Cleaning & janitorial
Cleaner Utilization Calculator
Work out what share of paid cleaner hours are billable.
Result
Not all unbilled time is waste. Travel, restocking, training and warranty calls are necessary and will never be zero. The useful question is whether the share is drifting, not whether it reaches 100%.
Get a Free Business AuditWhat moves the number
- Travel between properties, which dominates on domestic rounds.
- Gaps caused by customer time preferences.
- Cover and absence.
Where this one goes wrong
Blaming cleaners for low utilisation. It is overwhelmingly a scheduling and geography problem, and the fix is in how the round is built rather than in how fast anyone works.
Questions
About this calculator
What utilisation is realistic?
It depends almost entirely on round density. A tight urban round and a rural one produce very different figures with identical effort.
How do I improve it?
Cluster properties geographically and constrain customer time preferences to a window rather than a slot. Both add billable hours without anyone working faster.
Do customer preferences really cost that much?
Yes. A round scheduled around individual preferred times rather than geography can lose a large share of the day to driving.
The formula
utilisation = billed hours / paid hours
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How to use this calculator
- Paid hours per day. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 8.
- Hours that reach an invoice. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 5.2.
- Number of technicians. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 12.
- Rate charged per hour ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $55.
- Cost per paid hour ($). Wage plus burden.
- Working days per month. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 22.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to billable share of the day, and change it back. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
A worked example
These are the figures the calculator opens with. Every number in the results column below is produced by the same calculation the page runs, so you can follow it through before putting your own figures in.
What goes in
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid hours per day | 8 |
| Hours that reach an invoice | 5.2 |
| Number of technicians | 12 |
| Rate charged per hour | $55 |
| Cost per paid hour | $34 |
| Working days per month | 22 |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Billable share of the day main result | 65.0% |
| Unbilled hours per month | 739 |
| Revenue those hours would have carried | $40,656 |
| What the unbilled hours cost in wages | $25,133 |
65.0% of the paid day reaches an invoice. The rest is 739 hours a month, costing $25,133 in wages and carrying $40,656 of revenue that never happened.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only rate charged per hour, this is what happens to billable share of the day. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Rate charged per hour ($) | Billable share of the day |
|---|---|
| $28 | 65.0% |
| $41 | 65.0% |
| $55 example above | 65.0% |
| $83 | 65.0% |
| $110 | 65.0% |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Paid hours per day
- A number, between 0 and 24, starting at 8.
- Hours that reach an invoice
- A number, between 0 and 24, starting at 5.2.
- Number of technicians
- A number, between 0 and 500, starting at 12.
- Rate charged per hour ($)
- A money amount, starting at $55.
- Cost per paid hour ($)
- Wage plus burden.
- Working days per month
- A number, between 0 and 31, starting at 22.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Billable share of the day | The headline result. A percentage. |
| Unbilled hours per month | A number. |
| Revenue those hours would have carried | A money figure. |
| What the unbilled hours cost in wages | A money figure. |
Time is the variable that bites
Pricing that works out on paper fails when the job takes longer than quoted. First cleans, heavily soiled sites and access problems all run over, so it is worth pricing the first visit separately from the recurring one.
Estimating is the easy part
The jobs you never hear about cost more than the ones you mis-measure. BDEVY builds the marketing, systems and automation that bring them in.