board would make sense to whoever does your scheduling — you, a spouse, or an office manager.

An Estimate

Open an estimate and look at how it is built from the service list: per room, whole house, stairs, sofa, area rug, pet odor treatment and so on. Notice how the carpet job details sit on the estimate. In your own account, when a customer approves an estimate online, it becomes the scheduled job with those details carried over.

Invoices and Monthly Accounts

Look at a few invoices: line items, sales tax, paid and unpaid. If you do commercial work, look for a client set to Monthly and see how one statement covers every address, with each line labeled. Think about whether your property managers would find it easy to read.

Clients and Addresses

Open a client with more than one address and see how the addresses, access notes and history are organized. If you have landlords or property managers, this is how they will look in your account.

Pretend to Be a Tech

Spend a few minutes thinking like the person in the van. Look at a day's jobs in route order. Read a job card from top to bottom: the address and navigation, the rooms and carpet, the add-ons, the access notes, the past notes. Walk through the carpet cleaning checklist in your head, from the walk-through with the customer to furniture back on blocks and the dry time talk.

Ask whether your newest tech could run that job without a phone call. If the answer is yes, the tech app will save your office a lot of interruptions.

Pretend to Be a Customer

Then switch sides. Think about what a homeowner sees: a reminder the night before, an alert when they are next, a live route map that says how many stops away the crew is, and afterward an invoice, the before and after photos, and a way to pay or update their card. That is the experience your customers would get.

Questions to Ask Yourself

As you click around, keep a few questions in mind:

• Would my techs understand the job card without calling me?
• Could I fill next week from the Waiting List map?
• Does the service list cover what I sell, the way I price it?
• Would my customers find the invoices clear?
• Is anything missing that I rely on every day?

If the answers are mostly yes, the next step is a trial with your own data.

From Demo to Trial

The demo shows a company that is already set up. A trial is your company. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial with no credit card. In the trial, set up your service list and prices, add your vans and techs, import your customers, and run a real day. Plans are Start at $59/month, Pro at $89/month and Crew at $199/month.

The demo and the trial work well together: use the demo to understand how a finished setup looks, then build yours in the trial with that picture in mind. The setup order is covered in Setting Up Carpet Cleaning Software: Services, Prices, Vans and Techs.

To see every feature in one place, return to the CarpetBossPro carpet cleaning software page.