An integral part of the daily operations is to ensure that the Housekeeping department has clear guidelines of what needs to be done on the day, which rooms need to be cleaned, are there special/incidental tasks that need to be performed and more.
Important: This article explains how to handle the Housekeeping daily operations in Clock PMS+, however, you must make sure that the Housekeeping module is properly configured. Please check Housekeeping Module - Activities, Sectors, and Credits and Housekeeping Module - Activity Schemes for all the settings information.
Housekeeping Tasks
As the Housekeeping module implements a 'Task-based' approach, the Housekeeping tasks are the most important element of the operation.
Important: Please make the distinction between Housekeeping Activities and Housekeeping Tasks. A housekeeping task is a particular task defining when, where and by whom certain activities are to be performed.
Let's see what can generate Housekeeping tasks
- Tasks from Activity schemes - Primarily, Housekeeping Tasks will be generated based on your setup of Housekeeping Activity Schemes. Find more information about setup HERE.
- Tasks from Schemes connected to a Charge Template - Tasks can be generated if a scheme is attached to a Charge Template. You can use this feature to automate generating tasks related to additional beds and baby cots, as well as the stocking of special consumables related to various packages. Find more information about this feature HERE.
- Arrival Housekeeping activity - If a booking requires a certain special room preparation, you can specify this in the booking itself. For example, VIP consumables or a festive theming of the room. To apply such a arrival activity, edit the booking and select the activity in the field 'Arrival Housekeeping Activities'.
- Manually added tasks - At any point of time, a user can also manually add a Housekeeping Task. This can be done through a number of different screens - Housekeeping Report; Housekeeping Tasks Management screen; Housekeeping Live Monitor; through a booking; Room Calendar and more. Find more information HERE.
Generating the Tasks for the day
At the beginning of each day, set the tasks for this day. Go to menu Housekeeping->Housekeeping Tasks-> and click 'Generate'. You will see how many tasks will be created. Confirm. Tasks are created as "Unassigned", i.e. it is not set who is to perform a certain task. Please note that if you have tasks set for arrival, the arrival bookings must have allocated rooms because the rule is that each task is to be linked to a room. Only then you will be able to see the info of the booking-related tasks.
Warning: You should generally generate tasks once a day (usually at the start of the day). Generating the tasks again later throughout the day, will refresh ALL tasks, even the ones that were already completed for the day.
Important: Please note that tasks remain in reports and screens until they are completed. They will not simply disappear once you generate the tasks for the new day.
Important: If upon the generation of the daily tasks, there are situations needing the attention of the housekeeping department, a specific task is to be manually added for the respective room.
Automatically Generated Tasks
We have created an additional algorithm for the automation of housekeeping tasks related to early departures of guests and room changes during their stay. To avoid confusion with the already generated daily tasks, the automatic tasks are created in the following cases:
- Room Change - with each room change (also in the cases of marking a room change as 'Done') a task is created for the old room. The old room is marked as dirty, and the task description will specify the room to which the guest is moved (Room changed to: ...). This way, if necessary, you can move the specific room stocking as per the booking.
- Checkout - with the booking checkout, an early or normal one, if, for some reason, the room is clean, a housekeeping task is created for the room with the "Dirty" status and the following description: "Checkout discrepancy".
Task Priority
Each task has a certain priority. It can be determined automatically or manually. The task priority level affects the arrangement of tasks in the reports for the housekeepers (Housekeeping Tasks), so that they are informed of the tasks of the highest priority. With the automatically created tasks, the priority is determined based on whether there is an early arrival or late departure indication in a booking. If you have an early arrival, the cleaning tasks have a high priority. A late departure lowers the priority level of the cleaning tasks, and the rest of the tasks get a normal priority level. Furthermore, tasks for rooms in which there is a Departure->Arrival on the same day will also automatically have a high priority.
In addition, the Priority can be changed manually through the Booking screen, Housekeeping Report and Live Monitor as well.
Task Assignment
As mentioned and seen above, once you generate the tasks for the day, they are initially 'Unassigned'. You have the option to manually assign them or use the Auto-assign.
Manual assignment
Once you've generated the tasks, you can simply click the pencil icon next to each task and set the housekeeper that has to perform it.
Auto-assign
Obviously, assigning tasks one by one can be quite time-consuming, thus we have added an option for Auto-assignment.
You can choose among how many housekeepers the tasks to be distributed.
There are two algorithms which will determine how will the tasks be distributed among
the housekeepers - Optimal or Stable Order.
- Optimal: This is an algorithm letting you take an advantage of the equal distribution of tasks among housekeepers, however, sometimes they may receive tasks in different housekeeping sectors.
- Stable Order: This is an older algorithm prioritizing the order of housekeeping sectors, however, sometimes housekeepers are not equally assigned tasks.
The system will use the housekeeper number given by you to distribute the tasks and create a list of tasks for each of these housekeepers. The system will also assign a consecutive number to each list: 1, 2, 3, etc. You can afterwards change the list number to a name of a housekeeper. Please note, this is simply swapping a number with a text (name). These are not real users in Clock PMS+.
Test both methods of distribution and select the more suitable for you.
You can choose which of the methods to be the default one by going to Settings-> All Settings->Housekeeping Credits-> Housekeeping task assignment algorithm field.
Here is a little more info on how the automated task distribution works:
- The unassigned tasks are ordered by room number following the room sorting order set by you. If the rooms have Housekeeping Sectors assigned - the tasks will be distributed by sectors.
- When distributing the tasks, the system aims at evenly distributing the workload among the given number of housekeepers while accounting for the set number of credits.
- If there is more than one task for a room, all of these tasks are given to one and the same housekeeper.