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Cleaning invoice example for NPOs

Sample contract. Do you have a sample contract for the house cleaning business? What does it look like? We're going to talk about that today. Hi, there. I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question and I get to help you find an answer. Now, today's show is brought to us by MyCleaningConnection.com and on there, there's a series of downloads and you can in fact find a sample contract. Okay, this is a question that comes from a house cleaner. "Hi, Angela. I love the blog and the videos. I always watch them. I'm wondering if you can do like a sample contract for us. I really loved using your sample fliers. They're excellent and were really easy to edit and plug in my own info. If you have like a sample contract that we can use, that would be great just to give us some idea of what information to plug in and stuff like that. All right, thank you." Angela Brown: All right, sample contracts. Before we get into that, what I want to cover is this. There are a lot of house cleaners that start a house cleaning business and they over-complicate the process. They go to a customer's house to do an initial walkthrough and they have what they call a welcome packet. I have customers and house cleaning companies that ask me about this all day every day, what should I put inside my cleaning packet or my welcome packet for a new customer? Well, the reality is this, I think you're over-complicating the situation. Most customers don't need a welcome packet. They don't need one. It's overkill. It's thinking too much. It's putting too much effort and too much energy into the startup process. Here's how it works. You go to a customer's house. The customer has a need to have their house cleaned. They want you to be the right person to come clean their house. They will pay you the money. They're done. That's the end of the transaction. Nobody wants to sit through a two-hour presentation and read before and after photos and letters and letters of recommendation and contracts and this is what happens and that's what happens and all these things. That's just it's overkill. It's like going to the hardware store and you need a gallon of paint so that you can paint your kid's bedroom. You go to the hardware store, they don't sit you down and explain what paint is, explain how paint can have toxic fumes. They don't explain that if you step in a can of paint, you're responsible if you track it across the floor, or that you're not allowed to sniff it or inhale it or whatever, that you may want to wear protective gear. They don't go through any of that stuff. They just say what color do you want, they mix it up, they sell you the can of paint. That's it. It's a simple transaction. Now, it is a business and so this is really important to you, but it's not really important to the customer. I get asked this question dozens of times a day, "What should I have in my welcome packet?" You don't need a welcome packet. In the 25 years I've done business in all the employees we've had and all the customers we've had, we've never once had a welcome packet. There's no reason to have a welcome packet. It's like if a guy comes over to your house and he's going to be a pest control guy and he's going to kill the bugs or the pests or spray for worms or whatever it is, he doesn't give you a great big welcome packet with all these instructions and things. There might be a little sheet that says, "Take your shoes off when you come in the house. Make sure that the doors and windows are closed when we come in to do the bug bomb. Make sure that you open the windows and let the air out when we're gone." It's very simple. The same rules apply with house cleaning. When you show up to clean somebody's house, what they want is a simple transaction. Now, you are going to do a walk through and you're going to go through and explain some of your rules and regulations but that's pretty much it. For me, the sample contract that I'm going to give you it's called my worksheet. I have a worksheet that I give the customer when I do the initial walkthrough. And I say, "Hey, here's the worksheet that I use. If you like, you can follow along." Now, we go on a walkthrough through the house and I have my own worksheet, they have their worksheet. It's the exact same worksheet. I make notes on mine. At the end I say, "Hey, here's all the stuff that we covered. I'll just have you initial it. That's it. On that worksheet, there's a breakdown of every room of the house and the things that we're going to do in that room. As they walk through the house with me, they're going to tell me if something in that room doesn't apply, or if there's something special they want me to add on to that room and I just make a note on my worksheet. The last page of my worksheet is my contract and it covers things like if I'm sick, here's what I do. If you're sick, here's what you do. Here's my cancellation policy and here's how you pay me. It's pretty much it. It's really, really simple. Now, to go beyond that is overkill, because nobody really cares. If you're bonded and insured, you're covered if you break something. If you have a satisfaction guarantee, they're covered. If they don't like the work that you did, then they get their money back or you come back and re-clean. That's pretty much it. There's no need to create a big welcome packet. Now, technology has changed and so now, everybody has a website. On your website and on your social media, you can put your before and after pictures. You can put any frequently asked questions. All that stuff could be on your website so that there's no need for a welcome packet. The welcome packet is overkill, so you guys are overthinking things. You're trying too hard and it's not a hard business. Keep it really simple. Now, I will tell you this. My worksheet is three pages and I take all three pages every single time I go to clean a house. And the reason being is this, the customer can review those rules and regulations at any time because it's right there in front of them. Also, they can pass that on to a friend and say, "Hey, here's what my house cleaner does." When they pass that on to a friend, the friend can look at it and see your rules and regulations. It's very simple. It's very concise. It's very exact in its strategy and I've gone into so many customers houses where I see their neighbor's worksheet on their counter. It's a great sales and marketing tool but that's it. We don't have any before and after pictures. We don't have any letters of references. We don't have any of that stuff. All that stuff is now on social media and it's on your website. All righty, so sample contracts, there is one you can download. It is my worksheet. It's very simple. It's very exact. We've been using it for 25 years and for all of the companies that we've trained, we've been using it and it works very well. All righty, that's my two cents for today and until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.