It means staying organised and flexible
Perfect Clean is a mid-sized commercial cleaning company with around 30 employees. Specialising in routine maintenance cleaning, Oliver Budde, managing director of Perfect Clean, has built up a loyal customer base over recent years that has high quality standards. Those standards have to be met every day, no matter which of his employees is on site.
“We need a good overview of the individual project activities for our employees, and we have to be able to respond to things that come up on the day, such as special tasks.”
Turnover, Covid, ... Perfect Clean has its struggles too
The high staff turnover in the industry does not exactly make that easy. Especially now, in a time shaken by the Covid crisis and by rising energy costs, conditions at Perfect Clean change constantly. And employees’ personal circumstances change frequently too. “We have a regular coming and going,” Budde tells us.
That means a large investment of time in training new employees and settling them into the role. And time means money and uncertainty, particularly because many of the employees do not speak German.
Time tracking with pen and paper was the last straw
Time tracking is nothing new for commercial cleaning; working time tracking has been mandatory in this sector for many years. In the past Perfect Clean handled it with pen and paper. That also takes a lot of time for transferring entries by hand and, above all, for calculating special rules. Because premium pay has to be watched carefully, particularly for Sunday and public holiday work but also for night work. For Oliver Budde that means: an ordinary timesheet with two columns is not enough here.
The requirements for a time tracking system are considerably more complex for a commercial cleaning contractor. After a great deal of work in the office and growing expansion of his business, he decided on a new solution.
No more pen and paper!
Looking for a digital time tracking program, he came across clockin among others. He signed up for a free trial and experimented on a small scale at home with the features and possibilities, but quickly decided: the effort of introducing this app is low for him and it offers him a great deal of value. Asked why clockin in particular, he says: “Even at that point the number of my employees was growing steadily. The modular structure of clockin played right into my hands. I can increase the quota of employees I manage quickly and easily. Two clicks and I have two more employees in the clockin administration.”
A big step towards quality assurance, and customers appreciate it too
But that is not all: Perfect Clean makes heavy use of project documentation. Photos and messages sent through the app shorten many steps in the work. Information recorded on day 1 by employee A is saved in the project file and can easily be called up on day 2 by employee B. Photos let spotless results be archived and shown to the customer. Because these are often work situations that can change again very quickly: a freshly mopped hallway can look quite different once five people have walked through it.
“That way we always have the proof that the area was kept clean. And that is also one reason why our customers hire us, because they want to help preserve the value of these properties.”
But project documentation is not the only way Oliver Budde ensures quality. “Transmitting GPS data was a huge step forward, because now we can prove it: the app was not started from the sofa, but actually at the property.” That strengthens his trust in his employees and gives him a good feeling.
One click instead of ploughing through sheets of paper
Perfect Clean now manages far more employees with less time spent than it did just a few years ago. The error rate in time tracking has dropped sharply and the documentation of the individual properties has improved considerably. With straightforward post-project costing, clockin delivers what used to be a real performance every time. Instead of ploughing through sheets of paper and adding up hours to find out whether properties were completed successfully, today all it takes is opening an analysis in the Office Center. That is the press of a button and no longer hours of work.
When German customs suddenly knock at the door
“We now have time tracking completely under control and, what is more, legally watertight,” Oliver Budde explains. During our visit on site he tells us about a situation that is not unusual in commercial cleaning but that still regularly causes stress: German customs (Zoll) are at the door. The two officers were apparently on their way to another cleaning company in the building, which was not there, so on the spur of the moment they knocked on Perfect Clean’s door to take a look at their time tracking system.
“The visit lasted maybe 20 minutes in total, and the actual inspection was already done after 10 minutes once we had shown them how we work with clockin.”
Excellently handled and exemplary for the cleaning industry
Oliver Budde sent the documents afterwards, meaning the printout from the Office Center and the statements, to the customs authority and quickly received the feedback: from the customs authority’s point of view, the matter was handled outstandingly. “From that point at the latest, I was 100% convinced about using clockin,” says Oliver Budde.
The employees benefit too
The employees at Perfect Clean can rely on being paid fairly and correctly. clockin is intuitive to use and there are never any questions about how it works. Customers get concrete proof of the work, and whenever questions come up, Oliver Budde simply turns to the experts at clockin: “We have always been supported as much as possible in the past. I feel that recognition and appreciation at clockin and it confirms my decision to have chosen the right partner.”
Would you like to find out more about how clockin can support your business?
