No — you don’t have to be home. You can leave a door code, a lockbox key, or a smart-lock invite, and in a condo building you can register us with the front desk. Most recurring customers aren’t home during the visit. Staying is perfectly fine too. What matters isn’t your presence — it’s that entry is arranged before the day.
Two worries hide inside that question: is it rude to leave, and is it safe to leave. Neither is settled by etiquette; both are settled by what a company puts in writing about access, insurance and proof.
Four ways in, and only one of them is you
Our residential cleaning in Miami page answers access head-on: most recurring customers aren’t home during the visit; you can leave a door code, a lockbox key, or a smart-lock invite, and in condo buildings you can register us with the front desk. The Terms put it the same way, and there is the detail almost nobody notices — you provide reasonable access with “a code, key, smart-lock invite, or someone home”.
Someone home is the fourth option, not the default — a way to open the door, not a supervision requirement. If you would rather stay, stay. And if you are at work or at school pickup, that is the ordinary case, not the awkward one.
The access mistake that actually costs money
Leaving is free. Leaving without arranging entry is not. Cancel or reschedule free up to 24 hours before your appointment; inside 24 hours a $25 cancellation fee applies. Then the line almost nobody reads: “If our team arrives and cannot access the property (lockout, no arranged entry), the visit may be treated as a late cancellation.”
A two-person team drove to your address and stood outside. That is the expensive version of not being home, and it turns on whether the door opened — not on whether you were behind it. The cheapest insurance is the setup our prep guide recommends: a one-time code that expires after the visit, dropped into your booking notes. Around Cutler Bay, gates work the same way — we handle lockboxes and gate codes the way you tell us, but only if you tell us first.
What replaces standing there watching
The real reason people want to be home isn’t the door — it is wanting to know the work happened. That is what CleanCheck is for. The published residential visit is a 2–3 hour visit with a 2-person team on a 28-item checklist verified by photo, and eligible completed visits get a CleanCheck Report afterward. The Terms are explicit: work areas are photographed before and after the clean, and those photos are not used in marketing without your separate permission.
“Standing in the kitchen, you see the kitchen. The report shows you all 28 items — including the ones that were behind you.”
And if something is not right, the window is the same either way: contact JAS within 24 hours of completion and include the report. Damage is reported inside that same 24 hours, documented in your CleanCheck, and resolved through insurance; JAS carries at least $2,000,000 in general liability coverage and every cleaner is background-checked. Your presence is not the safeguard — the record is.
The first visit: reachable, not present
There is one visit where the answer softens: the first one. First-time homes are the reset — it has been a while since the last professional clean, so we reset the home to keep future biweekly visits efficient. And a reset is where surprises turn up. The Terms say what happens then: if the scope on arrival is materially different, we re-quote with you before doing extra work — never silently.
Re-quoting with you takes a phone, not a doorway. The honest version of the advice is not “be home for the first clean” — it is be reachable. Everything else a walkthrough would cover belongs in the booking notes: which product you want used, whether you would rather we use your own vacuum, the room that matters most, the door that cannot be left open. Tell us up front and your quote reflects reality, with no surprises at the door.
In a Miami tower, the front desk decides this — not you
In a house with its own driveway, access is a door. In a Brickell or Sunny Isles tower it is a process — the part generic advice pages cannot answer. Buildings want vendors registered at the front desk, and many associations require a certificate of insurance on file before a crew gets past the lobby. Many towers require the service elevator, and some assign it by reservation and time slot, on top of quiet hours.
None of that gets solved by you being upstairs. It gets solved once, before the first visit: you tell us the building, we coordinate with the front desk — crew registration, key or fob handoff, vendor parking — and we store the rules on your unit’s profile. You don’t have to be home, and you don’t have to play messenger; the long version is in our apartment and condo guide. It is why this works for owners outside the county too: on Key Biscayne, thick with second homes, a CleanCheck photo set can be forwarded to a co-host instead.
You booked a window, not a minute
An arrival window is what you book, not a minute on a clock: new bookings need 24–48 hours’ lead time so a team can be confirmed for it. A window is easy to leave a code for and a long time to sit on a couch. And sometimes it is us who cannot make it: hurricane season runs June through November, and the Terms cover that — we may reschedule for weather, safety, or staffing reasons, we tell you as soon as we know, and you never pay a fee for a reschedule we initiate.
Quick answers
Is it rude to stay home while the cleaners work?
No. The Terms list four equal ways to give access — a code, a key, a smart-lock invite, or someone home — so staying is one of them. Plenty of customers stay for a first visit; most recurring customers are not home. Neither choice changes the checklist or the price.
Do I need to be there for the very first cleaning?
Reachable, not present. The first visit is the reset, and a reset is where surprises turn up; the Terms say that if the scope on arrival is materially different — additional rooms, heavy build-up — we re-quote with you before doing extra work, never silently. That happens by phone.
What happens if the team arrives and cannot get in?
The Terms cover it: if our team arrives and cannot access the property — a lockout, no arranged entry — the visit may be treated as a late cancellation, and inside 24 hours a $25 fee applies. Arranging entry matters more than being there.
What do I do with the dog if I am not home?
A closed room with water and a favorite toy is the comfortable middle ground — vacuums stress a lot of animals, and an open front door plus a curious pet is how escape stories start. Put the name, the room and the door that cannot be opened in your booking notes.
If I was not there, how do I know what actually got done?
The published residential visit is 28 items verified by photo, and eligible completed visits include a CleanCheck report afterward. If something is not right, contact JAS within 24 hours of completion and include the report; damage goes to support inside that same window.
The short version
You don’t have to be home. Leave a code, a lockbox key, or a smart-lock invite, or register us at the front desk — and if you would rather stay, stay. What matters is arranging the entry before the day, because a team that cannot get in may be treated as a late cancellation. If you are still weighing whether to hire at all, that argument is in is hiring a cleaning service worth it.
From the JAS operating playbook — a question the industry answers with an opinion, answered here with published policy.