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Here are things you should find out when you visit the customer and look the site over:
1 How often do they want you to clean (once, twice, five times a week)?
2 How many square feet of floor space need to be cleaned? This number will be used to figure your "per square foot" price.
3 How much of the floor is carpeted and how much is hard floor?
4 Do you need any special equipment to do the job?
5 Are you responsible for any recycling?
6 Are chemicals, protective gloves, cleaning supplies and consumable materials needed?
7 What are the administrative and overhead costs such as planning time, transportation and paperwork?
8 How many workers will it take?
9 What time of day must the cleaning be done? (You may charge a little more for weekend or middle of the night cleaning).
10 Don't forget to include your profit margin. When you are small, your profit margin will necessarily be higher because you have less volume and not much overhead. As you get bigger and become more competitive, you'll have to reduce your margins to stay competitive. To keep up a high volume of business, you'll have to hire more staff, supervisors and create an office staff to support the paperwork. Profit margins for larger janitorial services can be as low as 10 percent of gross income.
The more detailed information you get from the site visit, the better the estimate you will be able to give. Depending on the complexity of the contract you might charge 10-20 cents per square foot for a five-day-a week-job for a large building. -
Create a sample job and then call around and ask other janitorial services what they'd do the job for. Get at least three quotes. This will give you a price range for your area. If you're just starting, charge a little less. If you have a great reputation, charge a little more.
The more detailed information you can gather in advance, the better your chances for success. - Your first estimates will be more difficult, but with experience, you'll know how much time and expense each element of a cleaning job will cost. Develop a contract that specifies each cleaning task, frequency of cleaning and any special cleaning tasks that are included. You can fill out the contract checklist as you conduct your site visit, then do your estimate and submit a completed contract to your customer as a bid. Some sample contract forms are linked below.
- There are several janitorial estimation software packages available. These packages simplify the process by helping you develop the contract element checklist and then quickly figures the number so that you'll have an accurate professional-looking bid to give your customer.
