Start-House-Cleaning-Business
 
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Before you Start a House Cleaning Business
 
Before you start a house cleaning business, you’ll need to do some planning. Your business plan should include consideration of the following: Before you Start a House Cleaning Business
   
   
A) Back-Office Planning and Administration
Setting Up Your Office
Finding suitable premises, signing a lease, and so on.
Furnishing the Office
Purchasing desks, filing cabinets, etc.
Signing Up for Phone and Internet Services
Land-lines, mobile phones, fax lines, answering machines and more...
Planning Your Computer System and Purchasing the Computer Hardware and Software
You need to select your IT (Information Technology) purchase wisely.
choose where to have the house cleaning office
 
You need to ask several questions initially:
 

a) How many people will need to access the software you plan to use at the same time?
Initially, many business owners start with just a single computer, but experience shows that, if your house cleaning business is going to grow at a reasonable rate, you’ll probably want to have at least two computers initially. With a single computer, the person doing billing must share time on the computer with the person (or people) doing sales, and managing day-to-day requests for appointment changes, requests for additional work, etc. Our experience has shown us that any house cleaning business which grows at a reasonable rate will need more than one person managing the day-to-day operations. And if more than one person is involved in helping to manage the business, each of them will need access to the computer.
 
To cut down on start-up costs, you could always start with one computer, and then add a second (or third) computer later, and have all the computers networked together.
 
 
b) Selecting computer hardware these days is not as difficult as it once was
There were times when computers cost thousands of dollars, and deciding whether to have a larger hard drive, or whether to install a network system, would run you into perhaps thousands more. These days, I recommend that maid service business owners purchase any reliable computer which has all the standard features. You’re not going to need the latest and greatest computers, with gigantic hard drives, or specialized video cards.
 
I generally recommend purchasing a computer from one of the major manufactures such as Dell, or HP. An important consideration: Check to find out what kind of support you’ll get from the company where you purchase your equipment. Once your house cleaning business is running day-to-day, you’ll become reliant on your computer system, and if and when there is a problem, you don’t want to have to start sending the computer back to the manufacturer via UPS or FedEx, and then have to wait days or weeks for the computer to come back. While the computer is in transit, all your precious business-sensitive data will be at risk. Your business won’t be able to afford a period of days or weeks without access to the computer system.
 
Probably the best bet for most people is to find a reliable computer consultant near you, who will help guide you through the entire process of purchasing the computers, setting up the network, and installing your software. In addition, the consultant can be available for you if and when there is a hardware problem.
 
I have seen many people in the residential cleaning business as well as in other industries that I work with try to save money on their initial computer purchases – hardware as well as software – and who regret it later, when unexpected problems arise.
 
 
 
 
All contents of this site © Copyright 2008, Murray Gordon, Murray Gordon Consulting. All rights reserved.