CarpetBossPro Blog — Upholstery, Rugs & Tile

Setting Up Your Upholstery Cleaning Service List: Sofas, Loveseats, Chairs and Sectionals

The service list is the quiet foundation of an upholstery business. Every quote, every job and every invoice pulls from it. If the list is thin, people improvise prices on the phone. If it's cluttered, people pick the wrong thing. An hour spent setting it up properly pays back every time someone books a sofa.

Start With the Big Picture

If you haven't read the overview yet, Upholstery Cleaning Software: The Complete Guide to Running Sofas, Rugs, Mattresses, Tile and Add-Ons With Your Carpet Work explains how the service list feeds quotes, jobs, the tech checklist and invoices. This article is about the list itself.

In CarpetBossPro, your service list is whatever you set up. There is no fixed menu you have to fit into. Estimates are built from it, and each service you add becomes a line item when it lands on an invoice. That means the names you choose are the names your customers will read, so write them the way you would say them out loud.

The Core Upholstery Pieces

Most companies can cover the majority of furniture calls with five services:

• Sofa. A standard three-cushion sofa. Example: $129.
• Loveseat. Usually priced below the sofa. Example: $99.
• Chair. An armchair or recliner. Example: $69.
• Sectional. Priced per section or per seat, since sectionals vary so much.
• Dining chair. Priced per chair, seat only or seat and back.

Resist the urge to create a service for every furniture style you have ever seen. A chaise, an ottoman or a bench can often be quoted as a chair or noted on the job. Add a new service when you find yourself quoting the same odd piece every week, not before.

Rugs, Mattresses and Tile

Next, add the other non-carpet work your vans already do. Area rugs can be a flat price per rug or tiered by size, such as small, standard and large. Mattresses can be priced by size or as one flat rate. Tile & grout is usually best priced per square foot, because CarpetBossPro can price services off the property's measurements, so the square feet on file fill in the number.

These services match checkboxes on the job details: Area Rug, Mattress and Tile & Grout sit right next to the rooms. When the office checks the box and adds the service, the tech sees it on the job card and on the checklist.

Add-Ons as Their Own Services

Add-ons are where a lot of money leaks out of a carpet company, because they are small enough to give away. Put each one on the list:

• Pet odor treatment, often per room or per area, such as $25 a room.
• Stain protector, per room for carpet and per piece for upholstery.
• Deodorizer, per room or per job.
• Spot removal, for heavy spotting beyond normal pre-treatment.

With add-ons on the list, the office can offer them on every quote and the tech's request at the door turns into a real line item. Pricing pet odor work is covered in Pricing Pet Odor Treatment Per Room or Per Area Without Undercharging.

Naming, Order and Minimums

A few habits keep the list easy to use:

• Use plain names. “Sofa cleaning” beats an internal code. The customer reads it on the invoice.
• Group similar items. Keep the upholstery pieces together, then rugs, then hard floors, then add-ons, so nobody scrolls past the loveseat.
• Decide on minimums. If a single dining chair isn't worth a trip, set a minimum charge as its own service or write the rule into your estimate templates.
• Write short descriptions. “Seat cushions and back, up to three seats” tells the office and the customer what a sofa includes.

When you change a price, change it on the list once. Every new quote picks up the new number.

It also helps to decide who on your team owns the list. Keep price changes with the owner or office manager as a house rule, so a new hire doesn't quietly drop the sofa price while building a quote. One person owning the list keeps it clean, and everyone else just picks from it. Review it each season, remove anything nobody has booked in a year, and add the piece your techs keep writing into the notes by hand.

Testing the List Before You Go Live

Before you rely on the list, quote a few real jobs from last month with it. A three-room carpet job with a sofa and protector. A sectional on its own. A kitchen and two bathrooms of tile. If any quote takes more than a couple of minutes to build, or needs a note to explain a missing service, fix the list.

The live demo at my.carpetbosspro.com/demo.html is a fully stocked sample carpet cleaning company, so you can click through estimates and services before entering your own. To see how the service list connects to everything else, head back to the CarpetBossPro upholstery cleaning software page.