Detailing and cleaning business glossary

Pricing

Cost per sellable hour. Total monthly business costs divided by the hours you can actually sell. The single most important number in a service business and the one most operators have never calculated. Sellable hours are usually 60 to 90 a month for a solo operator, not 160.

Floor. The lowest price a job can carry without losing you money — cost per sellable hour, times the block length including drive time, before any margin.

Block. The whole slot a job consumes, including drive both ways, setup and teardown. The customer buys the job; you sell the block. Pricing the job and not the block is the most common structural pricing error.

Size multiplier. A published factor applied to a base price for larger vehicles or larger homes. Its absence is the single most common pricing error in detailing, and SUVs and MPVs are roughly 41 percent of detailing volume — so a flat price loses money on the most common job.

Condition surcharge. An adjustment for jobs materially worse than standard — pet hair, smoke, heavy soiling, a move-out clean. Best published as a band rather than negotiated on arrival.

Consumables cost per job. Chemicals, pads, towels, bags, water, machine wear, divided across jobs. Bought monthly, used daily, and almost never priced in.

Travel band. A surcharge or minimum for jobs outside a defined radius. The alternative to quietly paying yourself nothing for the drive.

Minimum charge. The smallest total you will accept for a visit, regardless of the work. Makes a single small job in an outlying area viable on its own.

Package. A named bundle at a fixed price. Reduces quoting time and makes upselling structural instead of awkward.

Upsell / add-on. A discrete extra with its own price — engine bay, pet hair, interior windows, oven. Priced separately so the base package stays comparable.

Recurring job. A repeating booking. The core of cleaning economics and the reason recurring scheduling is table stakes rather than a premium feature for that trade.

Route density. How close your jobs are to each other. The most under-priced variable in mobile work — two jobs in one suburb are worth materially more to you than two across the city at the same price.

Drive-time gap. Calendar space reserved between jobs for travel. Without it, a full-looking day is not a workable one.

Bookings and money

Deposit. An upfront amount securing a booking, credited against the final invoice. Purpose is commitment, not cash flow.

No-show rate. The share of booked jobs where the customer does not appear or cancels too late to refill. Mobile-detailing software vendors consistently report 15–25 percent without deposits, under 5 percent with deposits plus reminders — vendor-sourced figures rather than independent research, so directional.

Cancellation window. The notice period inside which a cancellation carries a charge. A policy the customer has not seen before they cancel is not a policy.

Win-back. An automated follow-up to a customer who has not booked in a while.

Quote expiry. A date after which a quote lapses. The fix for the slot decaying while everyone is polite.

On-my-way text. A message sent when leaving for a job. The single highest-value automated message in either trade — it removes the most common honest cause of a customer not being there.

Stripe Connect. The payment arrangement letting a platform process card payments on your behalf into your own account.

Tap to Pay. Taking a card payment on the phone itself, no reader.

Software and pricing models

Per-seat / per-user pricing. Charging per person with access. The loudest complaint in the cleaning trade because the bill grows with every hire — "the tools that charge per user or per seat climb with every cleaner you add."

Flat pricing. One price for the business regardless of headcount.

Appointment cap. A limit on bookings per month on a tier. ZenMaid's $19 Starter caps at 40 appointments a month — roughly three weeks for one full-time cleaner.

Real entry price. The tier you actually need, not the advertised one. Jobber's advertised Core is around $49/month but QuickBooks sync and GPS sit above it, so the working tier is Connect at around $129. Housecall Pro's Basic lacks the same things, making Essentials at around $149 the real floor.

Booking link versus native app. A hosted booking page is not an app. DetailDeck's own site is direct about this: "A link, not an app."

Field service management (FSM). The generic category — Jobber, Housecall Pro. Broad, capable, priced for crews, and without trade-specific defaults like vehicle-size pricing.

Compliance

10DLC. The registration regime for application-to-person SMS over standard US ten-digit numbers. Unregistered traffic on local numbers is now generally blocked rather than throttled.

Sole Proprietor Brand. A 10DLC registration path for US and Canadian individuals without an EIN. A mobile number can be used for OTP verification a maximum of three times — a lifetime limit, so do not burn them testing.

TCPA. The US law governing telephone and text marketing. Marketing texts require prior express written consent; transactional messages such as an on-my-way text need only prior express consent — a lower bar. Keep the two streams cleanly separated; statutory damages run per message.

Quiet hours. The window outside which marketing texts may not be sent — generally 8am to 9pm in the recipient's local time.

Opt-out handling. STOP must work, opt-outs must be honoured through any reasonable method, and there is a defined window to process them.

IAP exemption. Apple does not require in-app purchase for real-world services rendered offline, so taking customer payments via Stripe is fine. Your own app subscription is a digital good and must use in-app purchase.

Certificate of insurance (COI). Proof of liability cover, frequently requested by commercial and property-management clients.