Cleaning Bid Template: How to Price a Commercial Cleaning Job

DEFINITION

Fully-Loaded Labor Rate

The actual cost of employing a worker, including their hourly wage plus payroll taxes (employer FICA), workers compensation insurance, and any benefits. A cleaner earning $18 per hour typically costs $23-28 per hour fully loaded. Using the wage alone in bid calculations means every job is underfunded from the start.

DEFINITION

ISSA Production Rates

Cleaning time standards published by the Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association (ISSA). They define how many square feet a single cleaner can complete per hour for specific task types -- vacuuming, mopping, restroom cleaning, trash removal, and others. Using ISSA rates produces more accurate labor estimates than guessing from square footage alone.

DEFINITION

Overhead Allocation

The portion of fixed business costs assigned to each account or bid. Fixed overhead includes insurance, vehicles, equipment depreciation, software, and management salaries. Overhead is calculated as a percentage of total revenue and applied as a cost line in each bid. Bids that do not include overhead allocation absorb those costs from margin.

The Problem With Most Cleaning Bids

Most cleaning companies bid one of two ways: they use a flat per-square-foot rate, or they estimate from experience. Both approaches work until they do not. One account that takes twice the expected labor hours wipes out the margin on several others.

The fix is a structured bid template that calculates labor from task-level production rates, includes all cost lines, and produces a defensible price. You should be able to explain every number in your bid if a client pushes back — but you do not show them the breakdown.

This guide walks through the template step by step.

Step 1: Capture Property Details

Before opening a spreadsheet, gather four inputs from the site walk:

1. Square footage by area type. Carpet, hard floor, and restrooms each have different production rates. Measure or request drawings. Do not estimate.
2. Task list from the scope of work. Every task in the contract drives labor hours. An account with floor stripping, window cleaning, or disinfection protocols takes more time than a basic nightly clean.
3. Service frequency. Visits per week determines monthly labor hours and monthly cost directly.
4. Site-specific factors. High restroom counts add significant time. Polished terrazzo requires special equipment. Security sign-in procedures add setup time. These are exactly what a flat per-square-foot rate misses.

Walk the site. A 30-60 minute visit before bidding is not optional — it is how you catch the factors that separate a profitable account from a losing one.

Step 2: Define Scope of Work Per Area

For each area in the building, list every task and its frequency. This is also the section that goes in the bid document the client signs.

Sample scope by area:

Restrooms (daily): scrub toilet bowl and under rim, disinfect toilet seat and handle, clean sink and faucet, wipe mirror, restock paper products, empty trash, mop floor. Restrooms (weekly): wipe partition walls and doors, clean trash can interior. Restrooms (monthly): scrub grout lines.

Offices (daily): empty trash, vacuum carpet, wipe high-touch surfaces. Offices (weekly): dust furniture surfaces, clean interior glass. Offices (monthly): vacuum under furniture, wipe baseboards.

Writing this out at bid time forces you to account for every labor task before you calculate hours. Tasks you forget to list are tasks you will eat as a hidden cost.

Step 3: Calculate Labor Hours With ISSA Production Rates

ISSA production rates are the industry standard for this calculation. Common benchmarks:

For each area, divide the square footage by the applicable rate to get task hours. Sum across all tasks, then add a 10-15% buffer for setup, pack-up, and restocking time between areas.

Monthly labor hours = (hours per visit x visits per month) x (1 + buffer)

Your own numbers from completed accounts are the best calibration source over time. ISSA rates are the starting point; your job records refine them.

Step 4: Apply Your Fully-Loaded Labor Rate

This is where most cleaning bids fail silently. The fully-loaded rate covers:

• Cleaner hourly wage
• Employer payroll taxes (FICA: 7.65% of wages)
• Workers compensation insurance (typically $3-6 per $100 of payroll in cleaning)
• Any paid time off or benefits

If a cleaner earns $18/hour, the fully-loaded cost is commonly $23-28/hour. Using $18 in your bid calculation means you are absorbing $5-10/hour as a hidden loss on every visit.

Monthly labor cost = monthly labor hours x fully-loaded hourly rate.

Step 5: Add Supply and Equipment Costs

Materials for standard commercial accounts run 5-12% of labor cost. For a bid with $3,000 in monthly labor, that is $150-360 in supply costs. Higher for medical, food-service, or accounts where you supply paper products directly.

If you supply paper products, track usage from similar-sized accounts and use that as your estimate rather than guessing. Underestimating supply costs is a common margin leak on paper-product accounts.

Equipment depreciation — vacuum replacement, floor machine maintenance, cart restocking — belongs here as well. A rough way to handle it: calculate your annual equipment spend and divide by 12, then allocate that monthly cost across all active accounts by visit count.

Step 6: Add Overhead and Margin

Overhead is the fixed cost of running your business: insurance premiums, vehicle costs, equipment depreciation, software, management time. Calculate your total fixed monthly overhead and divide by your total monthly revenue to get an overhead percentage.

Example: $6,000 in monthly fixed overhead on $30,000 in monthly revenue = 20% overhead rate. Apply 20% of labor cost as an overhead line to every bid.

If you do not know your overhead rate, calculate it before writing another bid. Pricing without it means overhead is silently eating margin on every account you run.

After overhead, apply your target margin. Commercial cleaning targets are typically 15-25% net margin. Add margin to the sum of all cost lines to get the monthly price.

Step 7: Format the Bid Document

The bid document has five sections:

Scope of work. Every task included, organized by area, with frequency labels. This becomes your quality standard.

Pricing. Monthly total. If you offer a discount for a longer contract term, show it as a comparison. Do not break out labor, materials, or overhead.

Service frequency. Visits per week, days of the week, approximate arrival window.

Explicit exclusions. Tasks the client might assume are covered but are not. Common exclusions: carpet extraction, exterior window cleaning, floor stripping and refinishing, supply stocking above base level. Write these out. Disputes come from ambiguous scope, not from clearly written exclusions.

Terms. Contract length, cancellation notice period (typically 30-60 days), payment terms, and a reference to your certificate of insurance. Signature lines for both parties.

Format it as a branded PDF. Your logo, the client’s name and address, and a date. A clean one-page summary with a scope attachment is the right format for most commercial accounts.

Common Bidding Mistakes

Bidding without visiting the site. Floor plans do not show restroom counts, floor conditions, or security procedures. Every site visit catches something a plan misses.

Using flat per-square-foot rates without adjusting for task complexity. Two 10,000 sq ft buildings can require 3x different labor depending on restroom count, floor type, and scope. The flat rate treats them identically.

Using wage instead of fully-loaded rate. If a cleaner earns $18/hour and the real cost is $25/hour, every account bid at $18 is losing money from the first visit.

Not allocating overhead. If your overhead is not in the bid, you are absorbing it from margin without knowing it.

Showing the cost breakdown to the client. Present the monthly price and the scope. Your cost structure is your business.