Industries / Auto detailing and mobile mechanic
A sedan is two hours. An SUV with pet hair is four. The slot should know.
Works with a few tweaks
Book exact slots, route between driveways, upsell add-ons, get paid at the car.
Apex offers detailing in slots sized to the vehicle and the package, checks the service area and that the customer has water and power, and holds ceramic and heavy-soil jobs for photos.
Who it is for: Mobile detailers and small detailing shops running vans to driveways, offices and fleet lots, with maintenance plans and coating work.
Works with a few tweaksDetailing evidence comes from vendor pages and community forum posts about generalist booking tools. Operator interviews will deepen this pack.
What generic schedulers get wrong for mobile detailing
Price and time depend on the vehicle
Sedan, SUV and truck sizes, condition and add-ons change both. Undercharging SUVs is a named mistake in the vendor material.
Travel time is part of the slot
A van needs time between addresses, and that time depends on the two addresses, not on a fixed gap.
The service area must be enforced
Out-of-range requests need a hard check at the door, not a manual review after the fact.
Water and power are eligibility
No water or power at the address changes whether the job can happen.
Weather decides the day
Rain moves an uncovered job. It should be one tap, with a notice.
Drawn in code for mobile detailing
A day in a mobile detailing business
- Basic
- Full detail
- Premium
- Ceramic (photo quote)
- Fleet
8:00 to 10:00
10:45 to 14:45
3:15 to 5:00rain check
Slots follow duration and travel. Exact slots are in build.
Size sets the multiplier. Ceramic waits for photos.
A fleet account returns on a stable day.
A mobile detailer's week: size-based slots, a ceramic job waiting for photos and a fleet account. Illustration of planned screens: entries are examples, not customer data, and not every screen shown is built yet.
How mobile detailing runs in Apex: the key settings
Starter settings for this trade. You change any of them. Nothing here is a promise about your numbers.
How jobs get booked
Time slots sized to the package are the plan. Until that ships, morning and afternoon windows with a travel-aware route.
Stops in a day
Around 4 jobs a day per van.
Routing
Dynamic cluster with a radius and fee tiers beyond the core area.
Who says yes
Rules can auto-confirm in-radius, priced packages; heavy-soil and ceramic jobs wait for the owner.
How you price
Good-better-best packages times a vehicle-size multiplier, ceramic by photo quote, fleet by subscription.
Repeat customers
Monthly or every-other-week maintenance plan; customer picks each visit; skips per year.
Follow-up calls
Day-1 thank-you; day-30 maintenance reminder.
Review requests
Review request a day after a paid job, once.
What we ask the customer
- Vehicle year, make, model and size
- Condition and pet hair or odor
- Package and add-ons
- Water and power available
- Location type: driveway, garage, work lot
- Key handoff method
Photos and papers to collect
- Interior and exterior photos for heavy-soil and coating quotes
- Photos of the vehicle condition before work starts
Rules to watch
- Insurance for vehicles in your care
- Water reclamation note where required
What you get as a mobile detailing business
6 of 14 work today. The other 8 are coming soon.
Arrival windows with route density
Jobs cluster so the van is not driving across town.
Morning and afternoon windows
Windows with an on-my-way text until exact slots ship.
Photo quote for ceramic and heavy soil
These show photo quote required and wait for photos.
Maintenance reminder
A nudge to the next monthly detail, stopped if they scheduled.
Missed-call text-back
A text asking for the vehicle and the address.
Starting pack for detailing
Slots, four jobs a day and rule-based approval as owner-confirmed defaults.
Exact time slots sized to the package
The grid is built from the package duration.
Vehicle-size multiplier
Sedan, SUV and truck change price and time.
Travel buffer from real addresses
Time between jobs from the two addresses, not a fixed gap.
Water and power eligibility
The request is held when there is no hookup.
Deposit for correction and coating
Collected before the slot is held.
Weather reschedule for uncovered jobs
One tap moves the day and notifies the customer.
Fleet and subscription accounts
Recurring fleet visits on a stable route.
Van as a resource
One van, one slot, with equipment checks.
The tools in mobile detailing, and where we can honestly do better
Tools our research found in use for mobile detailing: Square Appointments, Acuity, Jobber, Housecall Pro, MarketBox, SchedulingKit. Listing a tool is not a claim about it.
Square Appointments
Square's own community forum says there is no automatic travel time between appointments. The workaround is a manual extra-time block per service.
Individual user report (anecdote): Square community forumWhat Apex does about it: Travel time comes from real addresses in the route engine, and exact slots built from package duration are in build.
Square Appointments
Square's community forum says there is no way to limit where a customer is located when booking. The workaround is manual approval.
Individual user report (anecdote): Square community forumWhat Apex does about it: Service area is checked by city and ZIP before a request is saved, and out-of-range requests are not accepted.
When another tool may be the better choice: Square Appointments and Acuity are widely used general booking tools. If your work is a fixed-location shop, they may fit well. Mobile detailers are where travel time and service area matter, and where the gaps above apply.
What it costs for mobile detailing
Apex lists three public plans, priced by users: Solo $59 per month for 1 user, Crew $99 for 2 to 5 users, Business $129 for 6 users plus $10 for each extra user. No plan includes any texts, AI phone minutes or AI usage. For this trade we would start you on Solo. A single van starts on Solo, and a second person moves you to Crew.
Housecall Pro lists Basic at $59, Essentials at $149 and Max at $299 per month billed annually, or $79, $189 and $329 billed monthly. Workiz does not publish plan prices, so we show none. These are public figures as read on 2026-10-06, verify before buying. Seat counts and included features differ between vendors, and we have not verified every one, so compare your own crew size on the pricing page before you decide. Texts and AI run on your own provider account or a prepaid wallet, and card processing is at the processor's own rate.