A fortnightly contract isn't just "a weekly contract, less often." The gap between visits changes how much work each visit actually involves, how the annual numbers work out, and how periodic work needs to be handled. This article covers the parts of pricing that change specifically for a fortnightly frequency.
For the general pricing framework — labour, cost components, margin — see How to Price a Commercial Cleaning Contract. This article assumes that framework and focuses on what's specific to a 26-visit-a-year contract.
26 visits a year, not 52
A fortnightly contract runs 26 visits annually — exactly half of weekly's 52. That halves the opportunities to spread your quoting and admin time, and it means labour that's slightly under-costed per visit compounds into a bigger annual gap more slowly than it would on a weekly job, but still adds up over a year.
More buildup per visit
The most important difference isn't the visit count — it's what happens to the site between visits. Two weeks of foot traffic, dust and rubbish typically means more labour time per visit than a weekly clean of the same site, even though the site itself hasn't changed. Estimating fortnightly labour hours by simply halving a weekly time estimate usually underquotes the job.
Periodic work still needs its own allocation
Carpet extraction, floor treatments and high-level cleaning don't happen every fortnight — they run on their own, longer cycle regardless of the routine frequency. Whether you spread an allowance for that work across each fortnightly visit or price it separately, it shouldn't be silently absorbed into the routine price. See How to Price Periodic Commercial Cleaning Work for how to structure that decision.
Worked example
A fortnightly office site, illustrative figures only:
Checking the annual value
Once you have a price per visit, multiply by 26 to see the annual contract value — for the example above, $380 × 26 = $9,880 per year. That figure is what actually determines whether a fortnightly contract is worth the same as, more than, or less than a more frequent job with a lower price per visit.
Use the Free Contract Value Calculator to convert your own fortnightly price into a monthly and annual figure.
Use the Free Quote & Profit Calculator to work through your own labour, cost and margin numbers for a fortnightly job — it already models every visit frequency, including fortnightly.