Local guides · Post 28
The key and the job sheet: a Pembrokeshire cleaning round
For cleaning firms in Pembrokeshire running changeover cleans across several lets: the key-and-sheet scramble that eats the week, and what a written sheet changes.
The Saturday changeover in Tenby looks the same every week. Four lets empty by ten, four arrive at four, and between those two times a set of keys has to get from Saundersfoot to Narberth to Pembroke Dock and back before the second clean can start. The schedule never changes shape.
What changes is everything around it: which key is at which door and whether the linen for the Narberth let went out with the right van. The last guest may have left a note about a broken shower. None of it is written down. All of it lives in one person's head, and it works right up until that person takes a day off.
That is the loop: keys, job sheets and the changeover clean. The work is predictable. The remembering is not. A written sheet turns the remembering into something a second person can pick up on a bad morning.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Take one week of changeovers across five lets. It includes the time spent on the parts that are not cleaning: sorting keys, checking notes, passing messages, chasing up a job that was missed.
- × 3 hours a week = the time cost
- × £28 an hour = £84 a week
- × 46 working weeks = £3,864 a year
Every figure here is an assumption, not a client figure. Swap in your own hours and your own rate. The shape is what matters: a few hours a week of remembering carries a real annual cost, and none of it is cleaning. With a written sheet, the key log and the notes are prepared before the round starts, and the owner checks them in a few minutes.
Score it: the three checks
- Hours. Three or more hours a week disappear into keys, notes and messages. That clears the bar on its own for most rounds.
- Repeat. The round follows the same streets on the same changeover days. If it can be written down once, it can be prepared for you.
- Risk-if-wrong. A drive to the wrong door wastes an hour. A key handed to the wrong person is worse, and a missed changeover on an arrival day costs the let its next booking. That is why the awkward calls stay with a person.
Try one thing this week (free)
Write one page for next Saturday: every let, its address, which key opens it, who holds it now, and the one note that matters for that property. Do it before Friday. If the page is still accurate by Friday evening, you have the spec for the round.
Where a person stays
Software can hold the key log, draft the job sheet for each property, and prepare the message that goes to each cleaner. It prepares, it does not decide. A named person approves the round each morning and owns the awkward ones: a guest complaint, a damaged item, a key that has gone missing, a let that needs a same-day fix. Nothing goes out unchecked, and anything touching money or a contract stays approval-only, always.
FAQ
The key log, the changeover schedule and the standing note for each property. The software drafts them from what you already tell it, and you approve the version that goes out.
That is the test. If one page gets a new starter to the right door, with the key and the linen they need, the sheet is good enough.
It leaves the routine queue straight away. A named person reads it, decides what happens next and contacts the guest.
No. They keep working the way they do now. The sheet and the messages arrive in the form they already read, and the change sits behind the scenes.
The £499 diagnostic. One fixed fee: a one-hour call, a written report, and a 30-minute follow-up that ranks what to build first. 5 hours a week found or a full refund, and the fee credits in full against any build.