Is there any special formulas to price a commercial job cleaning one time and the following years maintenance 3 times a year?

Example 40,000 sq ft within the .11 -.12 sq ft range

Looking for examples

Charles there's honestly no set in stone price. Trying to lock your rates will never work IMHO.

In Florida (where prices are fairly low) I have used the following rule of thumb...

I go into the building with .10 per sq ft in my mind. This is just a starting point.

Then I will quickly go upward from .10 per sq ft --- all the way into the high .20's per sq ft range. So, what causes me to go up??? Here are a few things I'll consider...

How hard will it be to access the carpet? Is it cluttered? Is it a small account? Is it heavily soiled? Lots of spots? Gum? Likely to be serviced infrequently? Customer is difficult? Etc!

On the flip side, I will also very very gradually reduce my rate. .099 .098.097 .096 per sq ft, etc. I will even dip all the way down to the .07's per sq ft. So, what causes me to give lower rates??? A reversal of the list above...

Is it a LARGE account? Do they have multiple locations? Will it be serviced on a regular basis? Is it going to be easy to access and service? Will it be easy to work with this customer? Will they be a feather in my cap, helping me to land other similar accounts? Etc!

Can you see how this works Charles? The sliding scale approach has worked great for me. You just need to come up with whatever your median rate needs to be, and then slide upward quickly and slide downward very gradually. Using this scenario, your 40,000 sq ft account (in FLorida) would likely come it at around .08 per sq ft, providing that it meets the criteria listed above for discounting. On the other hand a small 1,000 sq ft dentist's office on Main Street would bid at .29 per sq ft --- or even higher.






Rick Gelinas

I was asking this same question a year ago and got the same great response. One year later I can see how much sense it makes (and dollars)!

I know how to price commercial carpet jobs, but I have never done maintenance prices for 3 - 4 cleanings per year. People in upstate NY are lucky they clean anything. I am right on the edge to jump right back down to Florida. All I need is a little push.

Think in terms of dollars per hour rather than pennies per square foot. PSF pricing gives you bragging rights but, if you're shooting for say $100/hour, what you're charging PSF is a moot point.

Dollars per hour is the only way to price ongoing carpet maintenance programs

Determine # of sq ft per year 40000 x 4 = 160,000 sq ft

Divide by sq ft per hour for each function i.e. Pile Lifting, HWE, Low Moisture etc etc until you get total hours for the 12 month period. and apply your hourly number, and you get the annual price for youe service. Now it is just a case of how your client wants to be billed---Monthly or 4 times per year.

And I will have to respectfully disagree. Square foot pricing is the way to go. I've used this method for years and I would never want to guesstimate how many hours it will take and then bid on an hourly basis. In fact my goal is to gross more than $100 per hour. Square foot pricing is the only way to make sense of the numbers IMHO.







Rick Gelinas

Sumitted my cleaning proposal this afternoon for this building which is about 35,000 sq ft. It is filthy from drinks & traffic, no thanks to the last cheap cleaners who basically sprayed water on the floor. They cleaned for $2,500. I already tested a few spots with Rick's chemicals so I know it will come up. I have a box of Encap-Clean DS ready to go & clean.

Thanks for all of your ideas.

We're probably talking about essentially the same thing. For years I judged the success of my PSF pricing by what it turned into per hour. Eventually, I started working up a price based on what I wanted to make per hour and worked back to a PSF charge, not an hourly charge.

There are always risks involved with any form of pricing commercial maintenance contracts. We use an old form, from back in the days of the Carpet Appearance Management program that Chemspec developed many years ago. The main thing you need to know is how much is this contract going to cost me per year to provide the service I agreed to. Once you know that, you can add your mark up and you now have your selling price, you can convert that to Sq Ft or an hourly rate, which ever makes you happy!!!!

When you have a building that you are cleaning somes areas 52 times a year, other areas 26 times a year, some 12 times a year, and some 4 times a year, I find it very hard to come up with a sq ft price per cleaning, you better know how many hours a week[month/year you are putting into this contract. We also calculate travel time into our pricing process. Very hard to include travel time into sq ft pricing.

I guess you need to use both forms of pricing and compare one with the other to make sure you are meeting your companies income per hour expectations.

Heres an idea.. Just charge by the square foot with 2000 sq.ft. as your reference point. Using the Cimex cleans 2000sq.ft per hr. If you charge .20 for 2000 sq.ft. thats 400.00 per hr. x 20. Then give them a discount telling them you will do it for half of that and plus give them a free cleaning of 5,000 sq'ft. in 3 to 6 months. After its all said and done you've charge them 182.00 per hr. in less then 24 hr. period.