Friday afternoon, looking at Saturday
Saturday is changeover day for most of your properties. On Friday afternoon, the operations manager goes through the booking calendar, writes down every departure and arrival, checks which cleaners are free, texts each of them their list and hopes nobody is ill. A late booking comes in on Friday evening for a cottage that was empty, and it needs a clean nobody planned.
On Saturday morning a cleaner turns up at a property where the guest has extended their stay. Another property is missed because it was booked on a different channel and did not show up in the view the manager used.
Why the schedule is always last-minute
The cleaning schedule is derived entirely from bookings, but it is built separately, by a person reading the calendar. Every change to a booking, such as a late booking, a cancellation, a date change or an early check-in request, means someone has to notice and adjust the cleaning plan.
Cleaners are usually self-employed, cover different areas and have their own availability, which lives in text messages. So the schedule is really a set of conversations, reconstructed each week.
What a scramble costs
Guests who arrive to an unclean property leave poor reviews, and poor reviews affect future bookings on the channels. Cleaners who get wasted journeys or late changes are harder to keep, and good cleaners are the scarcest resource in holiday lets. Operations managers spend their Friday and Saturday on the phone rather than on anything else.
The changeover scheduler we build
We build a scheduler that works from your bookings and your cleaners' availability, and keeps everyone updated as things change.
- Booking feed: departures and arrivals are read from your property management system or channel manager, so every channel's bookings are included.
- Cleaning jobs: each departure creates a cleaning job with the window between check-out and the next check-in, the property's clean duration, linen needs and any special tasks such as a hot tub or pet clean.
- Assignment: jobs are proposed to cleaners based on area, availability and the properties they know. The operations manager confirms or changes the plan.
- Cleaner app: each cleaner sees their jobs on their phone with property access notes and checklists, and marks jobs started and finished.
- Change handling: when a booking changes, affected jobs update and the cleaner is notified. New last-minute bookings create jobs and prompt assignment.
- Uncovered alert: jobs without a cleaner, or where timings do not fit, are flagged early with the time left before the next arrival.
| Event | What the scheduler does |
|---|---|
| New booking | Creates a changeover job for the departure before it |
| Cancellation | Removes or reschedules the clean, tells the cleaner |
| Guest extends stay | Moves the clean, tells the cleaner |
| Cleaner unavailable | Flags the jobs and suggests alternatives |
| Clean finished | Marks the property ready for arrival |
How changeover day runs afterwards
The schedule for Saturday is built as bookings arrive, not on Friday afternoon. Cleaners know their jobs early and hear about changes as they happen. The operations manager watches a board of properties turning from 'guest departed' to 'clean in progress' to 'ready', and spends their time on the exceptions.
Guests arrive to properties that were cleaned, and the team can see which cleaner did each one if a question arises.
Is this your changeover day?
- The cleaning schedule is built by hand from the booking calendar.
- Cleaners get their lists by text the day before.
- Last-minute bookings or changes have led to missed cleans.
- Cleaners have turned up to properties still occupied.
- You cannot see on the day which properties are ready.