Scheduling Software for Window Cleaning Companies
Window cleaning is priced by what you can count and scheduled by who has to be home. Cartoply collects the pane count, the stories, and the photos at booking, sells the add-ons in the same flow, and keeps a day’s jobs inside one neighborhood.
The quote is a counting exercise, and the site visit is what it costs you
Window cleaning has one of the cleanest pricing models in the trades: panes times a rate, adjusted for stories, screens, tracks, and how bad the glass is. The problem is that almost nobody can quote it over the phone, so the industry default became driving out to count. Twenty minutes each way and fifteen minutes counting, for a job that might be $280 and might be nothing, repeated across every lead in a spring week — that is a working day a month spent on estimates that a form and three photos would have handled.
Then there is the access problem hiding inside the service menu. Exterior-only work does not need the customer present. Interior work does, and it needs them present in a home where somebody will move furniture off the sills. Booking those two as the same appointment is how a crew ends up outside a locked house at 9 a.m. with half the job unable to start. Sunrooms, skylights, and second-story interior work over a stairwell make it worse, because they are the details that decide whether you bring a ladder, a pole, or nothing at all.
And the calendar itself is fragile. Spring is three months of demand compressed into six weeks, storefront accounts expect the same day every cycle, and rain moves everything. Cartoply puts the counting into the booking form, splits interior and exterior into different appointments with different requirements, keeps residential and commercial on separate rules, and gives every customer a self-service reschedule link for the days the weather decides for you.
What Cartoply does for window cleaning companies
Pane count, stories, and photos — quote without the site visit
Add up to ten intake questions per service and ask what actually sets the price: approximate number of panes or window openings, how many stories, whether there are French panes or grids, screen count, when the windows were last cleaned, and a photo upload of the front and back of the house. The answers and images land on the appointment, so you can size and price most residential jobs from a desk instead of a driver’s seat.
Interior, exterior, and both as different appointments
Exterior-only is a crew-shows-up job. Interior means somebody has to be home, sills need to be clear, and the duration roughly doubles. Give each its own appointment type with its own duration, price, lead time, and questions — and use the interior type to ask who will be there, whether pets need to be secured, and whether anything needs moving. The customer picks the one they want and takes a slot that reflects the real work.
Add-ons that add time, not just line items
Screen cleaning, track and sill detailing, hard-water and mineral removal, skylights, sunrooms, and post-construction paint scraping are where the margin lives, and each one lengthens the job. Attach them as questions or as their own service types so choosing them changes the slot length, not just the invoice. Selling the add-on in the booking flow beats trying to upsell a homeowner from the top of a ladder.
Route density by neighborhood
Draw each crew’s area on a map — ZIP codes, cities, a radius around where they start, or a custom shape for a subdivision. A customer enters their address and only sees the availability of the crew that covers it, so a residential day fills in one grid instead of bouncing across the metro. Shared areas rotate fairly across crews, and when someone is out, coverage is a map edit rather than a morning of calls.
Storefront routes on a fixed frequency
Commercial storefront work is a different business with the same squeegee: short stops, weekly or monthly frequency, done early before the shops open, billed on an account. Make it its own appointment type with a short duration, its own hours, and its own questions — number of storefront panes, inside or outside, whether you need a key or an opening manager. Keeping it separate from residential means a 15-minute storefront route never collides with a three-hour whole-house job.
Spring rush, and the rain day that moves it
Cap bookings per day so the spring flood does not sell your crew a twelve-hour Tuesday, set a minimum notice so nobody books you for 7 a.m. tomorrow, and limit how far out the calendar opens. When weather takes a day, every confirmation email already carries a self-service reschedule link with a cutoff you control, so customers move themselves instead of your office making twenty phone calls before 8 a.m.
Who at a window cleaning company uses Cartoply
Owner-operators and two-person crews
You are on a ladder when the phone rings, and the call is somebody who wants a number. A booking page that asks for panes, stories, screens, and a couple of photos answers most of that without you, and the customer who was never going to book at your rate filters themselves out on the price. Your hours, your service radius, and your minimum notice are enforced by the page rather than by you saying no while holding a pole.
Start on the free plan. There is nothing to pay until you put a second crew out.
Owners running residential and commercial together
Storefront routes and whole-house jobs need different rules, different hours, and often different people. Set them up as separate appointment types with separate areas and the bookings sort themselves, checked against live calendars so nothing double-books. Add a crew, assign an area, and they are taking work the same day.
Pro runs $7/seat/month — $28 for a four-person operation, less than the fuel on a week of estimate drives.
Whoever schedules and quotes
Counting questions, add-on selection, confirmations, reminders, and weather reschedules all happen without a person. What is left is the work that needs a human: the three-story with a hillside on one side, the historic home with 300 divided panes, the property manager who wants a bid on six buildings.
See it set up for a window cleaning company
We’ll configure an exterior and an interior service with pane-count questions, photo upload, hard-water add-ons, and a storefront route type — in 15 minutes.
Book a 15-minute demoHow to set up online booking for your window cleaning business
Most window cleaning companies go from signup to a live booking page that quotes by pane count in under 30 minutes.
- 1
Create your Cartoply account
Sign up free — no credit card required. Add your company and invite your technicians or crew leads.
- 2
Connect crew calendars
Each crew lead connects Google Calendar or Outlook. Cartoply reads live availability, so a booked commercial route never gets a residential job dropped on top of it.
- 3
Draw your service areas
Map each crew’s coverage by ZIP code, city, radius, or a custom shape you draw for a subdivision. Bookings route to whoever covers the address, and customers outside your radius never see open slots.
- 4
Create your service types
Exterior only, interior only, interior and exterior, storefront route, post-construction, and hard-water restoration — each with its own duration, price, hours, and minimum notice.
- 5
Add your counting and access questions
Pane or window count, stories, grids and French panes, screen count, skylights and sunrooms, ladder access and landscaping obstructions, who will be home for interior work, pets, and a photo upload of the front and back elevations.
- 6
Set add-ons, caps, and your reschedule cutoff
Add screens, tracks and sills, hard-water removal, and skylights as paid options that extend the appointment. Cap jobs per day for the spring rush and set a cancellation and reschedule cutoff so rain days move themselves.
- 7
Publish your booking link
Put it on your website, your Google Business Profile, and every door hanger and estimate you send. Customers book 24/7 and Cartoply routes each one to the crew that covers their neighborhood.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best scheduling software for a window cleaning business?
It depends which problem you are solving. If you need a full field service platform — invoicing, crew payroll, chemical and equipment tracking, and long-term commercial contracts — that is the territory of Jobber, Housecall Pro, Service Autopilot, and Markate, and for bidding specifically a lot of window cleaners use ResponsiBid. If your problem is intake — leads calling for a number you cannot give without driving out, interior jobs booked as if nobody needs to be home, add-ons you only remember to sell from the ladder, and rain days that turn into twenty phone calls — that is the booking layer, and that is Cartoply. It puts a booking page in front of your company, collects pane count, stories, and photos so you can quote from a desk, sells screens and hard-water removal in the same flow, and routes each job to the crew covering that address. Plenty of window cleaners run Cartoply for booking alongside a field service platform for invoicing and job management.
How do I price window cleaning by pane count online?
Ask for the count as a required intake question and let the service type carry the base price. A common setup uses dropdown ranges rather than an exact number — 1 to 15 windows, 16 to 30, 31 to 50, 51 and up — plus separate questions for stories, whether the windows have grids or divided panes, and screen count. Add a photo upload of the front and back of the house so you can sanity-check the answers before the crew leaves. For anything unusual, you still send a bid, but the routine three-bedroom two-story is priced and booked without anyone driving out to count.
Do customers need to be home for interior window cleaning?
For interior work, yes, and that is a scheduling constraint rather than a pricing footnote. Exterior-only jobs can be completed with nobody home, which makes them the easiest thing you sell and the safest to book tightly. Interior work needs an adult present, needs sills and furniture cleared, and needs pets secured. Make interior and exterior separate appointment types so the interior one can require more notice, carry a longer duration, and ask its own questions — who will be home, whether anything needs moving, whether there are pets. That way a crew never arrives at a locked house with half the work impossible to start.
Can I schedule commercial storefront window cleaning on a weekly or monthly route?
Yes, and it should be a different appointment type from residential. Storefront work is short — often 10 to 30 minutes per location — happens early, repeats on a fixed frequency, and is billed against an account rather than paid at booking. Give it its own type with a short duration, its own available hours so it only lands before opening time, and its own questions about pane count, inside versus outside, and whether you need a key or a manager to let you in. Keeping it separate means a storefront route and a three-hour whole-house job never end up competing for the same block on a crew’s calendar.
How do I handle rain and weather reschedules without calling every customer?
Every confirmation email Cartoply sends includes a self-service reschedule link tied to that booking, with a cutoff window you set per service type. When a day washes out, customers can move themselves into your next genuinely open slot, pulled live from the crew’s calendar, without your office running a phone tree at 7 a.m. Setting a shorter reschedule cutoff on exterior work than on interior work is common, since exterior is the part weather actually stops. The calendar sync means a rescheduled job releases its old slot immediately, so the day can refill.
How do I sell screen cleaning, track cleaning, and hard-water removal as add-ons?
Put them in the booking flow, where the customer is already deciding to spend money. Add-ons that mostly affect price can be intake questions on the main service; add-ons that meaningfully change the job length — hard-water and mineral removal, heavy track and sill detailing, post-construction scraping, skylights — are better as their own service types or as options that extend the appointment duration, so the schedule stays honest. This matters most for hard-water restoration, which can take longer than the entire window cleaning it accompanies and should never be squeezed into a standard slot.
Ready to stop driving out to count windows?
Start free. No credit card required.
Set your service types, ask for panes, stories, and photos, and let customers book the crew that covers their street — in under 30 minutes.
14-day free trial — no credit card required. $7/seat/month after that.