Cleaning & Service Business Job Tracker
This cleaning business job tracker works out what each client really pays you per hour once the drive to them is counted.
Two jobs at the same price are not the same job when one of them is forty minutes further away. Forty minutes of driving turns a $23 an hour job into a $19 an hour job, and nothing on the invoice says so. Per hour after travel is the number that decides which clients are worth keeping.
What is in it
- Six tabs: Start Here, Setup, Clients, Jobs, Week Planner and Month by Month.
- Setup — four numbers only: the hourly rate you want to clear, your mileage rate, the week you want to work, and your tax percentage. Everything else is measured against them.
- Clients — 50 clients with their rate and schedule. Anyone paying under your target rate once travel is counted shows in red.
- Jobs — 500 visits, each with time on site, travel time, mileage, what you charged and what you spent on supplies.
- Week Planner — the round drawn hour by hour across seven days, so you can see where the gaps and the long drives fall.
- Month by Month — 24 months of jobs, hours on site, hours driving, charged, supplies, mileage, profit, pay per hour and tax to set aside.
Who it is for
Cleaners and cleaning businesses, but the arithmetic is the same for gardeners, window cleaners, mobile trades and any service business that drives to the customer. It is built for one person or a small team, and it is most useful when you have enough clients that the round has stopped being obvious — the point where dropping the wrong one costs you money and keeping the wrong one costs you a day.
The worked example
The file arrives with eight clients and twelve visits already entered, so nothing is blank when you open it. Five of the eight are in red: they pay less than the hourly rate set in Setup once the driving to them is counted against the day.
Willow House is the row worth reading twice. It pays $23.33 an hour on site — a perfectly respectable rate — and $18.92 an hour once you have driven forty-two minutes each way to get there and back. The invoice does not change. The day does, and so does the answer to which client you replace first.
How it works
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install.
The download has two workbooks: one with the example above already filled in, so you can see what every column expects, and the same file completely blank for your own figures. A plain-English guide comes as a PDF. Buy it on Etsy — $9
Sold through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the download, the payment and the buyer protection are all handled by Etsy.
Questions people actually ask
How do I work out what a cleaning job actually pays per hour?
Enter the time on site, the travel time each way and what you charged, and the Jobs tab gives you both figures: per hour on site and per hour once driving is counted. In the worked example Willow House pays $23.33 on site and $18.92 after forty-two minutes of driving each way. The second figure is the one that decides whether a client is worth the slot.
Is this only for cleaners?
No — the arithmetic fits any service business that drives to the customer, including gardeners, window cleaners, mobile trades, dog walkers and mobile beauty. Nothing in the file is specific to cleaning beyond the words in the example. It is built for one person or a small team rather than a company with several rounds running at once.
I have never recorded my mileage. Can I still use it?
Yes — put your mileage rate into Setup and record the miles from today onwards; the file starts working from the first visit you enter. If you would rather ignore mileage altogether, leave the rate at zero and the travel time alone still moves your pay-per-hour figure. Month by Month keeps the mileage totals in one place if you need them for a tax return.
Will it run in Google Sheets?
Yes — it is built as .xlsx and runs in Google Sheets and LibreOffice as well as Excel. For Google Sheets use File, then Import, then Upload, and choose Replace spreadsheet; the formulas carry over. Excel 2016 or newer works on both Windows and Mac.
Does it send invoices or book my jobs in?
No — it does not raise invoices, chase anybody for money or schedule a single job, and it connects to no bank, app or accounting service. You type each visit in after you have done it, and the file works out what it paid. It calculates tax to set aside at the percentage you enter, which is arithmetic rather than tax advice.
Need it built around your business?
This file assumes one person or a small team, a price agreed per visit, and that you drive to the customer. If your work runs differently — several cleaners on the road with their own rounds and their own pay rates, contract cleaning billed monthly rather than per visit, or supplies charged on to the client — I can rebuild the same arithmetic around the way your round is actually organised.
All other templates are listed on the Excel & Google Sheets Templates page.