Hi All,
Most of you probably won't remember me as I sold my company 2 years ago and have been MIA since then…but my non-compete agreement has ended and now I’m back! What’s changed in the industry the past couple years? Did I miss anything?
Now for the questions:
I’m finishing up my website and I am obsessed with having an online booking tool. I promised my family I would not be ‘workaholic Melody’ this time around, so I’m trying to find new ways to make that happen.
One way I’m doing this is by limiting my appointment availability. As a still reforming workaholic, it might just kill me to turn away money, but I can’t work myself (or my back) to death this time…and that goes for both physical labor and office work.
Do any of you currently, (or past-ly) use an online booking program? Ive read a couple of the threads on WCR, but haven’t seen this addressed recently (except for the Housecallpro thread).
I’ve been doing tons of research, but most reasonably priced programs are for service people that book appointments hourly (like hair dressers), which really doesn’t work in our line of work.
I have to say that my goals this time around are very different than last time. No world domination in my future! I plan on having 1 employee at most, and will work with another local company when I get my bigger jobs. I plan on only booking 1-2 jobs a day. So whatever app I use has to be able to limit the calendar in this way. Really I plan on opening up my calendar for 1 job a day to start, and then as I see how it fills out I’ll open up more times. One issue Im worried about:
-If my first client booking is in town#1, my second client that books on that day might be from a town 20 minutes away. That is not efficient. I wish there was a way the program could see that a person had booked a job from town#1, and would only show a 2nd appointment as available when another person from town #1 wanted to book a job. If a person was outside a certain mile range, the timeslot would show as busy. Is that confusing? It feels like that should exist in a program when you’re at different locations each day.
I’ve been following the huge thread on WCR about housecallpro. I started looking into it last month, and they have an advantage in that they cater to our line of work. It seems very promising, and the pricing is very good for what they offer…a little too good to be true. I am a little squeamish on paying for a program, investing my time into figuring it out and uploading customers, only to find it doesn’t work for me. I’ve had that happen too many times in the past. I have a large client database, and don’t need to find work through HCP, so I wouldn’t need to utilize the consumer (housecall) side of the program. My concern is, If I am leading customers to HCP from my website, but I haven’t already entered them in the HCP database, does that mean that I have to pay a commission? And what is the commission based on? No window cleaning jobs are ever priced the same. Ill probably call them tomorrow to ask them these questions. I didn’t see that issue addressed in the HCP thread.
The two programs I’m actively testing right now are Square appointments, and You can Book Me. I love how simple and Pretty Square is, but there are a couple huge drawbacks.
As I said before, I only want to book 1 appointment per day to start. To make that possible, Square support suggested I create 8 hour time slots, and then make my workday length 8 hours. After I figure out the time it’ll take to do the job, I can open up another appointment if there is room.
I’ve had a few friends test it, and they found it very confusing. They click on a button for window cleaning (that’s easy), but then everywhere it says the service will take 8 hours. There isn’t a way to remove the service time. People who have small houses are going to freak out if they think Ill be there for 8 hours. My testers found that part very confusing. Now that I think about it, I probably could just create 2 ‘services’ and call them ‘small-medium sized house window cleaning’, and ‘large sized house window cleaning’ (except Ill say it more eloquently). Small-med. could be a 4 hour timeslot, and large would be the full day. Then I can book other jobs around those appointments.
YOU CAN BOOK ME is a lot less fancy than square, but functionally I find it to work better. It is missing some of the features that Square has, but Square is $30 per month, and YCBM is free for basic (but very good) service. If I stick with it I’ll probably move up to premium level, which is only $16 per month.
I have found other booking tools catering to contractors but they are much more expensive.
Sorry this is so wordy, but I’ve been living in the land of appointment software for too long. I need to make a decision, and I would love your input. What have you used? What works? How can I approach this in a different way?
Most of you probably won't remember me as I sold my company 2 years ago and have been MIA since then…but my non-compete agreement has ended and now I’m back! What’s changed in the industry the past couple years? Did I miss anything?
Now for the questions:
I’m finishing up my website and I am obsessed with having an online booking tool. I promised my family I would not be ‘workaholic Melody’ this time around, so I’m trying to find new ways to make that happen.
One way I’m doing this is by limiting my appointment availability. As a still reforming workaholic, it might just kill me to turn away money, but I can’t work myself (or my back) to death this time…and that goes for both physical labor and office work.
Do any of you currently, (or past-ly) use an online booking program? Ive read a couple of the threads on WCR, but haven’t seen this addressed recently (except for the Housecallpro thread).
I’ve been doing tons of research, but most reasonably priced programs are for service people that book appointments hourly (like hair dressers), which really doesn’t work in our line of work.
I have to say that my goals this time around are very different than last time. No world domination in my future! I plan on having 1 employee at most, and will work with another local company when I get my bigger jobs. I plan on only booking 1-2 jobs a day. So whatever app I use has to be able to limit the calendar in this way. Really I plan on opening up my calendar for 1 job a day to start, and then as I see how it fills out I’ll open up more times. One issue Im worried about:
-If my first client booking is in town#1, my second client that books on that day might be from a town 20 minutes away. That is not efficient. I wish there was a way the program could see that a person had booked a job from town#1, and would only show a 2nd appointment as available when another person from town #1 wanted to book a job. If a person was outside a certain mile range, the timeslot would show as busy. Is that confusing? It feels like that should exist in a program when you’re at different locations each day.
I’ve been following the huge thread on WCR about housecallpro. I started looking into it last month, and they have an advantage in that they cater to our line of work. It seems very promising, and the pricing is very good for what they offer…a little too good to be true. I am a little squeamish on paying for a program, investing my time into figuring it out and uploading customers, only to find it doesn’t work for me. I’ve had that happen too many times in the past. I have a large client database, and don’t need to find work through HCP, so I wouldn’t need to utilize the consumer (housecall) side of the program. My concern is, If I am leading customers to HCP from my website, but I haven’t already entered them in the HCP database, does that mean that I have to pay a commission? And what is the commission based on? No window cleaning jobs are ever priced the same. Ill probably call them tomorrow to ask them these questions. I didn’t see that issue addressed in the HCP thread.
The two programs I’m actively testing right now are Square appointments, and You can Book Me. I love how simple and Pretty Square is, but there are a couple huge drawbacks.
As I said before, I only want to book 1 appointment per day to start. To make that possible, Square support suggested I create 8 hour time slots, and then make my workday length 8 hours. After I figure out the time it’ll take to do the job, I can open up another appointment if there is room.
I’ve had a few friends test it, and they found it very confusing. They click on a button for window cleaning (that’s easy), but then everywhere it says the service will take 8 hours. There isn’t a way to remove the service time. People who have small houses are going to freak out if they think Ill be there for 8 hours. My testers found that part very confusing. Now that I think about it, I probably could just create 2 ‘services’ and call them ‘small-medium sized house window cleaning’, and ‘large sized house window cleaning’ (except Ill say it more eloquently). Small-med. could be a 4 hour timeslot, and large would be the full day. Then I can book other jobs around those appointments.
YOU CAN BOOK ME is a lot less fancy than square, but functionally I find it to work better. It is missing some of the features that Square has, but Square is $30 per month, and YCBM is free for basic (but very good) service. If I stick with it I’ll probably move up to premium level, which is only $16 per month.
I have found other booking tools catering to contractors but they are much more expensive.
Sorry this is so wordy, but I’ve been living in the land of appointment software for too long. I need to make a decision, and I would love your input. What have you used? What works? How can I approach this in a different way?
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