Chimney Sweep Software FAQs

We Sweep is built to grow with your chimney sweep business. There are no monthly subscription fees, no setup costs, no per-booking fees and no long-term contracts.
Instead, each booking carries a £1.95 online booking fee paid by your customer — shown to them before they book, on top of your price, however they choose to pay.

You pay We Sweep nothing.

That model is the whole point: no subscription to justify in a quiet month, nothing coming off your price, and nothing to cancel if the software isn’t earning its keep. The only other cost is standard card processing of 1.5% + 20p on card payments — the same as any card machine — and you can subsidise the booking fee for your customers if you’d rather. The one exception: bookings you import from your old system after your first 14 days cost you £1.95 each.

However suits you both. Customers can pay by card when they book online, or after the job is done — in cash, by card at the door (your technician shows a QR code or sends a payment link), or by bank transfer. You choose which options your business offers, and card payments go straight into your own Stripe account.

When the customer pays by card — at booking or at the door — the fee is collected with the payment and your price goes straight to your Stripe account, nothing for you to do. When the customer pays in cash or by bank transfer, they pay your price plus the £1.95 to you on the day; you collect the fee on our behalf and it’s passed on once a month on an itemised invoice against a card or Direct Debit you save with us. Nothing is ever taken from you before the customer has actually paid.

Yes. In Payment Settings you can subsidise some or all of the £1.95 — 50p, £1, £1.45 or the full fee — and the customer sees only the remainder. You can also set a fixed card deposit (£10 to £50) on cash, bank-transfer and card-on-completion bookings, taken by card when the customer books with the balance settled on the day.

If the customer cancels, the £1.95 is non-refundable — they agree to that when they book — and the rest of what they paid follows your normal cancellation terms. If you cancel, the customer is refunded in full including the fee. The customer-facing terms are on our booking fee page.

Completed jobs that haven’t been paid appear on your unpaid jobs dashboard, and We Sweep chases them for you — automatic payment reminders go to the customer at 3, 7 and 14 days, with a payment link included. When they pay, they get a receipt and the job clears from the list automatically. Customers without an email address can’t be chased by email: when the first reminder would have gone, We Sweep tells you instead, so you can give them a call.

No. Because there is no monthly fee, you are never locked into a long-term agreement. Use We Sweep as much—or as little—as your business needs.

Yes. Import Bookings in your admin panel brings your diary across in one go. Export your upcoming bookings from your current system or spreadsheet as CSV or Excel, upload the file, match its columns once, check the preview and import — the file is read in your browser and never uploaded. Starting from a paper diary? Download the CSV template from the same page and fill it in.

• No booking fee in your first 14 days — not for you, not for your customers. You can still import after that: each imported booking then costs you £1.95, and your customers never pay a booking fee on a booking you bring across.
• Future bookings only, up to 12 months ahead, and up to 2,000 rows a file. Past jobs stay in your old records.
• How they’re paid: on the day in cash, by bank transfer or by card (card needs your Stripe account connected) — or, in your first 14 days, marked as already paid if the customer paid you in full before you switched. After your first 14 days, cash and bank-transfer bookings need a card or Direct Debit saved for We Sweep fees, just as when you offer those methods online.
• Emails are your choice. Imported bookings get the usual reminder the day before, and you can choose to tell your customers their booking is now managed through We Sweep. Switch off the reminders in your old system so nobody gets two.
• Changed your mind? You can undo an import for 7 days — bookings nobody has touched since are removed.

Import them anyway — an import never fails for a missing email or phone number. We Sweep shows you who they are: in the import summary, on your dashboard, under Missing contact details on the Customers page, and on the job in your technician’s app, where they can add an email or phone number at the visit. You can add one yourself from the customer’s page at any time.

Until a customer has an email address, We Sweep can’t email them — no reminder email, no certificate or payment link by email, and no automatic payment chasing (you’re told instead, so you can call them). If they pay by bank transfer, give them your bank details yourself, and you can hand over their certificate from their customer page. With SMS reminders switched on, customers with a UK mobile number still get a text the day before.

No. We Sweep’s yearly reminder email isn’t sent for bookings you import — your customers weren’t offered the chance to opt out when you took their details. Collect their email at the visit and invite them back yourself; once they book through We Sweep they’ll get it. The reminder then goes about 11 months after that sweep, unless they’ve opted out.

We Sweep syncs with Xero, QuickBooks Online and Sage Accounting. Connect yours from the Integrations page in the admin panel — sign in to your package, approve the connection, then complete a one-time mapping (which sales and payment accounts to use, your VAT rates, and an invoice number prefix). From then on, the books keep themselves.

When a job is paid — by card, cash or bank transfer — a sales invoice is created in your package with the full line items (service, add-ons, extra chimneys, and any work added on the day) and marked paid against the account you chose. Completed jobs still awaiting payment raise the invoice straight away, with the payment matched when the money is recorded. Full refunds become credit notes automatically, and VAT-registered businesses get VAT-inclusive invoices at their configured rate. Every invoice reconciles to the booking total to the penny.

No. It's included — you pay nothing for it — no add-on, no higher tier. And a sync problem never gets in the way of taking a payment: failed pushes retry automatically, and you can see recent sync activity (and retry anything stuck) from the Integrations page.

Unlike standard booking calendars, We Sweep doesn’t just accept appointments—it optimises your entire workday automatically.

When a customer books:

• Your schedule reconfigures instantly
• Travel time and job duration are recalculated — including extra time for multi-chimney jobs
• The system fits as many jobs into each day as it can

This helps you increase revenue without working longer hours.

Yes. If a service has a price for additional chimneys, customers choose how many flues they need swept when they book, and the price and time slot scale automatically. And if your technician finds extra work on the day, they can add it on the spot — the customer agrees the new total at the door and the booking updates itself.

Yes. The booking form has an optional “Anything we should know?” box, plus room for up to three photos of the fireplace or chimney. It stays collapsed unless the customer opens it, so it never gets in the way of a booking — but when it is used, the note and the photos appear on the job in your admin panel, in your technician's app and in the Google Calendar entry, and your morning digest flags which of yesterday's new bookings came with them. It's the difference between finding out about the lined flue at the doorstep and finding out the week before. You can also add a note yourself to any booking you take over the phone.

They're stored against the booking alongside your own pre- and post-sweep photos, and are visible to you in the office and to your technicians in the field. Any location data embedded by the phone that took the photo is removed on upload, and photos attached to a booking that never completes are deleted automatically.

Yes. We Sweep uses Google Maps route optimization to calculate the most efficient travel path between jobs. This reduces fuel costs, eliminates unnecessary backtracking, and keeps technicians on time.

Absolutely. We Sweep offers full Google Calendar integration — each technician can connect their own calendar, so business bookings and personal schedules never conflict.

Yes. The We Sweep field app has an offline mode for technicians. Once you've signed in with signal, the day's jobs stay on your phone, and with no signal your team can:

• Start and complete jobs
• Take before-and-after photos
• Complete certificates for every flue, with the customer's signature
• Record cash or a bank transfer received, and add a customer's missing email or phone number

Everything is saved on the phone and sent automatically, in order, when you're back in signal — the customer is emailed a link to their certificate then. Telling a customer you're on the way, card payment links and adding work to a job need signal.

Yes. We Sweep allows you to generate professional digital chimney sweep certificates instantly — one certificate per flue on multi-chimney jobs. Technicians can attach before and after photos to each job, providing proof of work and increasing customer trust.

Once the job syncs online, We Sweep automatically emails the customer a link to download the completed certificate — or certificates, one per flue — and files them permanently in their online portal, where they can download them again at any time. No manual follow-up required.

Yes. Every customer with an email address gets an automated email reminder with their confirmed arrival time 24 hours before the visit. You can also switch on free SMS reminders, sent from your own business name, at no extra cost.

After a job is completed, We Sweep automatically sends a review request follow-up to your customer. This helps chimney sweeps build strong online reviews without extra effort.

Yes. About 11 months after a sweep booked through We Sweep, the customer gets an annual chimney sweep reminder in your name, encouraging repeat bookings year after year and keeping your calendar full. Customers can opt out when they book or from any reminder.

Yes. Switch on the optional customer referral programme and every customer gets a personal referral code in their booking confirmation and job-done emails, alongside an incentive you write in your own words (e.g. "£10 off your next sweep"). Friends enter the code when they book online — or use a share link that fills it in for them. When a referred new customer makes their first booking, you're notified and the referrer gets a "your referral worked" email.

You can honour the reward yourself, or set a fixed £ amount and We Sweep applies it automatically as a discount on the referrer's next booking — one reward per booking, valid for 12 months. The reward itself is your offer, funded by you; We Sweep handles the codes, tracking and emails. It's off by default — turn it on when you're ready.