Most underpriced commercial cleaning quotes aren't wrong because of the labour rate — they're wrong because of everything around the labour rate that never made it onto the page. A cost that's missed once is a rounding error; a cost that's missed on every job, every visit, for a year, is a real dent in profit.
This guide walks through the categories of cost that are easy to leave out of a commercial cleaning quote, and where they tend to get missed. It doesn't tell you what to charge — every business's actual costs are different, and only you can determine yours.
Labour-related costs
- Labour — the hours actually spent cleaning, at your fully loaded hourly cost.
- Employment on-costs where applicable — superannuation, leave entitlements, insurance and other on-costs that apply to your business and workforce structure.
- Supervision — time spent by a supervisor or team leader checking on a site, particularly for larger contracts or new starts.
- Site induction time — many commercial sites require staff to complete an induction before they can start work, which is time your team isn't cleaning.
Materials and equipment
- Cleaning chemicals — general-purpose and site-specific products, including any client-approved products that may cost more than your standard range.
- Consumables — toilet paper, hand towel, soap, bin liners and similar items, if you're supplying them.
- Equipment — vacuums, mops, trolleys and other standard gear.
- Machine hire — where a job needs equipment you don't own outright, such as a rotary floor machine or carpet extraction unit.
- Equipment depreciation or allowance — an allowance for wear and eventual replacement of equipment your business already owns.
Access and site conditions
- Travel — time and distance between sites, especially for multi-site routes.
- Parking — paid parking or time lost finding parking near CBD or high-density sites.
- After-hours access — work outside standard hours can affect labour cost, and some sites charge for after-hours building access.
- Security or access delays — swipe cards, sign-in procedures, security escorts or alarm procedures that add time before cleaning can start.
Periodic and specialist work
Periodic cleaning is one of the most commonly under-costed categories, because it doesn't happen on every visit and is easy to forget when pricing the regular contract:
- Periodic cleaning generally — work on a longer cycle than the routine visit.
- Carpet extraction.
- Floor scrubbing (machine or rotary).
- Window cleaning, internal and external.
- Wall washing.
- High-level cleaning.
See How to Price Periodic Commercial Cleaning Work for a closer look at pricing these separately from routine maintenance cleaning.
Administrative and quality costs
- Administrative time — rostering, invoicing and general contract administration.
- Quality inspections — site audits or walk-throughs to confirm standards are being met.
- Quote preparation — the time spent walking a site and preparing a quote in the first place, especially for larger or competitive tenders.
- Overhead allocation — a share of your ongoing business costs (vehicles, insurance, admin staff, software) spread across the jobs that need to cover them.
- Contingency where appropriate — an allowance for the unexpected, where your business considers it appropriate for a particular job or client.
A hypothetical example
Example Only — a fortnightly office contract might look complete with labour, chemicals and equipment costed in, but still be missing: a parking cost near a CBD building, an after-hours access allowance because the site can only be serviced after 6pm, and a periodic carpet extraction allowance that was discussed on the walkthrough but never carried into the quote. None of these are large individually — but left out consistently across every visit for a year, they can turn a job that looks profitable on paper into one that barely breaks even.
Costs that are easy to forget during a site walkthrough
Most missed costs trace back to information that was noticed on site but never written down. Access restrictions, parking limitations, security procedures and periodic work requirements are exactly the kind of detail that's obvious while you're standing in the building and easy to forget once you're back at your desk pricing the job. A structured walkthrough process — the same fields, in the same order, every time — is the most reliable way to make sure these details make it into your quote.
Start a free Site Walkthrough to record access requirements, site-wide conditions and periodic work in one structured pass.
Summary
Labour and chemicals are rarely where a commercial cleaning quote goes wrong — it's the access conditions, periodic work and administrative time around them that tend to get missed. Building a checklist of the categories relevant to your business, and working through it deliberately on every quote, is a more reliable safeguard than trying to remember everything from memory each time.
Calculate the Job Using Your Own Costs once you've identified everything that applies to a site.