HOW TO PRICE UP A CLEANING JOB

For building cleaning and general cleaning contracts. We get many queries about this. Here is how you do it. Look at your surface area. If you know your job you should know how long it should take you and your staff. If you do not have any employees then do not attempt to tender for any job on a large area unless you are really sure of the way you are able to do the job. Again, you should really know what you are doing.

Find out exactly what will be required of you in the duration of the contract. This is important for your timing of the hours of the job. It is no use agreeing a set amount of work in a set amount of hours only to find that much extra is required of you in the same time - and it does happen. Nearly all the time.
Get it in writing, and do not get too friendly with the people you are contracting with. You will find you will be doing "favours" which will certainly sour any relationship. Let us re-emphasize - get it in writing.

Having sorted this out - and we assume the whole of the building unless told differently - you can now price up your contract.

Look at your outgoings. You can put those direct ones - the cost of your materials, equipment and labour on to this contract. You cannot put all of your indirect expenses such as rent, rates, etc. onto this contract. These have to be spread out over all your contracts. By keeping a reasonably accurate cash flow you ought to be able to judge how much you can factor in to each contract. But be warned, this has to be done very carefully. The general situation is that you have to stand your off - site costs yourself and hope that you can recover some over each contract. Just do not expect any client to pay all your own liabilities. NOT the way to go.

When pricing up your contract this base figure has to form part of your overall costing strategy so factoring in gets easy. So you have a percentage on to each contract.

Now you have:

Contract cost+ percentage of base costs + the profit margin you want to work to. This is not fixed in stone. Some expect 10%, some work to33% and some work to even higher. Even two similar contracts can show different profit margins - any problems on one lowers your margins, whereas an easy contract can raise them up to 70, 80, and 90 %
Finally, it pays to find out what everyone else is charging, so ring around a few people and if you are really getting on well with your potential client, find out what budget they are working to. It could be very illuminating and you could work well within that.

You should not be seen to be too cheap - you will not look good, and you may not be able to afford your contract. If you charge little to get into a contract, don't be surprised if later you cannot increase the value of the contract. They've got a bargain! Conversely, if you charge amounts which are exorbitant then you really won't get the contract. Here is an example: we stopped working for someone who then had to find themselves another cleaning company. We used to charge a reasonable rate plus expenses. Everyone knew where they were. When this company asked someone else to price up the contract the result was 10 times our price. By this time, the company knew what we did and how we did it, so they knew what the likely costs should be. Result? No contract for them. One of our clients told us that they only pick the middle contract that is neither too low nor too high, and this seems to be the general way most people go.

One further point, if you encounter difficulties during your contract, which is likely to lead to further costs - talk to your client first.

HOW TO PRICE UP A CLEANING JOB

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