Cleaning

Cleaning scheduling that optimises your whole site portfolio

Every new cleaning site reshapes your whole calendar. Allocator finds the best weekday, time and cleaner for it — accounting for existing routes, recurrences, absences, and who already knows the site. That way the same team can take on more sites.

Book a demo See how the optimisation works

What is Allocator for a cleaning company?

Allocator is an AI-based scheduling and route-optimisation tool. It places one-off, weekly and fortnightly recurring cleaning visits on the calendar so that driving, overtime and gaps shrink. It picks the most affordable or best-suited cleaner for each site, suggests substitutes for sick leave, and can suggest better times for existing customers. That is how the same team can take on more sites.

Who is Allocator built for at a cleaning company?

CEOs and service directors

A cleaning company's margin comes from how much of its cleaners' time is billable. Allocator cuts driving and gaps, so the same team can take on more sites. At the quoting stage you see where a new site fits and what serving it will cost, before you commit to a price. Planning also stops depending on one supervisor's memory, which makes holidays, cover and staff changes easier.

Service coordinators and supervisors

Allocator works out the options, and you decide what goes live. Morning sick-leave calls, customer reschedule requests and new sites all arrive with a ready suggestion you can accept, swap for another, or edit by hand. A site's specifics — keys, alarms, customer preferences — are recorded once, and Allocator factors them into every plan after that. Time spent on the phone goes back to customers and cleaners.

Visibility into the field

The key efficiency metrics for mobile work are always available from the stats. See and compare how much work time goes to driving versus billable work, and look at efficiency by task, day, cleaner and team.

A map to make sense of it

The map visualises tasks and workers by location. See planned routes and open tasks at a glance.

How should a new cleaning customer be scheduled?

Most cleaning companies put a new site wherever there happens to be room on the calendar. A choice that looks sensible in isolation can still add driving, fragment the day, and lock a recurring visit into a bad rhythm for years.

Scheduling blind vs. optimising

Placing a new cleaning site blind, compared with using Allocator
Factor	Placed blind	Placed with Allocator
Timing	First available slot	The best day and time for the whole week's rhythm
Cleaner	Whoever has room	Cheapest or best-suited, weighting adjustable
Recurrence	Only the first visit is assessed	Every future visit is checked at once
Routes	New drive on its own	Site joins an existing route
Effect on others	Shows up as problems later	Visible before confirmation

How it works

Enter the site's details: address, estimated duration, the customer's allowed time windows and requirements (e.g. key management, access permits, special skills).
Choose the recurrence: one-off, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or a custom cycle.
Allocator runs the options across the whole calendar and compares them on driving, load, working-time rules and cost.
You get the 2–3 best suggestions with reasoning: day, time window, cleaner, and the effect on the week's total driving.
Confirm the suggestion, and every recurring visit is added to the calendar at once.

Balancing fortnightly sites

Fortnightly sites pile up easily on the same week, leaving one week overloaded and the next one light. Allocator spreads them across odd and even weeks so load stays even and cleaners' hours stay predictable.

Cheapest or best-suited cleaner?

You can weight cost (shortest drive, no overtime, right pay grade) or fit (skills, site familiarity, customer preferences). The weighting can be set generally or per site.

Who cleans when a cleaner calls in sick?

When a cleaner reports sick in the morning, supervisors don't need to start calling round for cover. Once you log the absence, Allocator immediately shows which visits are left uncovered and suggests a substitute for each. More than one sick-leave call can come in on the same day, and Allocator handles each one separately the moment it's logged — not once every absence for the day is known.

A substitute is chosen by location, free time, qualifications and site familiarity.
Visits can be split across several cleaners if one person can't cover them all.
If a site has flexibility, its visit can move to a later day inside the customer's time window.
Other cleaners' days change only as much as necessary.

Prioritising sites when absences pile up

Sites can be given a priority. If enough absences pile up that not every visit can happen on the scheduled day, Allocator suggests moving the non-priority visits first and keeps priority sites — such as healthcare facilities, food-handling sites, and contracts carrying penalty clauses — untouched. Moved visits get a new time proposed within the customer's own window.

A cleaner who knows the site

Site familiarity shows up in quality and in time: a cleaner who already knows a site knows where the keys are, the alarm system, special surfaces and the customer's preferences. Allocator keeps track of who has been where, and favours a familiar cleaner both for regular visits and for cover.

The same cleaner, or a small regular team, for standard sites.
For cover, priority goes to a cleaner who has been to the site before.
The customer sees familiar faces, which cuts complaints and improves retention.

Better times for existing customers too

A calendar built up site by site over the years is rarely optimal. Allocator analyses the current site portfolio and suggests which sites would benefit from a different day or time.

Suggestions are ranked by impact: the moves that save the most driving or overtime come first.
Every suggestion has a clear benefit you can explain to the customer (e.g. a more precise arrival time, or the same familiar cleaner).
Changes can be phased in gradually, for example alongside contract renewals.

Ametro, who does residential cleaning across the Helsinki region, uses Allocator for exactly this: new customers arriving every week each get a real-time suggestion for the best cleaning slot and a regular cleaning pair, while existing calendars are optimised in stages to cut unnecessary driving distance.

Read how Ametro cut unnecessary driving distance

Allocator has increased our operational efficiency and made our operations more environmentally friendly.

Ville Haataja CEO, Ametro

Example: a new office site in Espoo

A cleaning company gets a new 300 m² office in Keilaniemi, cleaned fortnightly, 3 hours, weekdays 16:00–21:00.

Without optimisation

The site gets put on Tuesdays with whichever cleaner has room. Their other sites are in Vantaa, so each visit adds about 50 minutes of driving. On even weeks Tuesday is already full, and overtime results.

With Allocator

The best option is Thursday on odd weeks, with a cleaner who already has two sites in Tapiola. The extra driving is about 10 minutes, and no overtime results. Over a year (26 visits), that's roughly 17 hours of driving saved from this one site alone.

Illustrative example calculation.

What does a cleaning company gain?

Allocator's customers drive 31% less on average and bill 18% more hours. Planning time often shortens by at least half, and Ekovilla's driving distance, for example, fell by 9–27%.

The same work with fewer resources

As driving and gaps shrink, more cleaning fits into every cleaner's day. You can serve more sites with the same team, or your existing customers with a smaller one. In an industry short on skilled people, that means growth without a new hire for every new contract.

In Dynamik's example calculation, the same service day was planned two ways. The manually built plan needed 12 shifts; Allocator's plan needed 9.

Example calculation for one service day, manually planned vs. with Allocator
Metric	Manually planned	Allocator	Change
Shifts	12	9	−25.0%
Idle time	26.7 h	6.9 h	−74.2%
Driving time	13.8 h	9.6 h	−30.4%
Distance driven	613.2 km	388.2 km	−36.7%
Cost / job	€37.16	€23.53	−36.7%

Sources: dynamik.fi, homepage (averages and example calculation), Ekovilla reference. The example calculation is general, not specific to the cleaning sector.

Other benefits

Allocator's other benefits for a cleaning company
Benefit	Where it comes from
Faster cover arrangements	Substitute suggestions right after an absence is logged
Better quality and customer retention	A familiar cleaner returns to the same site
More profitable sales	See before quoting where a new site fits and what it will cost
More even load	Less overtime and fewer light days
Lighter-touch supervision	Supervisors approve suggestions instead of building the calendar by hand

Connected to your system, or standalone

Allocator can connect directly to your own ERP or field-service (FSM) system, so sites, customer data and hours sync automatically in both directions. If you don't have a separate system, Allocator works just as well on its own: jobs are imported as an Excel file, and nothing more is needed to get started.

A mobile app for the field

Cleaners see their day in a single mobile view: sites in order, times, addresses and navigation one tap away. Nothing needs planning or logging by hand, and the list updates itself as the plan changes.

See all integration options

How much slack is in your calendar?

Book a demo

let's calculate it on your own sites

Cleaning FAQ

How should a new cleaning site be scheduled?

At the best point for the whole week's rhythm, not the first free slot. Allocator compares every possible day, time and cleaner and picks the option that adds the least driving and overtime across every future visit.

Does Allocator work for one-off and recurring cleaning?

Yes. One-off, weekly, fortnightly and monthly recurring visits are planned in the same view, and a recurring visit’s whole series is assessed at once.

How does Allocator choose which cleaner goes where?

It compares cleaners' location, free time, skills, site familiarity and cost. You can decide whether to weight affordability or fit.

What happens when a cleaner calls in sick?

You log the absence, and Allocator suggests a substitute for every visit left open. Priority goes to a cleaner who knows the site and is nearby.

Can cleaning sites be prioritised?

Yes. When absences pile up and not every visit can happen, Allocator suggests moving the non-priority sites first and leaves priority visits untouched.

Can the same team handle more cleaning sites?

Yes. As driving and gaps shrink, more visits fit into every cleaner's day. Allocator's customers drive 31% less and bill 18% more hours, on average.

Can Allocator's suggestion be changed by hand?

Yes. You can accept the suggestion, pick another option, or move a visit yourself. Allocator shows how the change affects other visits.

How is a customer's reschedule request handled?

Enter the customer’s preferred time window, and Allocator suggests a new time and cleaner that fits the existing routes. A cleaner who knows the site gets priority.

What does Allocator cost?

The price depends on how many resources are being planned. See our pricing, or calculate your savings potential.

Can the same cleaner always visit the same site?

Yes. Allocator favours a regular cleaner who knows the site, and uses that familiarity when choosing cover too.

Can Allocator improve times for existing customers?

Yes. It analyses the current site portfolio and suggests moves that cut driving or even out load. You decide which changes to make.

Does Allocator suit commercial, residential and property-service cleaning companies?

Yes. It suits anyone with multiple cleaners and multiple sites — commercial cleaning, residential cleaning, stairwell cleaning and property maintenance alike.

Does Allocator integrate with existing systems?

Allocator can connect to CRM, ERP and operations systems through an API, so sites and customer data transfer automatically.