Commercial Cleaning Pricing: Bid Worksheet (2026)

A commercial cleaning bid starts with a walkthrough and a written scope. Estimate cleaner-hours per visit, multiply by the number of visits in the contract, add paid travel, supplies, supervision, and overhead, then apply a clearly defined margin. Square footage helps describe the site; it does not tell you how many restrooms, touchpoints, access steps, or specialist tasks the team will perform.

This guide is for owners quoting recurring offices, retail spaces, and other facilities. Use the separate house-cleaning pricing worksheet for residential visits. The figures below are transparent example inputs, not national janitorial rates or a promise that a bid will win.

Define what the facility is buying

Walk the site with the buyer and record cleanable floor area, room types, restrooms, floor finishes, bins, kitchens, high-touch surfaces, public traffic, and any requested consumable restocking. Ask when work can occur, who provides keys and alarms, where supplies are stored, whether parking or security check-in adds time, and who signs off on completed work. Photograph or record the scope with permission.

Specify each task's frequency: daily, each visit, weekly, monthly, or separate project work. Window washing, carpet extraction, floor refinishing, post-construction cleanup, and emergency callouts should have their own method and price if they are outside routine service. A 5,000-square-foot office with two restrooms is a different job from a 5,000-square-foot clinic or restaurant; area alone cannot make the bids comparable.

For healthcare and food-service premises, identify the customer's applicable infection-control and food-contact requirements before bidding. CDC facility guidance distinguishes cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting, while OSHA/NIOSH guidance addresses worker protection with cleaning chemicals. Do not describe a routine office-cleaning package as clinical disinfection or automatic regulatory compliance.

Measure labor in cleaner-hours, not only square feet

Time a representative visit or compare completed jobs with the same scope. Two cleaners working 90 minutes use three cleaner-hours. Include setup, restocking, quality checks, and any paid time between customer sites. If a proposed production rate comes from a generic chart, validate it against the buyer's floor plan and your own trial. Restroom count, furniture, flooring, soil, security access, and daytime interruption can dominate the time.

Build a loaded labor cost per cleaner-hour from wages, applicable employer taxes, insurance, benefits, and other actual employment costs. The IRS employer-tax guide identifies employer obligations; it does not supply one universal percentage for a janitorial crew. The U.S. Department of Labor's hours-worked guidance treats travel between job sites during the workday as work time. Count it in the bid without double counting it in both labor and travel allowances.

If the owner cleans on-site, put the value of that labor into the worksheet. Otherwise the quote may appear profitable only because the owner worked for free. Estimate a realistic backup or coverage cost for absences, but do not present a fixed industry staffing multiplier as fact.

Monthly office-cleaning bid: a worked example

Assume a buyer agrees to clean a 5,000-square-foot ordinary office three times per week. A walkthrough and a comparable completed job suggest two cleaners for 1.5 hours each: three cleaner-hours per visit. The following inputs are illustrative and must be replaced with the operator's actual costs:

1. Loaded on-site labor: 3 cleaner-hours × $24 = $72 per visit.
2. Paid travel and vehicle allocation, outside those on-site hours: $15 per visit.
3. Consumables and equipment wear for the specified work: $10 per visit.
4. Direct visit cost: $72 + $15 + $10 = $97 per visit.
5. Annualized monthly visits: 3 × 52 ÷ 12 = 13 visits on average. Some calendar months have 12, 13, or 14 scheduled visits; a flat monthly contract should state how the annual schedule is billed.
6. Monthly visit cost: $97 × 13 = $1,261. Add $140 of monthly insurance, supervision, administration, software, and other allocated overhead. Included monthly cost is $1,401.
7. At an owner-chosen 20% margin on the price after those included costs, the calculated monthly fee is $1,401 ÷ 0.80 = $1,751.25 before applicable tax.

This example is roughly $0.35 per square foot per month for this one scope, not a U.S. benchmark. It is also not a net-profit prediction: omitted owner labor, extra supervision, callbacks, tax, or unusual access would change the cost. A 20% markup on $1,401 would instead produce $1,681.20, only a 16.7% margin on the price. Keep markup and margin separate in every bid.

The SBA break-even calculator shows why fixed costs and variable per-service costs both matter. If a bid does not cover its share of fixed costs and the full cost of each visit, a large monthly invoice can still be a poor contract.

When to use hourly, per-visit, monthly, or square-foot pricing

Calculate the job internally from cleaner-hours and actual cost regardless of how the customer wants to see the price. An hourly rate can be appropriate for uncertain one-time work when tasks and authorization limits are clear. A per-visit flat fee works for a known scope with variable frequency. An annualized flat monthly fee is convenient for a recurring schedule if the agreement explains the visit count, missed visits, holidays, and change orders.

A per-square-foot figure is a comparison unit after you have priced the work, not a shortcut that replaces the walkthrough. State whether it means a one-time visit, a month, or a year. A quote of $0.20 per square foot without the time period and included tasks is not comparable with another provider's monthly price.

As one real local reference, AccessMaids in Chicago publishes $50 per maid-hour for its office/commercial service. That is one company's customer-facing offer and may include different travel, supply, crew, tax, frequency, and task assumptions from your bid. Use it only to inspect how a provider labels the unit, not as proof that your office should charge the same amount. ISSA's commercial-pricing guide also discusses why service frequency and scope change square-foot comparisons.

Keep facility types and special work separate

An ordinary office bid can be built from routine tasks and measured visit time. Retail may need customer-hour constraints, fitting rooms, or spill response. Restaurants can involve grease, food-contact surfaces, and additional access requirements. Clinics and other healthcare settings can impose distinct procedures and documented responsibilities. Do not apply one productivity rate or chemical protocol to all of them.

If a buyer requests disinfection, document the surfaces, products, application method, training, protective equipment, contact time, and who is responsible for compliance. The CDC says to clean surfaces before disinfecting; the OSHA/NIOSH worker guide warns against treating a product's marketing label as a substitute for hazard information. Specialist tasks may require separate training, insurance, equipment, and a separate quote.

Build an explicit rate or authorization method for unscheduled calls, event cleanup, consumable refills, extra floors, and changed operating hours. Otherwise a flat monthly number can silently absorb work that was never costed.

Submit a bid that survives a scope change

The written proposal should identify the location, buyer contact, walkthrough date, task list by area, visit frequency, estimated crew and time, included supplies, customer-provided utilities or storage, access process, quality review, exclusions, extra-work approval, invoice amount and cadence, tax treatment, start date, and quote validity. Put an acceptance process and a change-order route in the contract. Discuss insurance and any sector-specific credential with the buyer before the work begins.

Do not copy a universal minimum contract size, cancellation period, automatic annual increase, or liability cap from a blog. Those are commercial and legal terms for the parties to negotiate under local rules and the specific risk. A smaller site close to an existing route may be attractive even when its monthly invoice is below a generic threshold; an after-hours site with difficult access may cost more despite similar floor area.

Track planned versus actual cleaner-hours, supply usage, travel, site changes, quality callbacks, and payment terms after launch. If actual work differs, document the evidence and agree a revised scope or fee. Use the measured cost and contract terms to decide on renewal rather than promising that a fixed annual percentage always protects margin.

Where Fixlify fits in a cleaning bid

Fixlify keeps customer and property context with jobs, appointments, assignments, notes, estimates, invoices, and payment-status records. That can help a team keep the agreed scope and subsequent changes connected to the work. The owner still owns labor estimates, pricing, safety decisions, contract terms, and acceptance checks. Do not assume built-in janitorial compliance, payroll, material-consumption accounting, automated contract billing, or autonomous commercial bidding without testing the exact workflow.

Explore cleaning software, estimates, invoicing, and the commercial cleaning business guide. For home visits, use the residential pricing worksheet. The free cleaning price calculator models direct labor and supplies; it does not separately add travel or overhead, so include those before converting its result to a commercial bid.

Frequently asked questions

How do I price a commercial cleaning contract?

Write the site-specific scope, estimate cleaner-hours per visit, multiply by the contracted visit count, add paid travel, consumables and allocated overhead, then divide by one minus your chosen margin. State the billing period, included tasks, tax treatment, and change-order process.

Is square footage enough to price an office?

No. It helps identify the size of the area, but room layout, restrooms, floor finish, traffic, requested tasks, access, and frequency determine labor. Use square-foot pricing only as a cross-check after estimating the actual work, and label its time period.

How many monthly visits is three times per week?

Annualizing 3 × 52 visits gives 156 visits per year, or an average of 13 per month. Actual calendar months can differ. A flat monthly fee should specify the annual schedule and how skipped or added visits are treated.

What is the difference between 20% markup and 20% margin?

On $1,401 in included monthly cost, a 20% markup is $1,681.20 and leaves a 16.7% margin on that price. A 20% margin requires dividing cost by 0.80, giving $1,751.25 before tax. Neither result covers costs left out of the worksheet.

Should medical-office cleaning use the same office rate?

Do not assume so. Confirm the facility's specific cleaning and infection-control responsibilities, training, product use, documentation, and insurance requirements before bidding. These can change time and cost, and some work may require a specialist scope.

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