TrashCanBossPro Blog — Routes by Trash Day

Choosing Bin Cleaning Route Software: What to Check Before You Switch

Switching software is a real cost. You move your customer list, retrain the crew and change how the office works. So before you switch, make sure the new tool actually understands how a bin cleaning route works. Here is a checklist built from everything in this series.

Start With Your Own Routine

The last article, Putting a New Customer on the Right Bin Cleaning Route Day, walked through placing one customer. Picture that same routine with each tool you look at, along with building tomorrow's route, handling a skip and moving a rained-out day. If the software makes those everyday jobs harder, no feature list will make up for it.

Generic field-service software is built around appointments: a customer books a time, a tech shows up. Bin cleaning is built around the garbage truck. The questions below test whether a tool gets that.

Does It Know Trash Day?

• Can you store the city trash pickup day on every address?
• Can you store how many trash, recycling and yard waste cans each address has?
• Do the trash day and cans show under the address on the lists and on the tech's phone, without opening another screen?
• Is there a place for can location notes and gate codes that the tech sees every visit?

In TrashCanBossPro, every address shows a line like "2 trash · 1 recycling · Trash day Tue," plus the can location notes. If a tool only gives you an address and a general notes box, the trash day ends up on a separate spreadsheet, which is what you were trying to leave.

Do Plans Come Due on Their Own?

• Do weekly, every-other-week and monthly plans come due automatically?
• Are they based on days between visits that stay lined up with trash day, rather than calendar dates that drift across the week?
• Is there one map of everything that came due, with overdue cleanings clearly marked?

TrashCanBossPro uses 7, 14 and 28 days and a Waiting List map with pins colored not due yet, due now and overdue past a 7-day grace. See The Waiting List Map: Seeing Every Bin Cleaning That Came Due.

Can It Build and Split Routes?

• Can it auto-route a day from your shop, and can you choose the direction?
• Can you change the order by hand afterward?
• Can you assign jobs to a trailer and filter the board by trailer?
• Does the order on the board match the order on the tech's phone?

TrashCanBossPro auto-routes Closest First or Furthest First from the shop, lets you set the order by hand, and filters the Scheduled List by trailer or truck.

What Does the Tech Get?

• Does it run on the phones your crew already has, iPhone and Android, without special devices?
• Is login simple, with a personal PIN for each tech?
• Does each card have navigation, cans, trash day and notes?
• Are there clear Start, Skip and Complete buttons, with photos and a skip reason?
• Is there a time clock on the same phone?

Ask for a demo of the tech side, not just the office. If a tech cannot learn it in one ride-along, it will not get used.

What Does the Customer Get?

• Automated night-before reminders to leave the cans out?
• Automatic on-the-way and arrived texts?
• Alert choices for the customer?
• A live route view with their place in line?
• Two-way texting so replies reach the office?
• A way to pay invoices and update a card online?

These are the features that keep cans at the curb and phones quiet.

How Is It Priced?

Watch for per-user pricing. A tool that charges for each tech makes every new hire and every second trailer more expensive. TrashCanBossPro is never billed per user: Start is $59/month, Pro $89/month and Crew $199/month, with a monthly text allowance included, and every plan starts with a 14-day free trial with no credit card.

Check that it bills the way you do: card on file, auto-charge on completion or on a schedule, and one monthly statement for HOAs and property managers covering every address.

Can You Get Your Data In?

A tool you cannot load is a tool you will not use. Check that you can import your existing customer list from a spreadsheet, that one client can have many addresses for HOAs and property managers, and that tags and custom fields let you keep the details you track today. TrashCanBossPro imports a CSV of your customers and supports tags such as Monthly, Every-Other-Week, HOA and Commercial. If you work outside the US, check that it bills in your currency; TrashCanBossPro works in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Try It on a Real Route

The best test is one real route day. Import your list by CSV, put trash days on one neighborhood, build tomorrow's route and send a tech out with the phone. You will learn more in one morning than in a week of reading feature pages. To see how all the routing tools fit together first, return to the TrashCanBossPro bin cleaning route software page, or try the live demo.