TrashCanBossPro Blog — Recurring Plans

Moving a Customer Between Trash Can Cleaning Plans Without Losing Track

Customers change plans. A family adds a baby and wants every-other-week. A retiree downsizes to one can. A restaurant cuts back for the slow season. Each change is small, but if the schedule, the job card and the price do not all move together, you end up cleaning on the old plan and billing on the new one, or the other way around.

Plan Changes Happen All Year

Seasonal swaps, covered in Summer vs Winter: Adjusting Trash Can Cleaning Plan Frequency by Season, are the most common, but customers change plans for all kinds of reasons. The goal is the same each time: change one thing on the address and have everything that depends on it follow.

In TrashCanBossPro, a customer's plan lives on the address as a recurring service with minimum days between visits. Change that service and you change the schedule, what the tech sees and what the invoice charges.

The Three Things That Must Match

Every plan change touches three things. Check all three before you call it done:

• Frequency. The days between visits: 7, 14 or 28.
• Cans and services. The can counts on the address and any add-ons like pad cleaning or deodorizing.
• Price. The line items that end up on the invoice.

Most plan-change mistakes come from updating one and forgetting another. A customer moved to every-other-week but still billed the monthly price will be happy for a while and then very unhappy when someone notices and corrects it.

Upgrading a Customer

An upgrade is usually monthly to every-other-week, or every-other-week to weekly. To make the switch:

• Change the recurring service to the new days between visits.
• Update the price to the new plan's rate.
• Text the customer to confirm the change and when the next cleaning will be.

The next due date is counted from the last completed cleaning, using the new number of days. If the customer was cleaned ten days ago and moves from monthly to every-other-week, their next cleaning comes due in four days. If you want the first cleaning on the new plan to happen sooner, you can schedule it from the Waiting List right away.

Downgrading a Customer

A downgrade is the opposite: weekly to every-other-week, or every-other-week to monthly. It feels like lost revenue, but it is almost always better than a cancellation. A customer who drops to monthly is still a customer, still on the route and still paying.

Make the change the same way: new days between visits, new price, confirmation text. If they are dropping a can or an add-on at the same time, update the can counts and services on the address so the tech does not clean what the customer is no longer paying for.

Changing Cans Mid-Plan

Not every change is about frequency. A customer adds a recycling can, drops a yard waste can for winter, or moves into a house with three cans instead of two. These changes affect the job card and the price but not the schedule.

Update the trash, recycling and yard waste counts on the address. They show on the tech's phone as “2 trash · 1 recycling · Trash day Tue,” so the next visit reflects the change. Update the price lines on the plan to match.

When a customer moves to a new house, add the new address under the same client rather than creating a new client. Their history, card on file and contact info stay together, and the new address gets its own cans, trash day and plan.

Write It Down and Tell the Customer

Every plan change should leave a trail. A short note on the client record, “Moved to EOW for summer, back to monthly in October,” tells anyone in the office what happened and why. Tags help you find groups of changes later, like every customer you moved up for summer.

And always confirm by text. A message like “You're now on every-other-week cleaning at $50 a month, next cleaning Tuesday” prevents surprise charges and surprise visits. Customers can also request changes themselves from the customer app, which sends the request to the office to approve. More on tags in Using Tags to Organize Recurring Bin Cleaning Plan Customers.

Make Changes Easy to Say Yes To

The easier it is to change plans, the fewer customers cancel when their needs change. Change the frequency, the cans and the price together, confirm by text and keep a note. For more on recurring plans, visit the trash can cleaning subscription software page.