If you have employees that are traveling between cleaning locations you need to have a company policy for paying travel time. Once you decide on your policy, add it to your employee manual, and then go over it with each employee. Don't let your employees tell YOU how they expect to be paid for traveling.

1. The first thing to keep in mind is that you are not required to pay travel time for the employee's time spent traveling from home to work and from work to home. You are however, required to pay your employees for any travel time between jobs. If your employees are allowed to take a lunch break during the day, you will need to create a policy as to whether they will be paid for this personal time.
   

   
   

2. Keep your policy simple and consistent for all employees. Travel time adds up, so the easiest system is to pay them from your location and job-to-job as soon as they're on the clock. If you introduce a separate payment system for travel and one for cleaning you are opening the door to a bookkeeping nightmare.
   

   
   

3. Know the mileage and time your employees should be traveling. Either do your own tracking of the time it takes to travel between homes or use a mapping tool like www.mapquest.com. Just keep in mind that estimated travel time on Mapquest may be wrong depending on traffic conditions. You could also invest in GPS devices to track travel.
   

   
   

4. Plan your employees' routes instead of letting them decide which route to take. Not all will be efficient with their time and may take a longer route than necessary.
   

   
   

5. Consider cleaning in teams of two or even single maids in order to keep travel time to a minimum. One or two people take longer to clean a home than a group of 3 or 4 people, so they won't be traveling to as many homes each day. When you have 3 or 4 people traveling together to several homes a day you have to pay each one for riding in the vehicle.

Pay attention to how much money you're spending on paying travel time to your employees. Even though you do have to pay travel time, these tips will help you to make sure you aren't paying for wasted time.

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Jean Hanson helps owners of residential cleaning companies build a more profitable and successful cleaning business through her online community at MyHouseCleaningBiz.com. Read inspirational cleaning success stories at http://www.cleaning-success.com, and sign up for House Cleaning Profit Tips at http://www.MyHouseCleaningBiz.com.