A cleaning quote can look like a single number. What interests me is everything that has to be understood before that number makes sense. How big is the home? What sort of clean is needed? Is it a one-off visit or something regular? How long will the work and the journey take?
Those were the questions behind Home & Hour. I wanted the quote to begin with the job itself, rather than with a price typed into a box and justified afterwards. The app asks for the type of clean, frequency, requested date and room counts. There is space for the customer’s brief too, because two homes with the same number of rooms can ask for very different work.
Start with the job
The first time estimate comes from room times that the cleaner sets in the app. It is a starting point, not a promise about how long a home will take. The cleaner can change the planned minutes before saving the quote. They can also enter return travel time and mileage, supplies for that visit and the price they actually intend to offer.
I put the live price check beside the form so the assumptions are visible while the quote is taking shape. It draws on the cleaner’s own target hourly pay, minimum visit price, supplies and overhead allowance, mileage cost and margin setting. The suggested figure is there to question and adjust. It does not know the condition of a property, the local market or the details of a conversation with a customer.
Keep the decision with the cleaner
That distinction matters to me. A useful app should make a decision clearer without pretending to make it for the person doing the work. If the requested clean is more involved than the room count suggests, the planned time needs changing. If a customer has a particular priority, it belongs in the brief. If the journey is significant, it should be visible in the working rather than quietly absorbed.
Once a quote is saved, Home & Hour can prepare a customer version to copy or print. The cleaner reviews it and sends it themselves. If the customer accepts, the quote can become a visit with a checklist and payment record. After the work, actual time and supplies can be entered to see how that particular job compared with the plan. Those figures are operational notes, not formal accounts.
I built the flow around a simple idea: a quote is better when the person sending it can explain what is included and where the price came from. That is the part I want Home & Hour to help with.
You can see the app here: Home & Hour on Payhip
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