How To Quote A Cleaning Job

Survey before you quote, or say you have not

Almost every underpriced cleaning job traces back to a number given before anybody looked at the property. A three-bedroom house is not a unit of work: the same address can be a four-hour clean or a nine-hour one depending on the oven, the limescale and whether the client has a dog.

Where you can, survey. Ten minutes walking the property with a notepad will tell you more than any phone call, and it converts better as well, because the client has met you.

Where you cannot, be explicit that the figure is an estimate rather than a quote. A quote is a fixed price that binds you once accepted; an estimate is an indication that may change. Using the words interchangeably is the single most common cause of a scope argument later, and the correct word costs nothing.

The build-up, in the order it has to happen

A defensible quote is built rather than guessed, and every line has to be there before the margin is applied.

• Hours. From the specification, not the room count. Be honest about the first clean: a property with no regular cleaning almost always needs a deep clean first, and quoting it at regular-clean hours is where the money goes.
• Labour cost. Not the wage. The wage plus employer National Insurance, pension, holiday accrual and absence cover, which together typically add 25–35%.
• Travel. Time between jobs is generally working time, and fuel and vehicle costs are real. A cheap job forty minutes away is not cheap.
• Materials and consumables. Chemicals, cloths, bin liners, machine consumables.
• Equipment. Depreciation or hire on anything beyond a vacuum, plus servicing.
• Overhead. Insurance, software, phone, accountancy, advertising, your own admin time. It has to be recovered across jobs or it is recovered from nowhere.
• Margin. Applied last, on top of the true cost, not hidden inside an hourly rate you picked because a competitor charges it.

The quote calculator runs this build-up, the time estimator sanity-checks the hours, and the true cost of a cleaner tool gives you the labour figure that most quotes get wrong.

The exclusions are worth more than the inclusions

Listing what is included reads as a description and protects nothing. Listing what is not included converts an assumption into a conversation before the work rather than an argument during it.

Every one of these has been assumed to be in scope by a client at some point: external windows, carpet and upholstery washing, clearance and waste removal, moving heavy furniture, cleaning inside occupied wardrobes and drawers, work above safe reach from the floor, garages, lofts and outbuildings, and consumables like toilet roll and bin liners.

Naming them does not make you look unhelpful. It makes you look like somebody who has done this before, which is exactly the impression that wins commercial work. The quote template carries the full list as a starting point.

What actually converts

• Speed. Quoting within 24 hours materially raises your hit rate, because most enquiries go to three or four companies and being first often matters more than being cheapest.
• A real name and a real number. A quote from a person converts better than a quote from an inbox.
• A scope the client can read. Somebody comparing three quotes will pick the one they understand, and price is only decisive when everything else is identical.
• A validity date. Thirty days is standard, protects you against cost rises, and creates a legitimate reason to follow up.
• One follow-up. A short message a few days later converts a meaningful share of quotes that would otherwise expire in silence. Most cleaning businesses never send it.
• Options rather than one number. Weekly, fortnightly, and a one-off deep clean first. A client choosing between your options is no longer choosing between you and somebody else.

When not to quote

Some enquiries should be declined rather than priced low, and recognising them is worth as much as any pricing technique.

Be wary of the client who leads with price before describing the work, the one who wants a fixed quote and will not let you see the property, the one whose previous three cleaners "were all unreliable", and the job whose travel time exceeds its cleaning time. Each of these has a predictable ending.

The discipline that matters: never win work on a price you cannot deliver at. An underpriced contract does not become profitable through effort, it just occupies the capacity you needed for a better one, and it is far harder to raise a price than to set it correctly at the start.