How to create services and add-ons
Services is one list of what you sell and what you charge for it. The price on a clean, the line on a quote and the amount on an invoice are all read back from this list, so it is worth an hour of your time early on.
On this page
Most cleaning firms already have a price list. It lives in the owner's head, in an old PDF, or at the bottom of a quote sent to somebody in March. The trouble with all three is that nothing else can read them, so every clean gets priced again by hand and two clients end up paying different amounts for the same clean.
CleanFlo keeps that list in one place and then reads it everywhere: the Services and Add-ons pickers in the clean drawer, the Add from catalogue button on a quote, and the global search. Get it right once and you stop typing prices.
The Services screen
The sidebar item is called Services and the page it opens is titled the same. Everything on it is one table: your whole catalogue, services and add-ons together, ten rows to a page.
Manage your cleaning services and clean add-ons
| Name | Type | Base Price | Duration / Unit | Active | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Changeover Clean Between guests: linen, bathrooms, kitchen, floors | Service | £65.00 | 1h 30m | Edit | |
| Deep Clean Full property including inside cupboards and appliances | Service | £180.00 | 3h | Edit | |
| End of Tenancy Clean | Service | £240.00 | 4h 30m | Edit | |
| Oven Clean Dip tank, racks and door glass | Add-on | £45.00 | per oven | Edit | |
| Window Cleaning | Add-on | £4.50 | per window | Edit |
- Services in the sidebar opens this screen.
- New service is the main action on this screen.
- New, in the title bar on every screen, adds a clean, client, quote, invoice and more.
The four readings under the header are counts of the whole catalogue, not of whatever the tabs are currently filtering to, so they do not move when you switch tabs. Each one is a button on to the rows behind it, and each tab carries the same count beside its own label. The sort control beside the search offers Name (A–Z), Name (Z–A), Type, Price (low to high), Price (high to low) and Duration (shortest first), and it sorts the whole catalogue rather than the ten rows on screen.
Services and add-ons: the difference
There are two item types and the app treats them as two separate lists everywhere it offers them. A service is the clean. An add-on is something bolted onto a clean that would not be booked on its own.
| Service | Add-on | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A clean somebody books | An extra somebody asks for on top |
| Examples | Deep Clean, Changeover Clean, Weekly Office Clean | Oven Clean, Window Cleaning, Carpet Shampoo |
| Second field | Est. Duration, in whole minutes | Unit, free text such as "per window" |
| Where it appears | The Services picker on a clean, the Services tab of the quote picker | The Add-ons picker on a clean, the Add-ons tab of the quote picker |
| Can be booked alone | Yes | In practice no: it is priced as an addition |
The split matters because the clean drawer draws them as two separate sections. Put window cleaning in as a service and it will not appear under Add-ons when somebody is booking a house clean and wants the windows doing as well. The type cannot be changed after the item is created, so it is worth pausing over.
Creating a service
Press Add Service and a drawer slides in from the right. The title reads New service and changes to New add-on if you press the other side of the segmented control at the top, which is the quickest way to tell what you are about to save.
- Name
- Required. This is the string that appears in every picker, on every quote line and on the invoice, so write it the way you want a client to read it. The placeholder suggests e.g. Deep Clean, Changeover. If you leave it blank the drawer says Name is required. under the field.
- Description
- Optional, and marked as such. It shows as a second line under the name in the catalogue table and it is searched along with the name. Useful for the sentence that stops you being asked "does that include the oven?" every time. The placeholder is What does this include?
- Base Price (£)
- Required, and labelled inc. VAT. This is the number that comes across into a clean, a quote line or an invoice line as the unit price. A blank or non-numeric entry gives Enter a valid price. and a negative one gives Price cannot be negative.
- Est. Duration
- Services only, in whole minutes, and optional. It steps in fifteens, so 120 is two hours. The catalogue table renders it back as 45m, 2h or 2h 30m. A bad value gives Enter a duration in whole minutes. and a negative one Duration cannot be negative.
- Unit
- Add-ons only, and optional. Free text: e.g. per window, per room. It sits in the same Duration / Unit column as a service's duration and it is printed verbatim, so keep it short.
The footer is Cancel and Create. On an existing item the second button reads Save changes instead. Saving raises a small confirmation naming the item, and the new row appears in the table straight away, active by default.
Creating an add-on
Same drawer, one field different. Press Add Extra in the header, or press Add-on / Extra on the segmented control, and Est. Duration is replaced by Unit. An add-on is priced per something rather than per hour, which is why the app asks for a unit rather than a length.
A faster way to start: the template library
Typing services in one at a time is one way to build a catalogue. Press Browse templates, beside Add Extra and Add Service in the header, and a panel opens with 105 ready-written services and add-ons across fifteen categories: domestic, end of tenancy, deep cleaning, commercial, retail, healthcare, industrial, holiday lets, after builders, carpet and upholstery, windows, ovens, gutters and exterior, laundry, and a category of extras that fit almost any clean.
| Template | Suggested | Price |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Bed Home Regular Clean Kitchen, bathroom, living areas and two bedrooms. | 2h | £45 |
| Inside Oven Clean Added to a regular or one-off clean. | per visit | £20 |
Every price and length shown is a starting guide, not a rate CleanFlo has researched for your area, so the price beside each row is a plain number field you can overwrite before you tick anything. Nothing reaches your catalogue until you press the button in the footer, which counts what you have ticked: it reads Add 2 to my catalog once two are ticked, and stays disabled at zero.
A template you have already added keeps its place in the list with a small Added tag beside its name rather than disappearing, so you can carry on browsing another category and add a second batch without losing track of what already went in. What lands in your catalogue is identical to typing the same row in by hand: active by default, and free to edit or retire afterwards exactly like any other item.
How they show up on a clean
This is the payoff. Open the clean drawer and two sections down from the location you get Services and, under it, Add-ons. Each is a stack of rows, and each row is a dropdown of your catalogue plus a Qty box.
Every option in those dropdowns is written the same way: the name, a middot, and the base price to two decimal places. A service called Deep Clean at £180 reads Deep Clean · £180.00. An item with no price set shows just its name. The first option in the list is always , Select.
Underneath, Estimated Earnings lists each chosen line with its own total (base price times quantity), tags the add-on rows so they are distinguishable from the services, and lets you add a one-off Additional charge that is not in the catalogue at all. That charge is also marked inc. VAT.
If your catalogue is empty the pickers do not render at all. Instead you get a line of grey text: No services set up yet. Add them in Services. and, for the other section, No add-ons set up yet. Add them in Services. A clean cannot be saved without at least one service or add-on on it, so an empty catalogue blocks booking entirely.
How they show up on a quote
Quotes reach the same catalogue through a picker rather than a dropdown. In the quote drawer, under the line editor, Add from catalogue opens a small dialog headed Add Item with three tabs: Services, Add-ons and Products. The first two are this catalogue. The third is your stock list, and it carries a warning that stock prices are costs, not selling prices.
Picking an item appends a quote line carrying the name as the description and the base price as the unit price, with VAT set to 20 if your company is VAT registered and 0 if it is not. From there it is an ordinary line you can edit, so the catalogue sets the starting point rather than fixing the number.
Common questions
Can I change a service into an add-on later?
Do I have to fill in a duration?
What happens to the catalogue if I am not VAT registered?
How many services should I set up before I start booking?
Do I have to use the prices from the template library?
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