MOP & MARGIN / CLEANING BUSINESS PRICING

How to price a cleaning job while accounting for your own time

A cleaning quote needs to account for more than the time spent at the property. Travel, messages, supplies and the time of anyone helping you all affect what is left from the job.

A useful starting point is to build a cost estimate from your own numbers, choose a target profit margin, then compare the result with the scope of work and what your market will pay. A spreadsheet can help you organize that calculation. It cannot inspect a home or determine a competitive local rate.

1. Count all your time

Start with your expected cleaning time. Add travel and the admin work attached to the job, such as quoting, scheduling, customer messages and purchasing supplies.

In this fictional example, the owner expects four hours of cleaning, half an hour of travel and half an hour of admin. That is five hours. At a chosen owner-time allowance of $30 per hour, the estimate includes $150 for the owner's work.

That allowance is a planning assumption. It is not a payroll calculation or a statement about how an owner must legally pay themselves. Use a rate and time estimate that make sense for your own business.

2. Add help and direct costs

If a helper works 3.5 hours at an assumed loaded cost of $24 per hour, the helper allowance is $84. Your actual loaded cost may include more than the hourly wage. Use figures appropriate to your arrangements.

Add supplies, travel costs, parking and other expenses for this job. In this example, those costs total $22. Do not count the same cost in two categories.

3. Include a share of overhead

Overhead includes business costs that are not tied to just one visit. A simple planning method is to divide the monthly overhead amount you want to allocate by a realistic number of jobs.

For example, allocating $400 across 40 jobs adds $10 per job. If you complete fewer jobs, that allocation will not recover the full $400. Review the assumption as your schedule changes.

The example now has these modeled costs:

These are fictional inputs, not suggested market rates.

4. Account for payment fees and your target margin

Suppose, for illustration only, the payment fee is 3% of the customer price plus $0.30, and the target profit margin is 20% after the costs above. Your actual payment fees will depend on your provider and payment method.

The price calculation is:

Price = (modeled costs + fixed payment fee) ÷ (1 − percentage payment fee − target margin)

Using the example, ($266 + $0.30) ÷ (1 − 0.03 − 0.20) is approximately $345.84. Rounding up to a whole dollar gives $346.

At $346, the assumed payment fee is $10.68. Subtracting $266 of modeled costs and that fee leaves $69.32, approximately 20% of the price, after the owner-time allowance.

This is a model of the job. It is not a prediction of actual business profit and does not automatically capture taxes, refunds, unrecorded costs or changes in job scope.

5. Check a discount before offering it

With those same assumptions, a $220 price produces a $6.90 payment fee. Subtract $266 of costs and the modeled result is a $52.90 loss after the owner-time allowance.

A discount is not automatically wrong. It should be a deliberate decision about what changes: the scope, the time required, the costs, or the amount you are willing to retain. Simply lowering the price leaves those other assumptions unchanged.

Margin and markup are different

A 20% markup on $100 of cost produces a $120 price. The $20 difference is 16.7% of the selling price, not a 20% margin. Percentage payment fees reduce that remaining amount further.

Use the same definition consistently when comparing jobs. In this example, margin means the modeled amount remaining after the included job costs and payment fees, divided by the customer price.

Review the job after it is complete

An estimate becomes more useful when you compare it with the completed work. Record actual time, actual costs, revenue earned and cash received. A completed job can be profitable on your assumptions while still having an unpaid balance.

If the work repeatedly takes longer than expected, revise the next estimate. If a cost never appears in the tracker, the summary cannot account for it.

Quoting a first visit or repeat service?

Use our first clean vs. recurring cleaning guide to separate the scopes, compare two fictional quotes and review actual time before confirming a recurring price.

A simple place to start

Use the free Before You Quote checklist to collect the inputs before you work through a price.

The upcoming Cleaning Business Numbers Kit adds two editable spreadsheets: a quote calculator and a separate tracker for up to 200 completed jobs. It includes PDF instructions and uses USD formatting. The workbooks do not sync automatically.

The kit is in preview, with a planned one-time price of $29. Purchases are not open yet. Formula checks and LibreOffice recalculation have been completed; native Excel and Google Sheets testing is pending. Ask a question about the kit.

Questions about cleaning quote calculations

Does this formula tell me what to charge in my city?

No. It calculates a price from your own costs and selected margin. Property condition, scope, repeat frequency, competition and customer expectations still affect the final decision.

Can I use it if I work alone?

Yes. Set helper counts and helper costs to zero, and account for your own working time.

Should travel time and vehicle costs both be included?

They represent different inputs: the value you assign to your time and the direct cost of travel. Include them consistently and avoid counting the same expense twice.

Is this accounting or payroll software?

No. The kit is an internal planning and job-review tool. It does not create invoices, collect payments, run payroll or file taxes.

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