How to Bid on Commercial Cleaning

Next to quality of commercial cleaning, pricing is most important when bidding a cleaning job. Bid too high, and someone will bid lower with good quality work. Bid too low, and expenses may be more than the income. Finding a medium bid that allows for profit and still maintains excellent quality is the key to running a solid business and making sure clients return and refer others.

Things You'll Need

• Lists of materials
• Costs of materials
• Cleaning time data
• Square footage (even if estimated)
• Workload estimate
• Competitor rate checks
• Templates (optional)

Instructions

1. Prepare a list of cleaning materials. List the cost of these items and, if known, the number of uses before replenishment will be needed. Within this list, include not only various types of cleaners but the cost of brooms, mops, dusting equipment, sponges, gloves, carrying devices and anything else that is of material value and will be needed on the job. Try to make this list as complete as possible.

2. Using information gathered from previous cleaning jobs, even those around home, attempt to come up with a time estimate of how long it takes to do certain cleaning jobs. Clean a bathroom thoroughly and note the time it takes to do so. Clean a garage for a clearer understanding of how long it takes to clean a more industrial-type atmosphere. Time various jobs around the house and get a fairly good idea how long certain cleaning areas take. Chart these times or list them on a sheet of paper for quick reference. Call this the cleaning time data.

3. Know and reference the square footage of the areas in step 2. If the exact square footage is not known, use an estimate. Using this information will give a good idea of the time it will take to clean per square foot. This option will make bidding easier on larger jobs by giving an idea of how long it will take to complete the overall job. Title this information as cleaning per square foot or cleaning per hour as it will encompass all of the information based on the time it takes to accomplish the task. Make a list of times and square footage options to make bidding quicker and more efficient.

4. One method of bidding a commercial cleaning job will be to use the above information to help propose a bid for a commercial cleaning job. Get the square footage, or an estimate of the footage, for the site being bid. Presuming standard cleaning procedures will be desired. Use the lists from above to gain a fairly good idea of the length of time a job may require. Price by the hour or by square footage. If a job looks as if it will take three hours or three hours worth of square footage, add in all costs for cleaning supplies and multiply by the wage per hour that is desired. The bid is complete.

5. Keep track of bidding costs by making a complete list of every type of cleaning provided and the cost of each. This second option for bidding is based on a breakdown on a worksheet that would read something like: bathroom, 10 square feet, 1 hour; vacuum, 12 square feet, one-half hour. From this form calculate hourly time spent to clean entire buildings by adding the time and square footage of the project and taking it times the amount per hour being charged. There are actual templates, down-loadable from the Internet or from books, that will make this type of production rate tracking even easier.

6. After the bid computations are complete, make a complete, formal printout of the estimated cost to charge a customer. Make clear what cleaning tasks are included, the approximate time the entire job will take and the total charge to the client. Once this bid is made and accepted, even if the job takes longer than expected to complete, stick to the original bid figures. Taking less profit than expected will more than offset any extra charging to the customer upon completion of a job. This proves to the client that integrity is more important than profit and the person he has chosen to complete his commercial cleaning was the correct one.

Tips & Warnings

• Doing an excellent commercial cleaning for a customer, along with honesty in bidding and production, will make gaining further clients much easier. If customer No. 1 is a happy client, he will spread the word.

References

• Janitorial Resource Guide For Commercial Cleaning Services bidding
• Pricing Your Commercial Office Cleaning Business Services
• How To Bid Janitorial and Commercial Cleaning Jobs by Dan Liebrecht
• Commercial Cleaning Services Basics
• Janitorial Bidding Calculators