Not adapted from plumbing software. Not a generic FSM with a hood cleaning template. Built from the roof down by an IKECA-certified hood cleaner who runs 300+ kitchens a year.
The generic field service tools were built for plumbers and HVAC techs. They have never seen a baffle filter, a grease depth gauge, or an NFPA 96 Table 12.4 frequency schedule. So you build workarounds. And the workarounds break every time you add a truck.
Every NFPA 96 certificate takes forty-five minutes by hand. Handwriting access panel descriptions, listing service points, printing photos from your phone, then scanning everything into a PDF. Multiply that by a dozen jobs a week and you are spending an entire shift on paperwork instead of revenue-generating cleaning.
A kitchen catches fire eight months after your last service. The fire marshal wants proof you cleaned the ductwork. Your photos are scattered across three technicians’ camera rolls, a shared Google Drive folder nobody organized, and a text thread you deleted in January. You did the work. You just cannot prove it.
NFPA 96 Table 12.4 says solid-fuel cooking needs monthly cleaning and light-duty needs semi-annual service. Your spreadsheet does not know the difference. A quarterly client slips to five months. Nobody catches it until the health inspector does. One missed frequency is one lost client.
You quoted a restaurant at four hundred dollars three years ago. Since then you added a rooftop access hatch that takes an extra hour, grease traps that were not in the original scope, and overnight labor. The price never went up. Without per-job profitability tracking, you are guessing which accounts to keep and which to reprice.
Half your jobs happen in basements, behind walk-in coolers, or on rural rooftops with zero cell reception. Cloud-only software locks your techs out mid-checklist. They finish the job on paper, drive back to the office, and re-enter everything the next morning. That is double the labor for the same data.
HoodOps replaces all of that. Here is how it works, step by step.
Every commercial kitchen has a legally mandated cleaning frequency dictated by NFPA 96 Table 12.4. A high-volume charbroil restaurant needs monthly hood cleaning. A church kitchen used twice a week for light catering might only require semi-annual service. Most kitchen exhaust cleaning companies track these frequencies in spreadsheets, sticky notes, or their own memory. That works until the third truck, and then clients start slipping through the cracks.
HoodOps includes a built-in NFPA 96 frequency engine that automatically calculates when each client is due based on their cooking type, appliance volume, and grease output. When you onboard a new restaurant, you select the cooking style and the system assigns the correct interval. Monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual. No manual math. No guessing whether that pizza shop was supposed to be quarterly or every four months.
The drag-and-drop calendar supports overnight shift scheduling because most kitchen exhaust cleaning happens between ten at night and six in the morning when the restaurant is closed. Recurring job templates let you set a client once and never think about it again. And automated client reminders go out before every scheduled service, reducing no-shows and last-minute cancellations that kill route efficiency.
Kitchen exhaust cleaning is a geography game. Your crews drive box trucks loaded with pressure washers, chemical tanks, and extension ladders. Every mile between jobs is unbillable fuel, unbillable labor, and wear on equipment that costs six figures to replace. Efficient routing is not a nice-to-have. It is the difference between profitable nights and break-even nights.
HoodOps route optimization clusters tonight\u2019s jobs by geography so your trucks move in tight loops instead of zig-zagging across the metro area. When a tech pulls into the parking lot, GPS arrival auto-detection clocks them in automatically. No manual time entry. No forgetting to start the clock. The system knows they arrived because the phone\u2019s GPS crossed the geofence around the client address.
Crew assignment goes beyond availability. HoodOps matches technicians to jobs based on IKECA certification level, territory assignment, and the specific equipment required for each kitchen. Geography-based teams get color-coded territory maps so dispatchers see coverage gaps at a glance. And every shift starts with a van pre-trip inspection checklist to confirm the truck is loaded, the pump is working, and safety equipment is on board before a single wheel turns.
Your techs work in the worst possible environments for mobile software. Basement kitchens with concrete walls and no windows. Rooftops in rural counties where the nearest cell tower is fifteen miles away. National park concessions at seven thousand feet of elevation. If your hood cleaning software requires a constant internet connection, it fails exactly where your crews need it most.
The HoodOps mobile app works fully offline. Technicians open the job, follow the checklist, capture photos, log grease depths, and collect digital signatures without a single bar of signal. Everything stores locally on the device and syncs automatically the moment connectivity returns. Whether that takes thirty seconds after leaving the basement or three hours after descending from a mountain lodge, no data is lost. The job record is complete.
Photo enforcement checklists require before, during, and after photos at each checkpoint in the cleaning workflow. Techs cannot advance past a gate without capturing the required image. Voice-to-text job notes let them dictate observations while their hands are covered in grease on the roof. Grease depth logging tracks accumulation at each service point over time so you can demonstrate cleaning effectiveness to clients and fire marshals. When the job is done, the client and tech both sign digitally on the phone screen.
Documentation is where most kitchen exhaust cleaning software falls apart because it was never designed for compliance-heavy trades. A completed hood cleaning job is not just an invoice. It is a legal record that a fire marshal, insurance adjuster, or attorney may request months or years after the work was performed. Every photo, every measurement, every signature needs to be stored, organized, and retrievable on demand.
HoodOps AI Vision photo analysis scores every image captured during the job. The system evaluates each photo for NFPA 96 violations, grease depth levels, and overall cleaning quality. If a technician submits a blurry before photo or an after photo that still shows visible grease accumulation, the AI flags it before the job leaves the field. This catches quality issues at the source rather than in a manager\u2019s office two days later.
NFPA 96 compliance certificates generate automatically from the job data. No manual assembly. No copying data from one system to another. The certificate includes timestamped photos, service point details, grease depth measurements, tech signatures, and client authorization. A QA review queue lets your operations manager inspect every job before the certificate goes out. Once approved, the certificate auto-delivers to the client via email and syncs to their EvidLY compliance dashboard so their fire safety records update without a single phone call.
Most kitchen exhaust cleaning companies do not know their true cost per job. They know what they charge. They know roughly what they pay in labor. But the real number, including drive time, chemical costs, equipment depreciation, and callbacks, is buried somewhere between a QuickBooks spreadsheet and a gut feeling. When your margins are thin, guessing is how profitable accounts silently become money losers.
HoodOps tracks per-job profitability in real time. Every job captures labor hours from GPS clock-in to clock-out, material costs from the pre-loaded inventory, and travel time from route data. The system calculates your actual margin on every single service call. Over time, you see which clients generate healthy returns and which ones have been underpriced for years. Price increase flagging surfaces accounts where the data supports a conversation about raising rates, backed by job history and cost documentation rather than arbitrary percentages.
Built-in payments and invoicing eliminate the gap between completing a job and collecting payment. Invoices generate from approved job data so nothing gets lost between field completion and billing. Payroll exports to Gusto in decimal hours format so your bookkeeper does not spend an hour converting time entries. You get QuickBooks-class financial visibility from inside the same platform your techs use on the roof, without the workarounds and manual reconciliation that eat up back-office hours every pay period.
The best kitchen exhaust cleaning companies do not grow by constantly finding new clients. They grow by keeping every client on a recurring schedule and expanding wallet share over time. A restaurant that starts with quarterly hood cleaning becomes a monthly account when they add a charbroiler. That same client refers the steakhouse next door. Retention and referrals compound faster than any marketing campaign.
HoodOps gives every client access to a branded portal where they view their service history, download compliance certificates, and review invoices without calling your office. Automated service reminders fire based on NFPA 96 Table 12.4 frequencies, not generic ninety-day timers that have nothing to do with their actual cleaning requirements. When a quarterly client is due, they hear from you at exactly the right moment. After every completed job, an automated satisfaction survey goes out. High scores trigger a Google review request. Low scores alert your management team immediately so you can intervene before a dissatisfied client starts shopping for a replacement.
Revenue forecasting projects your income six months into the future based on recurring schedules and historical data. Client churn risk detection identifies accounts showing early warning signs, like declining survey scores, delayed approvals, or skipped service windows, before they cancel. A referral program tracker attributes new business to the client who sent it. And marketing ROI by lead source shows you exactly which channels generate profitable accounts so you stop wasting money on advertising that brings in one-time price shoppers.
Every stage of the kitchen exhaust cleaning job lifecycle in one platform. No integrations to duct-tape together. No per-tech fees scaling out of control.
Claim Your Spot →Whether you are a solo operator with one van or a regional company managing subcontractors across multiple states, HoodOps adapts to your operation.
1–4 techs
Everything you need to run and document
5–9 techs
Add EvidLY integration, forecasting, and churn detection
10+ techs
Multi-location, white-label, dedicated account manager
No per-tech fees. No implementation fees. No annual contracts.
IKECA CECS · PECT · CESI (In Progress) · U.S. Air Force Veteran
Arthur runs Cleaning Pros Plus, a kitchen exhaust cleaning operation that services over 300 commercial kitchens annually across California\u2019s Central Valley. His client roster includes national accounts like Cintas and Aramark, institutional facilities at Yosemite National Park, and independent restaurants that depend on reliable NFPA 96 compliance documentation to pass fire inspections and maintain insurance coverage.
“I built HoodOps because I got tired of explaining NFPA 96 to software that was built for plumbers. Every feature in this product exists because I needed it on a real job, in a real kitchen, at two in the morning.”
HoodOps is not a startup guessing at what field service operators want. It is a working tool forged inside a working KEC company, refined through hundreds of overnight shifts, and validated against the compliance standards that govern this industry.
When HoodOps launches, Founding Members get early access, locked pricing, and a direct line to the founder. Your competitors won't even know this exists yet.
The price you start at is the price you keep. No increases. Ever.
Your competitors won't even know HoodOps exists yet.
Arthur built this from 300+ kitchens a year. He'll set you up personally.