Four weeks is 28 days. A month is not.
A customer who says “monthly” may mean every four weeks, the same date each month, or the same weekday of the month. These produce different calendars. Write the intended rule down before creating the repeating job.
| Rule | Next two visits | What stays consistent? |
|---|---|---|
| Every four weeks | December 7; January 4 | Monday and a 28-day gap |
| Same date monthly | December 9; January 9 | The ninth; weekday changes |
| Second Monday monthly | December 14; January 11 | The weekday and its position in the month; gaps vary |
Why it affects your calendar and income.
A four-week schedule can produce about 13 visits per year, while a monthly schedule normally produces 12. Exact counts depend on the first visit and the date range. If each visit costs $150, that difference is about $150 per customer over a typical full year. This is arithmetic, not a promise of revenue or an instruction to change an existing agreement.
Four-weekly visits can line up neatly with fortnightly routes because both use whole-week intervals. Calendar-month schedules need more checking around short months and months with five occurrences of a weekday.
Confirm the rule with the customer.
Use a concrete sentence: “Your cleaning repeats every four weeks on Monday at 9am. Your next visits are December 7 and January 4.” For a monthly plan, name the date or weekday rule instead. Avoid relying on the word “monthly” alone.
What to check in the software.
- Repeat interval: Does the app support every four weeks, a monthly date, or a weekday rule? These are separate requirements.
- Date preview: Check the next three visits before saving, especially across February and year-end.
- Billing: Decide whether invoices follow each visit or a separate monthly billing cycle. A monthly invoice does not necessarily mean a monthly cleaning.
- Exceptions: Decide whether moving one visit should change the standing schedule.
Jobber distinguishes recurring jobs from one-off jobs, and its job documentation separates visits from billing frequency. BookingKoala documents settings governing how future recurring bookings are generated. These sources help you identify the controls to check; they do not establish that every repeat rule above exists in every plan.
Our practical recommendation.
Choose the service interval with the customer first. Then select software that can express that rule and show the resulting dates. Do not change your service promise just because an app's default says “monthly.”
Next: move one cleaning without changing the whole series →
Sources
Calendar dates above are our worked example. No product endorsement or affiliate link appears in this article.