Track Laundry Orders from Drop-off to Pickup, Without a Spreadsheet

The simplest way to track laundry orders without a spreadsheet is to keep three linked tables, Orders, Customers and Services, in an app your counter staff can use on their phones. With Ambisius you weigh the clothes, pick the customer and the service, and the order total calculates itself. Each order then moves from Received to Washing, Ready and Picked up, with a clear Paid box, so no bag sits on the shelf unnoticed.

Why the laundry spreadsheet stops working

Most laundries start with a notebook or an Excel sheet: one row per order, with columns for name, phone, kilos, price, date in and a note like "ready" or "paid". It works for the first few weeks. Then the same customer gets typed three different ways, someone overwrites the price formula, and nobody is sure which bags on the shelf have been paid for. On a phone the sheet is a tiny grid, so the counter goes back to paper and the owner retypes everything at night.

The real problem is that a flat sheet mixes three different things in one row: who the customer is, what services you sell, and what happened with this particular order. Split them apart and link them, and most of the mess goes away.

Flip the switch to see the same orders as a spreadsheet and as linked tables in Ambisius.

What you'll set up

Three tables, the same ones in the Laundry template.

Customers holds each person once: name, phone and address. The phone is a Phone property, so staff can tap it to call.

Services is your price list: Wash & Fold, Ironing Only, Bed Cover, Shoes. Each service has a unit (kg or pcs), a price and a turnaround time.

Orders is the heart of it. Each order links to one customer and has Line Items for the services in it, so a single order can hold 4 kg of wash and fold plus one bed cover. It also has the drop-off date and time, a status (Received, Washing, Ready, Picked up), a Paid checkbox and a photo of the items as they came in.

Because orders link to customers instead of retyping them, a customer's name and phone are the same everywhere, and the Customers table can count how many orders each person has made.

Taking an order from drop-off to pickup

1. Add your services once. Enter each service with its unit, price and turnaround. When a price changes, you change it in one place.
2. Take the order at the counter. Tap + Add Data on Orders, pick the customer from the list (or add a new one), then add a line for each service with the weight or the number of pieces. Snap a photo of stains or damage with the phone camera, so there's no argument at pickup.
3. Let the total calculate itself. A Rollup on Orders adds up price × quantity across the lines, so nobody does the sum by hand. A Formula can also show how many days each order has been waiting.
4. Move the status as the work moves. Change the status from Received to Washing to Ready. Group the orders by status and you see the whole shop at a glance: what's in the machines, what's on the shelf, and what has gone home.
5. Close it out at pickup. When the customer pays and collects, tick Paid and set the status to Picked up. An Admin can add an Action button called "Picked up" that does both in one tap. Setting it up uses credits; pressing it is free on every plan.

Try it here. Tap a service to add a line, change the weight and watch the total. Then move the order along and tick Paid.

Views for the questions you ask every day

A view is a saved filter, sort and group on a table. Save a few for the questions that come up daily: "Ready for pickup" (status is Ready), "Unpaid" (Paid is not checked) and "Dropped off today" (drop-off date is Today). Add a chart of orders by status, then pin your favourite views to the workspace's Dashboards page so each one opens in a single tap.

Staff on their phones

Counter staff and couriers join as Members, which costs no seat. On the phone they don't get a grid. Each order is a card that shows the few fields you put first, such as order number, customer and status. They add orders through a form with a date picker, a customer picker and the camera, and they swipe between tables and views.

The Owner or an Admin can make a short custom form just for the counter: hide the fields staff don't need, make Customer required, and give Status a default value of Received. Changes sync live, so when the counter marks an order Ready, the owner sees it on their own phone straight away.

To keep prices safe, set Services to Restricted and give staff Viewer access: they can read the price list but can't change it. Members can filter any view for the moment, but only the Owner and Admins can save views, so the shared ones stay tidy.

Questions people ask

Start from the Laundry template: Orders, Customers and Services, already linked and ready for your price list.