How To Bid On Commercial Cleaning Jobs

Using bidding calculators can help you put together cleaning bids for potential customers

Using bidding calculators can assist you lot put together cleaning bids for potential customers

This article was contributed by Stacie and Joe Gorse, members of TheJanitorialStore.com and owners of Omni Enterprises of Creedmore, NC.

Updated by Steve Hanson, co-founder of thejanitorialstore.com and MyHouseCleaningBiz.com

To estimate a bid price for an office space you need to know a couple of numbers. Starting time yous need to know the cleanable square footage of the facility. Second you need to know the time to make clean and third your toll per hr.

Getting the cleanable square footage is easy, simply measure the space with a measuring bicycle. Length 10 width = square footage. Example: 25 feet 10 fifteen feet = 375 square feet.
The time to clean is based on your production charge per unit (how many square feet yous can make clean in one hour). 25,000 square feet divided by 6 60 minutes = 4,166.66 square feet per hour.
Your toll per hour is based on marketplace research. When y'all know what your competitors are charging per 60 minutes for general cleaning, go in the heart range.

One time you know those numbers you can use the "bidding calculators" to know if you volition make a profit on the account.

There are basic guidelines for productivity. These are merely "crude" estimates, but it's essentially, how much space tin you clean in an hour. If you're cleaning a 6000 square foot area and it takes y'all iii hours to get done, your Productivity is 2000 feet per hour which is low productivity. If information technology takes you lot 1.5 hours to make clean that 6000 foot surface area, your productivity is 4000 feet/hr which is high productivity. The difference is usually determined past what needs to be done. For example, one 6000 square foot office might be all carpeted with a little light dusting and one bathroom. That would be much easier than say, a 6000 foot area divided into several rooms with tile floors and 6 separate bathroom stalls to clean and a carpeted lobby with a mirrored elevator. The "Productivity" number is only the corporeality of space you can make clean per hour. In the more than elaborate part, information technology takes longer to clean the same amount of space.

1500-2000: Low Productivity: High difficulty, high % of tile floors, industrial, high traffic areas.

2000-3000: Moderate Productivity: Standard account, moderate difficulty, lower frequency per calendar week.

3000-4000: Medium Productivity: Low difficulty, higher frequency per week.

4000+: High Productivity: this is an easy business relationship that you can generally clean in under an 60 minutes.

Time = Surface area Divided by Productivity.

This is the actual corporeality of fourth dimension it takes to provide service in one case. If you don't know how much time it will take, use the full general descriptions every bit a guideline... more than difficult accounts have longer to clean and then more difficult accounts accept a lower productivity number.

Frequency = How many days in one week service is provided.

Rate = Your hourly charge per unit.

This is another category that varies greatly by region and also by the number of services per week. Typically, to exist competitive, the hourly rate goes down as the frequency increases. For example, if yous make clean once a week, you tin charge $25 per hour. Simply if you clean 5 days a week, in order to win the bid, you might demand to bid a much lower hourly rate (closer to $fourteen-16 per hour).

Some full general guidelines to follow for this calculation formula are:

1x per calendar week: $25/hr
2x per week: $20-22/hr
3x per week: $18-19/hour
4x per week: $16-18/hr
5x per week: $14-xvi/hr

Of course this number varies depending on where y'all are in the country, merely it's a safety bet to start with, which will keep you competitive and even so assisting.

To summate your bid price:

Time ten Charge per unit ten Frequency x iv.3 (yous multiply past four.three considering this is the number of weeks in a month).

Hither's an example using this formula:

You are behest on an office. It's 6000 square feet, all carpeted with one bathroom. They take out their own trash and recyclables and have a small kitchenette with a microwave and dorm size refrigerator to wipe downwardly. They want service 3 days a week.

To bid this, you would figure information technology would probably autumn into the 3000 range for productivity because of the frequency. So, 6000 divided past 3000 = 2. Using this guide, it would take virtually 2 hours to make clean. Because it'south iii times a week, y'all would probably charge well-nigh $19 per 60 minutes.

So, Time x Rate x Frequency ten four.3 = Your bid two x nineteen 10 3 x 4.3 = $490

Potentially, this could piece of work with just about any type of account because in order to give them a good bid, you demand to figure out how long it will take to clean. In one case you have that number nailed downwardly, bidding is actually non that difficult.

Time is money, after all.