How to add locations and properties
A client is who you invoice. A location is where you turn up. Every clean in CleanFlo is booked against a location, which is why an address is the second thing you create and not an afterthought.
On this page
The split matters most for the people you clean for who are not the people who live there. A letting agent is one client with as many locations as they manage. A care provider is one client with a house on each of six streets. Each site keeps its own address, its own access notes, its own cleaning status and its own clean history, while the invoice still goes to one place.
Locations are added from the client, not from a screen of their own. Open the client from Clients and use Add Location in the page header, or the same button in the empty state on the Locations tab.
The Add Location drawer
The drawer is titled Add Location. Only the name is required, and the name is the one field worth thinking about, because it is the label your cleaners see in their clean list and in the schedule.
- Location name *
- Placeholder "e.g. Seaview Cottage". Name it the way your team would say it out loud: "Flat 4B", "Seaview Cottage", "2nd floor". A row of sites all called "Property" is no use to anybody at seven in the morning.
- Property type
- A select with five options: Home, Office, Holiday Let, Retail and Other. It sets the icon and pill on the location and gives you something to sort a long list by.
- Address
- One line with the placeholder "12 Harbour Road", then a two-up row of City and Postcode. The postcode is worth filling in even on a site you know by heart, because it is what the map opens on when you go to drop a pin later.
- Property details (optional)
- Placeholder "e.g. 3 bed, 2 bath…". The shape of the clean: how many rooms, how many floors, anything that explains why it takes as long as it does.
- Access notes (optional)
- Placeholder "e.g. Keys in the lockbox by the side gate…". How to get in. This is the field cleaners actually read, and it is where a key location belongs, not in a client tag. A key safe or alarm code does not belong here: it goes under Access codes on the location, where it is encrypted and every reveal is logged (see Key safe and alarm codes).
- Initial status
- A select of the four cleaning statuses: Awaiting Clean, Clean, In Progress and Needs Inspection. It defaults to Awaiting Clean, which is right for almost every new site.
The Locations table
Every site a client has is listed on their Locations tab. Five columns and a row action: Location, Type, Address, Details, Status, then a ghost Remove. Clicking the row opens the location itself.
| Location | Type | Address | Details | Status | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flat 4B | Home | 12 Quay Street, Falmouth | 2 bed, 1 bath | Clean | Remove | |
| Flat 9 | Home | 12 Quay Street, Falmouth | 1 bed, top floor | Awaiting Clean | Remove | |
| Seaview Cottage | Holiday Let | 4 Cliff Road, Portscatho | 3 bed, 2 bath | Needs Inspection | Remove |
The four cleaning statuses
Every location carries a cleaning status. It is a property of the site, not of a clean: it says what condition the place is in right now, which is the question a holiday let manager asks on a changeover Saturday and a facilities manager asks on a Monday morning.
| Status | What it means | Who usually sets it |
|---|---|---|
| Clean | The property is done and ready to be handed over or used. | Set for you when a clean at the site is completed. |
| Awaiting Clean | Work is due. The default for a new site. | You, or the changeover that just happened. |
| In Progress | A cleaner is on site now. | Set for you when a cleaner starts the clean in the phone app. |
| Needs Inspection | Something is not right and somebody should look before it is signed off. | You, usually after a complaint or a report from the cleaner. |
The same four statuses feed the counts on the client page: the stats strip there reads Total sites, Clean, Awaiting Clean, In Progress and Needs Inspection, so a landlord with thirty flats can be read at a glance.
The location page
Clicking a row opens the location itself. The breadcrumb runs Clients then the client name then the location name, and the header carries three buttons: a danger Delete, a ghost Edit Location, and a primary Add clean which opens the clean drawer already pointed at this client and this site. The page itself reads in the same order for every property, whatever type it is: the hero, a status row, Keys & access, then Cleans, the job history with a heading on it, and then Property issues. There is no second layout for a second kind of property.
Home · 12 Quay Street, Falmouth TR11 3EH · Keys in lockbox by the bin store, code 1147
| Date | Clean | Time | Assigned To | Price | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu 13 Aug | Changeover clean holiday let | 9:00am · 2h | Aisha Nowak | £95.00 | Done |
| Sat 15 Aug | Changeover clean holiday let | 10:00am · 2h | Marek Kowalski | £95.00 | Scheduled |
| Sat 22 Aug | Deep clean deep clean | 8:00am · 4h | Unassigned | £210.00 | Scheduled |
- Clients in the sidebar opens this screen.
- Add clean is the main action on this screen.
- New, in the title bar on every screen, adds a clean, client, quote, invoice and more.
- Set status
- Four pills. Tapping one changes the cleaning status immediately, with no confirmation and no save button. The current one stays pressed rather than being greyed out.
- All Cleans · Scheduled · In Progress · Done
- Filter tabs over the clean list. There is no Cancelled tab, so a cancelled clean at this site shows only under All Cleans.
- Date · Clean · Time · Assigned To · Price · Status
- The clean columns. Clean shows the title with the clean type beneath it, Time reads as "9:00am · 2h", and an unassigned clean shows a red Unassigned in place of a name. Clicking a row opens the clean details drawer.
- Add clean
- Opens the clean drawer with this client and location already chosen, which is the quickest route to booking repeat work at a site you are already looking at.
With no cleans the list reads No cleans yet and "Scheduled cleans for this location will appear here." Filtering to a status with nothing in it reads No scheduled cleans and "There are no cleans matching this status." A location you have opened from a stale link shows We could not find this location with "It may have been removed, or the link you followed is out of date." and a Back to client button.
The map pin, and what it is for
Edit Location shows the same fields as Add Location plus one block that only exists here: Map location, marked optional. Its help text reads "Used to check that cleans were started at this property, and to navigate cleaners to the door from their clean screen. Without it, cleans here are never flagged, CleanFlo simply says the property has no coordinates, and cleaners are routed to the address instead."
Used to check that cleans were started at this property, and to navigate cleaners to the door.
Pick on map opens a map underneath the buttons. Click the roof and the pin goes there. Drag it if you were a few metres out. The button changes to Hide map while it is open, and nothing is saved until you use Save changes, so you can move the pin around as much as you like first.
Placed on the map.
- Not set
- The state of a property with no pin. Once a pin exists this is replaced by the coordinates themselves and a Check on a map link that opens them in Google Maps.
- Pick on map
- Opens an OpenStreetMap of the area and lets you place the pin by hand. Click to place, drag to nudge, and the small print under the map reads "Click the property to place the pin. Drag it to nudge it." It leaves the note Placed on the map. underneath. This is the only method that can place a holiday let up an unnamed track or a new build whose postcode does not exist yet, and the only one where you can see you got it right before you save.
- Place pin at map centre
- Sits under the map and drops the pin wherever the map is currently centred. It is there for anyone working without a mouse: pan with the arrow keys, zoom with the + and − buttons, then place.
- Use my location
- Uses the device you are holding. Only worth doing when you are standing at the property. It leaves the note Placed from this device, accurate to about 12 m., with the accuracy the device reported.
- Clear
- Removes the pin. Only shown when there is one. Clearing it puts the property back to never being flagged.
The pin does two cleans, and neither of them happens on this screen. The first is directions: on the cleaner's clean screen, Open in maps routes to the pin rather than to the address, which is the difference between arriving at the door and arriving on a mile-long road. The second is checking. When a cleaner starts a clean in the phone app, CleanFlo takes a location stamp and compares it with the property. The Verification section of the clean details drawer then reads At the property, or Away from the property, with the distance and the accuracy beside it. It is not surveillance of the cleaner: it is evidence for you when a client says nobody came.
Common questions
Can one location belong to two clients?
Do I have to set the cleaning status by hand every time?
What happens to the cleans if I remove a location?
Is "Use my location" accurate enough for a block of flats?
Where does the map come from, and does it cost anything?
Do I have to pin every property?
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