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Block cleaning is not judged on the day you do it. It is judged months later, by a managing agent answering a leaseholder who says nobody has been, and the only thing that settles it is a record made at the time. This is that record: the areas as agreed, the visits as worked, and what you reported rather than cleaned.
Free, no signup, no email Prints to A4 Written for UK cleaning businesses
One sheet a block a month. The areas are the specification you agreed; the grid is the proof you worked it.
Block and address
Managing agent
Agreed frequency
Month
Cleaner or team
The communal areas, and what was agreed for each
Tick what is in the contract. Anything not ticked is work you are not being paid for and should not be doing for free.
Entrance door, glass, frame and the mat inside it
Lobby and post area, including the floor under the post boxes
Stairs, every flight, including the nosings and the corners
Handrails and balustrades, wiped rather than dusted
Landings and the doors off them, up to the leaseholders' own doors
Lift car, floor, mirror and control panel, and the lift lobby
Internal glass, vision panels and light fittings within reach
Bin store and the route to it, including the bin lids
Externals in scope: paths, entrance step, cobwebs, cigarette ends
Anything explicitly excluded, written down as excluded
What the visit record has to show
Not for you. For the agent, six months later, with a leaseholder on the phone.
The block, by the name the agent calls it, not the name you call it
The date of every visit in the month, including the ones nothing happened on
Who was there, by name, and roughly how long they were
Which areas were done, and which were not, and why not
Anything found and reported rather than cleaned
Any access failure: the key did not work, the door was on the latch, the bin store was locked
Photographs, where the state of a thing is the point
Reported, not cleaned
The things a cleaner finds in a block that are somebody else's decision. Report them, photograph them, and write the date you told somebody.
Anything stored on a stair, landing or escape route
Fly-tipping and bulky waste, which is not your waste to move
A fire door propped, damaged or not closing
Lighting out, particularly on a stair
Graffiti, and whether it is offensive enough to be urgent
Needles, broken glass, blood or human waste: not without the training and the kit
Water where water should not be, and anything that smells of drains
A door entry system standing open
The month, visit by visit
One row a visit. The signature column is the cleaner's, made on the day rather than reconstructed at the end of the month.
Date
In
Out
Cleaner
All areas done
Signature
04/03
07:10
08:05
A. Cleaner
Yes
11/03
07:05
07:40
A. Cleaner
No, see below
Area by area, this visit
The specification as worked. "Not done" with a reason is a stronger record than a tick, because it is the one nobody writes unless it is true.
Area
Done
Not done, and why
Note for the agent
Stairs, ground to third
Y
Bin store
Locked, no key held
Second month running
Reported to the agent
Date
What was found
Where
Photographed
Reported to
What happened
11/03
Mattress left by bins
Bin store
Yes
Agent, by email
Collection booked
Free to print, copy and use commercially, including with your own
clients and staff. From CleanFlo, cleaning business
software for UK companies.
In CleanFlo
One client, forty blocks, one invoice
Each block is a location under the managing agent as the client, with its own access notes, its own recurring visits and its own checklist. The cleaner ticks the areas on their phone, offline, and an item can be set to require a photograph before it can be ticked. At the end of the month the invoice run gathers every completed clean for that agent into one invoice. There is no signing-in sheet and no code on the door: what stands in for it is the start and finish stamped on the job with one coarse location fix each.
Block cleaning is a paperwork contract with a cleaning job attached
The work itself is not difficult. Stairs, a lobby, a bin store, twenty minutes a visit, and on a good week nobody notices you at all. What is difficult is that the client is a managing agent who has never seen the block, paying out of a service charge that leaseholders can and do challenge, and the question you have to be able to answer is not "was it clean" but "prove you came".
That is why this document is a log rather than a checklist. A checklist proves what good looks like. A log proves attendance, area by area and date by date, which is the thing an agent is asked for and the thing a contractor almost never has.
The commonest way to lose a block is not poor cleaning. It is one leaseholder complaint, no record to answer it with, and an agent who moves the contract rather than have the argument twice.
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Many small sites under one client
A block contract is rarely one block. It is eleven of them under one agent, each with its own frequency, its own key or fob, its own bin day and its own resident who rings the agent. The administrative shape of that is the opposite of an office contract: the money is small per site and the coordination is the whole job.
Three things follow, and they are what separates a block round that pays from one that quietly does not. Each block needs its own specification, because "communal areas" means something different in a converted Victorian house and a 1970s deck-access block. Each needs its own access record, because the fob that opens one bin store does not open the next. And the invoicing has to gather them: one invoice a month for the agent, itemised by block, not eleven invoices for eleven small amounts.
The strongest line in any visit record is a "not done" with a reason. A sheet of unbroken ticks reads as a sheet filled in on a Friday afternoon; one honest "bin store locked, no key held, second month running" makes the whole page credible and puts a problem in front of the person who can fix it.
It also moves the fault. A block whose bin store was not cleaned because the cleaner never had a key is an agent problem the moment it is written down and an agent problem nobody can prove until it is.
Keep the reported log separate from the cleaning record for the same reason. Fly-tipping, a propped fire door, a light out on a stair: none of those is a cleaning failure, and a contractor who reports them by name and by date is the one who gets kept when the contract goes out to tender.
What a paper log stops doing
Paper works for one block. It stops working at about six, because the sheets live in six blocks, they are filled in by whoever is on that day, and they are only ever read when there is a complaint, which is precisely when they turn out to be in a folder in somebody's van.
What a system does about that is narrower than it is sold as. Each block sits under the agent as its own location with its own access notes and its own recurring visits. The cleaner works from their phone with no signal, ticks the areas as they go, and an item can be made to require a photograph before it will tick, which is the closest thing to proof this product has. The month's completed cleans for that agent are gathered into one invoice by the invoice run.
What there is not is a signing-in sheet, a QR code on the door or an NFC point in the lobby. Starting and finishing the job on the phone stamps the time and one coarse location fix, compared with the block's own position and flagged only when it is far off. That is a real record of when work began and finished, and it is not a verified timesheet: the hours in reports are still estimated from the job as scheduled.
Frequently asked questions
01What should a communal area cleaning record include?
The block by the name the agent uses, the agreed frequency, every visit date in the month with who attended and roughly how long, the areas done and not done with reasons, anything reported rather than cleaned, and any access failure. A sheet of unbroken ticks and no reasons is the record that loses an argument with a leaseholder.
02How often should communal areas in a block of flats be cleaned?
It is whatever the contract with the managing agent says, and it varies enormously: weekly is common in a small converted block, twice weekly or daily in a large or student block, fortnightly in a quiet rural one. There is no statutory frequency. What matters is that the frequency is written into a specification per block rather than agreed by phone, because a service charge that funds it can be challenged by the leaseholders paying it.
03Do I need a signing-in sheet in each block?
Many agents ask for one, and a paper sheet in the lobby is the traditional answer. It proves somebody wrote a name in a folder rather than that any cleaning happened, and it is the first thing a leaseholder disputes. A record made against each visit, with the areas done and the exceptions written down, answers the actual question better. CleanFlo has no signing-in sheet, no door code and no QR point: the start and finish of the job are stamped on the phone with a coarse location fix each.
04Can a cleaner move items left in a communal stairwell?
Report it rather than move it. A communal stair is an escape route and items stored on it are a fire risk, but under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 it is the responsible person for the building who decides what is removed and how residents are told. Photograph it, write the date you reported it and to whom, and let the agent act. The same goes for fly-tipping in a bin store: carrying somebody else's waste away makes you a waste carrier.
05How do I invoice a managing agent for several blocks?
One invoice a month for the agent, itemised by block, rather than one invoice a block. Agents pay on account and on their own cycle, and eleven small invoices are eleven chances for one to go missing. In CleanFlo the monthly invoice run gathers every completed clean for a client into a single invoice, which is the shape this contract wants.
06Can I use this visit log in Excel?
Yes. The spreadsheet has the month, the area-by-area record and the reported log as three tabs, and opens in Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets. Nothing is locked, there is no signup, and no email address is asked for.
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