For most janitorial companies the nightly clean runs itself: the same crew, the same building, the same checklist. Floor care scheduling is different. Strip and wax twice a year, carpet extraction every quarter, exterior glass monthly, high dusting once a year: each building has its own mix, and the work needs a different crew, different equipment and often a weekend.
List the periodic work per building
Start with a simple inventory for each building: which periodic services it gets, how often, which months, how long each takes and with how many people. Most companies find work that was promised in the contract and never scheduled, or done every year without being priced.
Spread the load across the year
If every building gets strip and wax in the same two months, the floor crew is overbooked twice a year and idle the rest. Stagger buildings across months where the contracts allow it. Put the heaviest work where the building is quietest: schools in summer, offices over long weekends.
Plan the crew and the equipment together
Floor care needs machines: burnishers, extractors, a scrubber, a lift for high dusting. Two crews can’t use the same extractor on the same night. Plan the people and the equipment as one booking, and check for conflicts before the week starts, not when the van is half loaded.
Check the work, not just the schedule
Floor care is easy to do quickly and badly. A finish that was rushed shows up as scuffs a month later, and the building manager remembers. Agree with each building what “done” looks like, photograph the floor after the last coat, and note anything you couldn’t reach, like furniture the tenant didn’t move. A short record after each job settles most complaints before they start.
Make it easy for building managers to ask
Building managers ask for extras: a spill in the lobby, a tenant move-out, a carpet stain before an inspection. Give them one way to ask that lands with the office, and tell them when the visit is booked. It saves a string of emails and makes the extra work easy to price.
How Sentra Scheduler handles periodic work
A property management company is one customer with many sites. Each periodic service is a recurring job on its building, with its frequency (weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, quarterly, a few times a year or custom months), hours per visit, crew size and price. Sentra Scheduler adds up the annual value and creates each visit in the period it’s due.
Weekly work, like a weekly office clean, can be a recurring job too. Nightly routes can’t: the most often a job repeats is weekly, so nightly cleaning stays in the way you run it today, and Sentra Scheduler carries the periodic work and the requests.
On crew days, each crew gets its people, a vehicle and a start time, and equipment like an extractor is booked to the crew day or to a single visit. The schedule warns when the same machine is booked twice, or when someone is off.
Building managers can send requests from your website’s request button or by email; the office files them as jobs at the right building. After the work, the crew takes the after photos and the job type’s close-out questions, and the building contact can sign on the technician’s phone.
Weekend and after-hours work
Most floor care happens when the building is empty: nights, weekends, holidays. That changes how you plan it. Confirm access a few days ahead, including alarm codes and who opens the door. Make sure the building manager knows the floors will be wet and blocked, and for how long. And plan the crew’s hours honestly, so a strip and wax that runs until 3 a.m. doesn’t leave the same people working the next night’s route.
Good floor care scheduling also leaves a buffer after big jobs. A floor that needs a second coat, or a carpet that won’t dry before Monday, is easier to handle when the crew isn’t already due somewhere else.
In Sentra Scheduler, a building’s access notes and alarm codes sit on the site and show on the visit in the crew app, and each crew day has its own start time and hours, so a late weekend job is visible on the schedule before it’s booked.
See the year before it happens
The forecast adds up the hours your recurring jobs need month by month against your crews’ capacity. A spring that’s far over the line is a signal to move some buildings’ floors to another month while there’s still time to talk to the building manager.
Getting started
- Inventory the periodic work for every building.
- Stagger the heavy services across the year.
- Book equipment with the crew, not separately.
- Give building managers one way to ask.
For the full picture, see commercial cleaning and janitorial companies. For balancing the year, read crew capacity planning.