Office cleaning: how much to charge for a contract that pays.

Office cleaning is usually priced per visit, as a flat monthly contract, or checked against a rate per square foot. Whichever way you quote, check it against the real cost of the job.

Office cleaning: how much to charge starts with crew hours

Many owners look for one simple price per square foot. That number is useful, but only as a check. Two offices of the same size can take very different time to clean.

Start with the hours. Walk the space, picture the crew working it, and estimate how long one visit takes. Then cost those hours properly. The full cost of one person-hour is the wage plus payroll taxes, insurance and workers' compensation. If you have not worked that out yet, use the labor burden calculator first.

From there the method is the same as any job: crew hours (including drive time) times your full hourly cost, plus supplies, plus vehicle and fuel. Then divide by one minus your margin to get the price. Your office, ads, software and your own pay come out of that margin.

Per square foot, per visit, or a flat monthly price

Office cleaning is often priced one of three ways. They are not rivals. Most owners use one to set the price and another to check it.

• Per visit. You price one clean, then multiply by the visits in a month. This is the clearest way to build the number, because one visit is something you can time.
• Flat monthly contract. The client pays the same amount every month. Many office managers like this, because it is easy to budget for. Build it from the per-visit price, not from a guess.
• Per square foot. Divide your monthly price by the cleanable square feet. Use the answer to compare jobs and spot bids that look too low or too high. Be careful quoting it straight to a client: a busy office with many washrooms and a quiet open office of the same size should not cost the same.

For more on choosing between a fixed price and charging for time, see flat rate vs hourly pricing.

Time each type of space, not the whole building

A production rate is how many square feet one cleaner can finish in an hour. It is different for each kind of room. Time your own crew in each type of space and write it down. Your own numbers beat any chart online.

• Open office areas. Emptying bins, dusting desks and vacuuming open floor goes fastest.
• Private offices. Slower per square foot. Every door, desk and bin is a stop.
• Washrooms. The slowest space per square foot. Toilets, sinks, mirrors, refills and floors all take hands-on time. Count the fixtures, not just the room size.
• Kitchens and break rooms. Counters, sinks, microwaves and tables. Fridges and dishes are often extra.
• Entrances and lobbies. Glass doors and mats take more time in wet or snowy months.
• Hard floors. Mopping usually takes longer than vacuuming. Scrubbing or waxing is a separate job.

Add the time for each area, then add time to unlock, set alarms, fill the cart and take out the garbage. See how to estimate labor hours for a job for a simple way to build that estimate.

Turn one visit into a monthly price

A month is not four weeks. There are 52 weeks in a year, so an average month has about 4.33 weeks. If you multiply by four, you clean about one extra week every quarter for free.

Multiply the per-visit price by the visits per month to get the monthly contract price. Then decide what happens on public holidays. The 4.33 count already includes them, so if the client wants those nights cleaned, the price covers them. If you will skip holidays, write that in the contract. You can keep the same monthly price, which is easier for the client to budget, or take those nights out of the visit count. Just decide before you sign, not after.

What pushes an office cleaning price up or down

• Number of washrooms and fixtures. More toilets and sinks means more time, even in a small space.
• How many people work there. More staff means more garbage, messier kitchens and more fingerprints on glass.
• Floor types. Carpet, tile, wood and concrete all take different time and tools.
• Clutter. Desks covered in paper are slower to dust, and some clients do not want them touched at all.
• When you can get in. If you pay extra for night or weekend shifts, or the extra hours push someone into overtime, price the hours at what you will actually pay.
• Access and security. Keys, alarm codes, sign-in rules and elevators all add minutes to every visit.
• Supplies. Decide who buys toilet paper, paper towel, hand soap and garbage bags. If you supply them, price them as a separate line or build them in clearly.
• Distance. Drive time is paid time. A building close to your other night jobs is worth more to you than one across town.

Do a proper walkthrough before you bid

Never bid an office from a floor plan or a phone call. Walk it, ideally at the end of a working day when it looks the way your crew will find it. Bring a checklist and fill in:

1. Cleanable square feet, and which rooms are off-limits.
2. Number of washrooms, toilets, urinals and sinks.
3. Kitchens and break rooms, and what in them you clean.
4. Floor types in each area.
5. How many staff work there and on which days.
6. Visits per week, and the hours you can be in the building.
7. Who supplies paper, soap and bags.
8. Keys, alarm, parking and where garbage goes.
9. Extra tasks the client expects: windows, fridges, high dusting, floor care.

Ask what the client did not like about their last cleaner. The answer tells you where the extra time will go.

Add-ons and extras to price separately

Keep the regular clean simple and price these as extras, either per visit or as a monthly add-on:

• Inside fridge and microwave cleaning.
• Inside window glass and glass walls.
• Carpet extraction or deep cleaning.
• Hard floor care: scrubbing and adding a fresh coat of floor finish, or stripping off the old wax and putting on new.
• High dusting of vents, lights and ledges.
• Day porter hours (a cleaner on site during business hours).
• One-time move-in, move-out or post-renovation cleans.

Write the regular scope down in the contract. Anything not on the list is an extra. That stops the slow creep where the client asks for one more small thing each week and your time grows while the price stays the same.

Mistakes, walk-away signs and how to present the price

Common mistakes:

• Copying a square-foot rate from the internet without timing the job.
• Pricing from the wage instead of the full hourly cost.
• Adding a markup and calling it margin. A 50% markup is only about a 33% margin. See profit margin vs markup.
• Using four weeks a month.
• Leaving supplies, drive time and setup out of the price.
• Locking in a price for years with no way to review it when wages go up.

When to walk away or raise the price: the client wants a long scope at a price below your cost, will not let you walk the space first, or changes what they want every week. A contract that loses money every night is worse than an empty slot, because it ties up a crew you could use somewhere else.

How to present it: give one clear monthly price, the visits per week, and a written list of what each visit includes. Show extras as separate lines. Add a clause that lets you review the price once a year. A clean, written proposal tells the client you will be just as organized in their building. For more on raising prices later, see how to raise prices without losing customers.

Once the contract starts, track your real hours per visit. CrewBrain tracks crew hours by job, so you can see if each office still earns what you priced it at.

A worked example: one evening visit to a 5,000 sq ft office with two washrooms and a small kitchen, cleaned three nights a week

Hourly cost per person is the full cost of one hour of after-hours work, including payroll taxes, insurance and workers' compensation, not just the wage. Drive time from the last building is counted as paid time for each person in the vehicle. Multiply the per-visit price by 13 visits to get the monthly contract price. These numbers are an illustrative example of the method. They are not a price list, and not a promise of what your jobs will earn.

Try it with your own numbers

Built for house cleaning: the house cleaning price calculator works from home size, bathrooms, extras (inside oven, fridge, cabinets), with example speeds you can change to your crew’s.

Keep going

• CrewBrain for cleaning and janitorial companies: how the software handles quoting, scheduling and crew time for this trade.
• How much to charge for move-out cleaning, from empty homes to post-construction
• How much to charge for house cleaning: a price table with the math shown
• How to price carpet cleaning so small jobs still pay
• How to price a service job: the five-step method behind every page in this series.
• Job price calculator: the same calculator as above, on its own page.
• What is a good profit margin for a service business?
• How to estimate labor hours for a job
• All pricing guides by trade

Questions owners ask