Window Round Sheet Template

A round sheet is not a job list

A job list is a set of things to be done today. A round sheet is a cycle that has to keep turning, and the difference shows up in what goes wrong. Nothing is late on a round sheet, because there is no date to be late against: the customer just quietly gets further apart from the last visit until one day they think you have stopped coming.

That is why the cycle goes at the top of this sheet rather than being held in somebody's head. Everything a customer asks is answered from it: when were you last here, when are you next due, why has it been so long. A round with no written cycle cannot answer the third question, which is the only one that ever matters.

It is also why done and paid are two columns. On a domestic round they come apart constantly, one customer pays in cash at the door, one by standing order whether or not you turned up, and one is three visits behind. A single tick that means both is a tick you cannot trust by the end of the month.

Work the round in the order you drive it

Number the rows in the order the round is actually worked and keep them that way. A sheet ordered by name, or by the order customers signed up, means reading the whole page at every stop, and it hides the one thing a round sheet should make obvious: which customers are next to each other.

The value of that is money. Two houses on the same street are worth more than two houses at the same price ten minutes apart, and the only way to see it is a sheet ordered geographically. It is also how a new customer gets priced: the second house on a street costs less to serve than the first, and a round sheet in driving order shows you which is which.

Leave a gap at the end of each street or estate rather than filling every line. New customers land in the gap where they belong instead of at the bottom of the page, and the sheet stays in driving order for another year.

The skipped column is the one that pays for itself

Most round books have no way to record a customer who was not done. The visit is either ticked or the line is blank, and a blank means both "not been yet" and "could not get in", which are opposite things.

Write the reason. Nobody in, gate locked, car on the drive, rained off, van off the road. Then read the column at the end of the cycle: the same name twice in a row is a customer who is about to be somebody else's, and the same reason across ten names is a problem with the round rather than with the customers.

Tell them at the time, on a card through the door or a message, and write that down too. A customer who knows why you did not come is a customer who is still there next cycle. A customer who came home to clean windows they did not expect, or dirty ones they did, is the one who says yes to the next window cleaner who knocks.

What the paper cannot do

Paper is genuinely good at this up to a point, and this sheet is not a teaser for something else. One person, one van, one round in driving order: a printed sheet on a clipboard beats a phone in the rain, and it works with no signal, no battery and wet hands.

It stops working when there are two of you. Two people working two halves of one round produce two sheets that have to be reconciled by hand every night, and the version on the wall is never the version in the van. It stops working again the moment a customer rings to ask when you were last there, because the answer is on a sheet from six weeks ago in a drawer.

What software does about that is narrower than it is usually sold as. It holds one version of the round, puts each cleaner's own day on their own phone with the access notes, and flags a customer whose gap has grown past their own rhythm. It does not drive the van, order the round or collect the money.