Three Reports Your Cleaning Managers Need To Be Effective

Your managers can’t be everywhere — but reporting can help them oversee what’s happening when they aren’t on a job.

Being a cleaning manager means getting things done through the coordination and oversight of multiple people, products and processes. But in order for managers to do their jobs effectively, they need information to help them make decisions. 

The managers who oversee your daily cleaning operations need specific, accurate and timely information to do their jobs well. Without this information, they are left to manage and make decisions in the dark.

While getting out to visit accounts and interacting with their team members is certainly necessary, it is impossible for a manager to be everywhere at once. This is where reports can become valuable in allowing them to know what’s going on without being present. 

For project and operations managers, there are three reports your cleaning managers need to get a complete picture of what’s happening on the job.

Daily hours budget reports

The daily hours budget report is perhaps the single most important of the three reports because it gives daily information about the jobs. This report is basically a summary of the hours worked by each employee, broken down by job. 

For instance, if you’re managing the jobs at ABC Bank, you can see who worked there last night and how many hours they worked. Additionally, if budgets are set up correctly, you can constantly compare the hours worked to the hours budgeted.

This report gives your managers two distinct advantages. First, it helps them monitor quality by ensuring that enough time is spent on each account each night. A sure indicator of quality problems is a steady reduction in cleaning hours. You can stay ahead of quality problems by monitoring hours daily and catching problems before they balloon.

Second, the daily hours budget report helps your cleaning managers ensure jobs are always profiting as planned. With labor accounting for anywhere between 55-90% of your expenses, monitoring hours is the main driver of company profitability. When this is done effectively on a micro level, you can ensure that profits will occur on a macro level. It makes for a truly scalable model.

Monthly job cost statements

This report for cleaning managers zooms out the lens on the jobs and looks at a monthly snapshot of the account. It is basically a profit and loss statement broken down by job. At my company, Frantz Building Services, cleaning managers get a monthly statement for their accounts. With each account, they can track labor dollars, supply costs, overtime expenses and more. 

This allows our managers to be mini-business owners, taking charge of their piece of the company. Each month, they identify poorly performing accounts and put plans in place to get the accounts back on track. Once again, these reports give a micro-level summary of different parts of the business. If each manager is managing the accounts appropriately, we can expect consistent profitability, all other things being equal.

Monthly profit and loss statements

Sharing your company financials helps build trust among your management team while also cultivating ownership at all levels of the organization. I would encourage you not to be reluctant here. You shouldn’t have anything to hide from your team members. I have found that open books keep me accountable, which is a great check and balance on leadership.

Monthly profit and loss statements help your cleaning managers see how their group of accounts ties into the branch as a whole. When they are disconnected from this information, you should expect decisions in keeping with a disconnected attitude or mentality. 

While this is a topic for another blog, I would also encourage you to compensate your managers based on both account performance and overall branch performance. If you want team players, you must treat them as part of the team.

Accessing reports for cleaning managers

You may be asking, “How can I get these reports for my cleaning managers?” For the budget hours report, you can use a mobile timekeeping system specific to the cleaning industry. For the job cost reports, along with the monthly profit and loss reports, use a holistic software solution that includes accounting functionality. 

However, the key to these reports is your data input. If you are not accurately imputing employee time and other costs, then you cannot expect to get accurate reports. If you aren’t using these reports yet, then don’t wait. I promise it will help you and your managers make better decisions. Schedule a demo to learn more about reports your cleaning managers need. 

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As a 3rd generation owner, Jordan Tong has used various leadership and strategic approaches to grow the business from $1.7 Million to $15M since starting in 2007.  Jordan also offers 1-1 consulting through his company Elite Business Coaching and leads their unique and powerful online Janitorial Mastermind Group.