How to Set Up Your Cleaning Booking Form in ZenMaid: The Complete Guide

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Easy 5 minute setup

If you’re tired of playing phone tag with potential clients, spending your evenings returning calls, or worse — missing out on bookings because you were elbow-deep in someone’s shower when they called — you want to read this guide. 

Cleaning business owners are constantly juggling actual cleaning work with the admin side of their business. That’s where ZenMaid’s online booking forms can help. 

In this comprehensive guide to setting up ZenMaid’s booking forms, you’ll learn how to build, price, brand, and launch a booking form in 30 minutes or less. 

Why Use an Online Booking Form?  

Online booking forms capture leads 24/7, including during times you’re not directly available. Clients will also appreciate an online experience that is quick and effortless over a phone call they may need to wait for. 

A properly set up booking form will collect all of the home details you need in the client’s first interaction with you, reducing your back-and-forth with new clients. 

You also gain time back in your day with an online booking form because all of your client’s information goes directly to your customer relationship management tool (CRM) and scheduling software. 

ZenMaid users report increases in client bookings after they install booking forms on their websites, sometimes reaching a 20% increase. It helps cleaning businesses look more professional, free up time so business owners can take on more clients, and makes the entire process easier for clients. 

Some cleaning business owners worry that automating booking like this means they won’t get to talk to each and every client, but this isn’t true. You craft every email yourself, and the automations are what send them, not you. 

You’ll still be able to talk to every client, give them an exact quote or estimate based on their particular needs, and share your personality with them throughout the process. The only difference is that you’ll be better able to scale this behavior with automations. 

What online booking forms don’t do

There’s a small but important difference between online booking forms on the market: they either allow clients to claim appointment slots you set up, or they submit appointment requests that need you to approve them. 

ZenMaid’s booking forms aren’t a live calendar or auto-scheduler where clients claim appointments. Instead, ZenMaid’s booking form takes client inquiries and lets you decide when to schedule them, so you remain in control of your calendar. 

Step 1: Create Your Form

Let’s dive in and create a booking form! Here is a full video explaining each step in-depth, if you want to see it from start to finish:

Now, let’s go through the breakdown of each step.

First, log in to your ZenMaid account, then go to More > Booking Forms:

Click the New Booking Form+ button, and ZenMaid will provide you with a default layout that you can customize. 

At the top of the form editor, you’ll see several tabs:

• Form (these are the basic form fields that’ll show on your site)
• Sidebar
• Pricing
• Appearance
• Settings
• Confirmation

Congrats! You’ve created a new form. Now, let’s customize it. Keep in mind that all of your edits go live immediately, and customers always see the latest version. 

Step 2: Build the Form Fields

This is what the ZenMaid booking form looks like when you start a new one:

Everything is customizable, but there are five sections of the booking form you need to edit from the defaults that pre-populate:

1. Title and subtitle: Make these clear and easy to read. Tell the client what the form’s purpose is — “Request Your Professional Home Cleaning” or “Get Your Custom Cleaning Quote” both work.
2. Drag-and-drop questions: Drag in the questions you want to ask from the right panel. Reorder them by dragging them up and down the list. Each booking form comes preloaded with the following defaults:
   1. Contact info: Name, email, phone, address
   2. Home details: Bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage
   3. Service type: Standard, deep, move-in and move-out
   4. Appointment time
3. Contact fields and SMS consent: A phone number triggers two consent checkboxes, transactional and marketing. Customers can choose one, both, or neither. 
4. Calendar and appointment times: Customers can book whenever they want when you turn on the calendar, regardless of your availability. Add a note that times are preferences and subject to confirmation.
5. Custom questions: Use these to ask about pets, entry instructions, and parking. You can also add “How did you hear about us?” to track which marketing channels work.

You can further customize the drag-and-drop questions, such as by swapping square feet for square meters. Just drag the current element out, then drag the new one in. 

Pro tip: Save your form after every two fields you add. If something goes wrong with your Wi-Fi or the form, you’ll save yourself from having to recreate the entire thing!

Keep in mind that you won’t want to ask too many questions. Find a balance between asking too much and too little — you want to be able to quote jobs accurately, but not ask so much that people abandon the form.

Step 3: Price Your Booking Form

If you haven’t developed a pricing strategy yet, now is a good place to pause and think about that. Take a look at our pricing guide for inspiration!

The booking form offers three pricing options by default:

1. A base price, plus rooms and bathrooms
2. Square footage
3. A flat rate per service type

Choose your pricing method and then move on to the sliders. Sliders cover bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, and labor hours. Click the arrow beside each to set its rate.

ZenMaid booking forms offer linear scaling only. For example, if the base price is $50, a bedroom is $25, and a bathroom is $35, the total quote for a one-bedroom apartment would be $105. Scaling this linearly to a two-bed, two-bath house would bring the total to $170. If your price list doesn’t scale evenly like this, you’ll have to simplify it to fit or quote manually.

Adding extras and using dynamic pricing

Cleaning business owners often use bundles to increase average job value. You can add extras, add-ons, and deep cleaning fees to any ZenMaid booking form so long as they’re flat fees. 

Some popular extras include inside the fridge, inside the oven, the interior of cabinets, windows, or a load of laundry. 

Here’s how to add extras to your form:

Using recurring discounts

Ask clients if they want to set up recurring cleanings right where they book. Drag in the Recurrence option and set discounts to encourage repeat business. 

Recurring appointments are typically priced at a discounted rate over single-appointment cleanings. This is usually because cleaners are familiar with the property and clients. It takes less time to get into and clean homes when cleaners are there regularly.

Pricing tab settings

This is where you can show clients the estimated price of the appointment as they enter their details. Click Show Pricing on Form to display it on the form; if you prefer to share quotes manually, uncheck it. 

Make sure to include any base prices here as well, to ensure calculations are made accurately. Minimum booking prices, which override lower totals, help you prevent taking on appointments that aren’t financially worthwhile.

Add sales tax after your job estimations default; if you aren’t required to collect sales tax in your state, set “No Tax” to hide it.

Display a quote for service pricing

Generally speaking, clients appreciate knowing your prices up front. They can make decisions faster, and you don’t have to spend as much time pursuing clients who weren’t going to pay your price in the first place. 

That said, there are some scenarios where we would recommend asking clients to contact you for a quote first. For example, it’s not uncommon to ask first-time cleaning clients for more information before you give them a solid price. You need to understand how big a home is, whether any pets live there, and how to enter the home in order to price the appointment.

You may also want to try withholding pricing information in competitive markets. This could be whether you’re getting started for the first time or in a new area. In this case, you’ll want to highlight the value and quality of your services somewhere publicly, like on your website, before sharing your price. 

Pro tip: Find the middle ground. Hide prices on your booking form, then send the price in the confirmation email with {{booking.price}} or {{booking.estimate}}.

Step 4: Brand It So It Feels Like Your Business

ZenMaid’s booking form has fields for customizations that will help you look more professional to clients. In addition to detailing your services as we discussed in the previous section, you can add your own branding and details about your business to the form’s intro section:

In the sidebar, you can include three or four selling points of your business. This might be noting that you’re insured and bonded, or that your business is locally owned. Here’s an example of what this looks like on one of our real users’ websites, Serene Clean (based in Wisconsin):

You can also add a client testimonial to this section, such as a quote from a review or phone call with a client. Make sure to get that client’s permission to use their quote before posting it.

Use the pencil icon to edit the form; the star icon lets you switch between a clean icon style and a colorful one. Match your brand colors for a consistent, trustworthy look. 

Upload your logo in Settings > Business details and make sure that the photo you upload is square. This will make the logo show up best in your form. Then, check “Show my logo on the form” to complete your form!

Step 5: Settings, Payments, and Confirmation

Before we connect your payment and calendar systems to your booking form, let’s confirm all of the settings work for your setup. ZenMaid offers both automatic and manual appointment confirmation, and we recommend that you use both of them for different scenarios.

Manual vs. automatic appointment confirmations

Manual appointment confirmations should be turned on for all new booking requests. You need to review each request first so that you can build a schedule based on your cleaning team’s availability. This could look like:

• Grouping jobs by area to cut down drive time
• Matching experienced cleaners to harder jobs
• Balancing team workloads
• Vetting new clients

Even though automations are supposed to eliminate manual work, this extra layer of review will pay off when your calendar feels manageable and your clients feel taken care of:

Configuring your notifications

Notifications in ZenMaid can be sent to your office managers, your cleaners, and your clients. One checkbox alerts all active office managers by email and SMS, so they’ll know when to check in with cleaners and monitor clock-in and clock-out times if needed.

Clients will get either a text or email confirmation about their appointment, depending on what type of communications they approved. You can customize these confirmation notices under Email & SMS Notifications. We also have some templates you can use for inspiration.

Collecting payment info

Now, we’ll connect Square or Stripe to securely collect card details or deposits. Deposits are useful for many reasons, especially reducing late cancellations or confirming appointments. Some cleaning business owners use them to book move-out cleanings, which require the business to hold dates open.

Asking clients for their credit card up front like this also cuts the number of spam submissions you’ll receive through your online form.

Confirmation page

The last thing you have to prepare is your confirmation page. This is the page that shows up after the client clicks Submit.

Let clients know when you’ll get back to them, for example: “Thank you for your booking request! We’ll contact you within 24 hours to confirm your appointment details.” You can also include a redirect to your website or a promo page if you’re running any discounts.

You can also link to or list your booking terms and privacy policy, which you can configure in the Business Details section. This would be the place to mention your cancellation policy as well. 

Step 6: Launch and Promote Your Form

Once your form is ready, it’s time to get it in front of potential clients! ZenMaid offers several ways to use your booking form:

1. Embed it on your website: ZenMaid provides a simple code snippet you can add to any page
2. Share a direct link with clients: Perfect for social media or email marketing
3. Create a button: Add a prominent “Book Now” button to your website

For website embedding, the process will vary slightly depending on your platform (WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, etc.), but ZenMaid’s support team can help with installation if you get stuck.

Pro tip: Don’t bury your booking form deep in your website! Make it prominently visible on your homepage and service pages to maximize conversions.

Get more bookings from it

Ready to take your booking forms to the next level? Here are our top tips for maximizing submissions:

• Make your booking button impossible to miss: Use contrasting colors and place it in the top navigation of your website
• Link to your form from Google My Business: Add it to your profile so people can book directly from Google search results
• Include the link in email signatures: Every email you send becomes a potential booking opportunity
• Add a popup: Consider a tasteful popup on your website offering a small discount for booking online
• Highlight the booking form on social media: Create dedicated posts showing how easy it is to book with you

Many ZenMaid customers who have implemented these strategies alongside ZenMaid’s booking forms say they’ve been able to focus more on growing their business instead of chasing down leads. 

Bonus Step: Use Multiple Forms for Different Services

We hinted at this in the Settings section, but you can create multiple different ZenMaid booking forms, each with their own settings and details. This is helpful when you want to allow clients to perform certain behavior under certain circumstances, such as rescheduling a recurring cleaning. 

Here are some ideas for how to separate your forms:

• New-client quote form with detailed pricing
• Simplified form for existing clients
• Specialized forms for deep cleans and move-outs, each with its own questions and pricing

We recommend running three forms on your website: standard residential, deep clean, and move-out. The clarity is helpful to clients, and may improve conversions over time.

Conclusion

With that, we’ve covered all six steps to creating a booking form with ZenMaid. Take an hour out of your day to follow them all, and then count the hours you get back in the month that follows. The time savings will be worth it!

Remember to keep it simple, professional, and on-brand. As time goes on, tweak your pricing as bookings come in, and stay flexible about prices, both increases and decreases. 

And let ZenMaid help you keep track! Sign up for a free trial of ZenMaid and get all of your existing data imported to the platform for free, with the help of our Support team.