Cleaning & janitorial
Cleaning Pricing Calculator
Set cleaning prices from measured times and burdened labour rather than from what competitors charge.
Result
Overhead and margin are taken as shares of the selling price, which is why the cost is divided rather than multiplied. Adding 15% to cost does not produce a 15% margin. Gross profit is what is left after the cost of doing the job. Overhead comes out of that: the building, the office wages, the vans, insurance, software and advertising. A healthy gross margin still loses money if overhead is larger.
Get a Free Business AuditWhat moves the number
- Measured time on real properties rather than estimated time.
- Burdened labour cost including travel between jobs.
- Product and equipment consumed per clean.
Where this one goes wrong
Pricing per job from an assumed duration. Cleaning is sold per job and costed per hour, and every pricing failure in the trade is a gap between the assumed duration and the real one.
Questions
About this calculator
How do I know my prices work?
Time a sample of real jobs against what they were charged. Most cleaning businesses find a portion of their work is close to break-even and did not know which portion.
Hourly or flat rate?
Flat gives the customer certainty and shifts the time risk to you, which is fine if the times were measured. Hourly is safer and some customers dislike the open end.
Should first cleans be separate?
Always. They take far longer and pricing them at the recurring rate is the single most common way a domestic cleaning business loses money.
The formula
price = direct cost / (1 - overhead% - margin%)
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How to use this calculator
- Labour cost ($). Burdened: wages plus tax, insurance and the vehicle, not the hourly wage.
- Materials cost ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $12.
- Other direct costs ($). Permits, disposal, equipment hire, subcontractors.
- Overhead rate (%). Overhead as a share of revenue. Work it out from last year's accounts.
- Target net margin (%). Enter your own figure; the page starts at 15%.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to price to quote, 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 |
|---|---|
| Labour cost | $96 |
| Materials cost | $12 |
| Other direct costs | $0 |
| Overhead rate | 22% |
| Target net margin | 15% |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Price to quote main result | $171.43 |
| Direct cost | $108 |
| Overhead recovered | $37.71 |
| Net profit | $25.71 |
| Gross margin | 37.0% |
| Markup on direct cost | 58.7% |
Quote $171.43 to cover $108 of direct cost, recover $37.71 of overhead and leave $25.71 of net profit. That is a 58.7% markup on cost.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only labour cost, this is what happens to price to quote. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Labour cost ($) | Price to quote |
|---|---|
| $48 | $95.24 |
| $72 | $133.33 |
| $96 example above | $171.43 |
| $144 | $247.62 |
| $192 | $323.81 |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Labour cost ($)
- Burdened: wages plus tax, insurance and the vehicle, not the hourly wage.
- Materials cost ($)
- A money amount, starting at $12.
- Other direct costs ($)
- Permits, disposal, equipment hire, subcontractors.
- Overhead rate (%)
- Overhead as a share of revenue. Work it out from last year's accounts.
- Target net margin (%)
- A percentage, between 0 and 80, starting at 15%.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Price to quote | The headline result. A money figure. |
| Direct cost | A money figure. |
| Overhead recovered | A money figure. |
| Net profit | A money figure. |
| Gross margin | A percentage. |
| Markup on direct cost | A percentage. |
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.