Monday morning, seven jobs, four cleaners, and one of them has just texted to say she cannot make the ten o'clock. You now have to work out who is nearest, who has the keys for that address, whether the customer needs telling, and what that does to the two jobs after it — and you have to do all of it from a phone, in a car park, in about six minutes. Running a domestic and office cleaning firm is mostly this: rearranging a day that will not stay arranged.
ProTakip is job management software for cleaning companies. It runs on Android and iOS, works offline, and the first three months are free. It is built for firms sending people to addresses rather than firms processing items on a site — which changes almost everything about how the software has to behave.
The day, the round and who is where
Jobs in ProTakip move through four stages — to attend, in progress, ready and completed — and every job carries the address, the map location, the customer, the agreed price and the notes. The board is the day. Anyone with permission can see what is booked, what is running and what has finished.
Cleaners work from their own list. They open the job when they arrive and close it when they leave, which gives you actual start and finish times rather than the ones on the schedule. Over a month those two sets of numbers diverge in interesting ways, and that difference is usually where an unprofitable contract is hiding.
When someone drops out, you reassign the job to another cleaner and the day rebuilds itself. Push-to-talk and in-app messaging mean you can tell three people at once without three phone calls, which on a Monday morning is the whole game.
Recurring work is the business
One-off deep cleans pay well and pay once. The firms that survive are the ones with a book of weekly and fortnightly regulars, and that book has to live somewhere better than a diary. ProTakip's calendar and appointment management handles repeat bookings with reminders, so the Tuesday round exists in the system rather than in the manager's head.
Each customer card carries the history, the address, the access notes and the balance. Access notes are where the real operational knowledge sits: key safe by the bins, code 2280, cat stays in the kitchen, do not use bleach on the worktop. Written down once, that survives a cleaner leaving. Kept in one person's memory, it does not.
Quoting and pricing a clean people will actually book
Quoting domestic work is guesswork dressed as a formula, and everyone in the trade has undercharged the same three-bed house at least once. ProTakip lets you price by the hour, by the property, per room, or as a package, with extra services — oven, windows inside, carpets, end of tenancy — defined once and added on when needed.
What that buys you is consistency. Whoever gives the quote gives your quote, not their own guess, and the price on the job at the end is the price agreed at the start. Building the list itself takes some thought about minimum charges and travel time; the method in our pricing guide was written for cleaning work generally and transfers directly.
For a sole trader or owner-operator this matters more, not less. If you are quoting between jobs on your phone, a fixed list is the only thing standing between you and a price you regret for the next six months.
Keys, staff and trust
Cleaning is a trade built on letting strangers into people's homes, and the software has to respect that. Staff are added to ProTakip with an invitation code and given only the permissions they need — a cleaner sees her own jobs and the notes for them, not your turnover, not your margins, not other customers' details.
Performance is visible without anyone being watched: jobs completed, time on site, work closed on schedule. Vehicle and area assignment keeps rounds sensible and stops one person crossing the city while another does three streets. None of this is surveillance for its own sake — it is the information you need when a customer asks why the last clean was short.
Telling customers what is happening
Most complaints in domestic cleaning start as a communication gap: nobody said the cleaner would be an hour late, nobody confirmed the Thursday change, nobody mentioned that the oven clean was booked for next week rather than this one. ProTakip sends automatic WhatsApp messages on stage changes using templates you write yourself, and lets you message a customer directly from their card.
A confirmation the night before and a note when the cleaner is on the way removes most of the friction for the price of two templates. The wording and the frequency are covered in our customer notifications guide — the same rules apply whether you are returning a rug or turning up to clean a flat.
Getting paid, and knowing who has not paid
Domestic customers pay in every way imaginable and remember none of it. ProTakip records what was charged on each job, what has been paid, and what remains, with the balance visible on the customer card. The till record covers income and expenses by period and by staff member, so you can see what a week or a particular cleaner actually brought in.
Then there is the list nobody enjoys: everyone carrying an unpaid balance. Pulling it once a month and working down it politely recovers more money than any pricing change. Our payment collection guide covers a chase routine that does not cost you the customer.
Rounds, travel and the map
Unbilled travel is the quiet killer in this trade. ProTakip holds map locations on every address, groups jobs by area, and assigns rounds to a cleaner or a vehicle so the day makes geographic sense. Our guide to route planning and scheduling is written for firms with a handful of vehicles, which is most of them.
The phone side helps too. On Android, ProTakip shows who is calling before you pick up, offline, so a customer ringing about tomorrow's clean gets an answer that already has their history attached — see the caller ID guide for how it is set up.
Starting, and bringing your customers with you
You can import your existing customers and job history from Excel or another program, so the first day is not an empty screen — the data migration guide explains what moves and what does not. If you are still comparing tools, the nine criteria we use apply to any field service app. Firms that also take rugs and upholstery away for washing use carpet cleaning software in the same account, and those doing post-build cleans alongside renovation and repair work can run both sides together.
Frequently asked questions
Can I set up weekly and fortnightly regulars?
Yes. Recurring bookings are handled through the calendar with reminders, so a weekly or fortnightly round exists in the system rather than in someone's diary. Each visit becomes its own job with its own start and finish times, so you can compare what was scheduled against what actually happened.
Can cleaners see my prices and other customers?
No, unless you allow it. Staff join by invitation code and get only the permissions you assign. A cleaner can be limited to her own jobs and the notes attached to them, with no access to turnover, margins or other customers' records.
How does the software handle keys and access instructions?
Access details go in the notes on the customer card — key safe locations, gate codes, pets, parking, and anything else that should not be relearned every time someone new covers the job. Notes are visible to whoever is assigned to that address and stay with the customer when staff change.
Does it work on a phone with no signal?
Yes. Cleaners can open and close jobs, add notes and record payments offline, and everything syncs when the connection returns. That covers basements, tower blocks and rural addresses where mobile data is unreliable.
Is it worth it for a one-person cleaning business?
Often more than for a large one. A sole trader is quoting, scheduling, cleaning and chasing payment with no office behind them, so a consistent price list, a customer history and a list of unpaid balances save real hours. The first three months are free, which is long enough to find out either way.