You can set the price of house cleaning jobs by the hour. Check the prices of your competitors and base your number on theirs. It's a good idea to calculate the price per square foot to get the most accurate cleaning prices. This type of pricing is easy to calculate the moment a customer requests a quote.
Just ask them for square footage, and then multiply that number by their square foot rate. Once you know your hourly rate and cleaning schedules, you'll need to set up your price list. To give a customer an estimate, add up the times for the areas given by the customer, divide those times by 60 to get the time it will take to clean, and multiply that number by your hourly rate. Cleaning professionals generally don't negotiate specific prices and will most likely stick to a pre-established price list for their types of services.
Quoting a price to be charged for cleaning someone's house is directly related to how much time it will take to clean the house in question. Now that you know how much cleaning services charge in your area, you can average hourly rates to calculate how much you can charge to stay competitive. But if you charge the right house cleaning rates and taking the time to build trust with your customer, you can still make this pricing method work for you. This doesn't necessarily mean that they lied (although they could have), it just means that “their perception of what needs to be cleaned and how long it would take doesn't match yours.
Many larger cleaning companies have uniforms for their staff, company cars, and standard procedures for cleaning a customer's home. A typical standard bathroom cleaning service will include sweeping, mopping, scrubbing the sink and polishing the faucet, cleaning the counters, cleaning the mirrors, scrubbing the shower or tub and polishing the faucet fixtures, and disinfecting the toilet and toilet bowl. The tour allows them to see the size, layout and general cleanliness of your home, and gives you an estimate of what a one-time or first-time cleaning will cost, as well as the rates for ongoing services, whether weekly, bi-monthly or monthly. This allows them to give new customers a general idea of what their services will cost, based on experience and the estimated time and labor required to clean.
Window cleaning costs less than polishing wood because windows don't have all the nooks and crannies that wooden furniture has. Usually your hourly rate remains the same, but one-time or first-time cleaning will cost more because it takes longer. It will probably take you at least a few weeks to understand their cleaning process before you can decide whether to continue hiring them or not. You'll have a better idea of the type of cleaning services the customer is looking for and how long it would take them to clean their home.
Larger cleaning companies can rush from cleaning the house from one customer to another, with the goal of getting as many as they can into a day. Keep Cleaning in San Francisco, California has basic starting rates for its cleaning services that increase with each additional room.
