Industries — Cleaning & Facilities

Automation for cleaning & facilities businesses.

Contract cleaning and facilities management businesses operate with high staff turnover, complex multi-site rotas and compliance requirements that don't forgive lapses. We build the systems that make scale manageable.

The challenge

High turnover makes manual onboarding unsustainable.

Constant new starter admin

Cleaning businesses can onboard hundreds of staff per year. Contracts, right-to-work checks, DBS applications, uniform allocation — every one handled manually by an overstretched admin team.

Compliance gaps are a liability

Right-to-work checks missed. DBS renewals not tracked. Insurance certificates lapsed. In regulated environments, a compliance gap is a contract-ending event.

Client reporting is labour-intensive

Monthly reports compiled manually for each contract. Attendance records, quality audit scores, incident logs — all gathered from different places, formatted differently each time.

Rota changes create chaos

Last-minute absence on a cleaning contract. Manager scrambling to find cover, calling down a list, updating the rota manually. A process that happens multiple times a week, every week.

What we build

Systems built for facilities operations.

Every engagement is specific to your operation. These are the systems we most commonly build for cleaning and facilities clients.

01

Self-serve onboarding flow

New starters complete contracts, right-to-work uploads and personal details through a single link. Data lands in BreatheHR automatically. Works at volume — 10 starters or 100, the process is the same.

02

Compliance tracking and alerts

Right-to-work expiry dates, DBS renewal dates and certification deadlines tracked automatically. Alerts sent to HR before they lapse — not discovered after a client audit.

03

Automated client reporting

Monthly contract reports generated automatically from attendance, audit and incident data. Consistent format across every contract, delivered on schedule without an admin team compiling them manually.

04

WhatsApp absence and cover management

Staff report absence via WhatsApp. The system logs it, notifies the site manager and triggers a cover request to available staff — automatically, without a manager working the phones.

Example build

TR19 compliance certificates, generated the moment the job is done.

TR19 kitchen extraction cleaning requires a compliance certificate on completion of every job. Clients need it for their fire safety and insurance records, and producing it after the engineer has left site, whether by hand or through an outsourced provider, puts a wait between the finished job and the client. For CITYi Limited, we removed that step.

01

Engineer completes a form on site

A Google Form on their phone, submitted the moment the job is finished. Job details, site information and compliance parameters are captured at source.

02

Make.com runs instantly

The submission triggers the scenario automatically. No manual handoff, and nobody in the office has to pick it up.

03

Branded certificate generated

A PDF is produced automatically, populated with that job's specific TR19 compliance data.

04

Saved to the compliance record

The finished certificate is filed in Google Drive, giving the business its own permanent record of every job.

05

Sent back, ready for the client

The certificate is emailed to the engineer to review and forward. That is the only human step left in the process.

Before

Engineers sent photos to an outsourced company and waited days for certificates to come back, at £300+ a month.

After

The certificate is generated in seconds, and the only running cost is Make.com credits. No monthly fee to a third party.

Make.com scenario for TR19 certificate automation: a Google Forms trigger feeds a router that splits by client, then each branch runs custom JavaScript to build the certificate, converts HTML to PDF, finds the right Google Drive folder, uploads the file, adds a Google Sheets row and sends a Gmail
The live Make.com scenario behind it: one form, routed per client, certificate built, filed and logged. Swipe the diagram sideways to see the full flow. See the case study → Document automation → Client reporting → Make.com consultant →

The certificate exists before the engineer has left site: no delay, no forgotten paperwork, no return to the office. The same pattern applies to any cleaning or facilities business that has to evidence completed work, such as inspection reports, service records and sign-off sheets. Read the full write-up → Or read how TR19 certificate automation works.

What changes

Outcomes within weeks, not quarters.

Zero
Compliance gaps from missed expiry dates
Scalable
Onboarding process that handles 10 or 100 starters
Automated
Client reports delivered on schedule every month
Faster
Absence reported and cover found without manager calls
Tools we use
BreatheHR Xero Payroll Make.com WhatsApp Business API Google Sheets Looker Studio

Running a cleaning or facilities business?

Book a 20-minute discovery call. We'll identify where admin is costing you most and what to fix first.

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