More Than Just Square Feet: The Real Cost of Cleaning

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Happy Tuesday everyone! I hope your Sunday was filled with a crazy number of cleans as College Football ramps up 🏈 . Last Sunday, we had our busiest day yet thanks to the first home football game. All those jobs made me take a double check at our quoting process, the topic of today’s newsletter.

But before we get to that, let’s get this party started with a poll ⬇️ 

Thanks! Your feedback will help make this place awesome.

A Word on Quoting Jobs

It’s possible you’re quoting jobs wrong. Not terribly wrong. But slightly wrong. If your only way to quote jobs is by the square foot, there’s a chance you’re leaving money on the table.

In this post, I’m going to break down my company’s new way of quoting jobs, how it works, why it works, and why you might consider switching.

If you’re new to the cleaning business, it’s likely that you quote purely by the square foot. It’s common and hey, it works (most of the time). For example, say there is a small property that is only 1,200 square feet. Your instinct is to quote it at $120 and call it a day ($0.10 per sq ft).

But what if you learn that packed inside of 1,200 square feet is 3 bunk beds, two queen beds, a hot tub, a converted garage, two flights of stairs, and to top it off, it’s pet friendly.

How does that $120 sound now?

Exactly.

A New Day for Quoting

Here’s how to fix this: quote by the amenities + sq footage. Yes, quote by the total number of things that you are responsible for cleaning in that property and multiply by your hourly rate. What a concept!

To provide a more accurate quote (the first time) get the total number of each following items:

• Bedrooms

• Beds

• Bathrooms (1/2 or full)

• Kitchens (yes, some massive places have 2)

• Living rooms

• Exterior areas

• Extra spaces (e.g., converted garages)

• Square footage (carpet or hard floors)

• Is it pet friendly (Y/N)?

You should already know (or have a rough idea) of how long it takes you to clean specific places in the house. If you don’t, I have a gift for you at the very bottom of the newsletter ⬇️ 

Once you have the total estimated time, multiply by your hourly rate

Example:

1 bedroom (8 minutes) + 1 bed (12 minutes) + ½ bathroom (10 minutes) = 30 minutes * $50/ hour = $25

Of course, this is an incomplete example but you get the picture.

Let’s Make it Real

For over a year, we’ve been cleaning a well-decorated, beautiful Airbnb in a neighboring town. It’s 1,350 square feet and gets a fair bit of traffic. We’ve been cleaning it for $135 since we onboarded it.

The only problem is, it takes 3.3 hours to clean. Since our company’s hourly rate is $50 an hour, we should be charging $165 per departure clean. The main difference? It has 4 beds, is pet friendly, and has some extra spaces we never included.

We called the owner and increased the price ✅ 

Why This Approach to Quoting Works

This method is fair and transparent for both you and the host. It’s no longer subjective and levels the playing field. Say goodbye to getting hosed by the tiny home with several bunk beds. With this approach, it’s easy to explain to the host (or guest) why your cleaning fee is what you’ve quoted it.

“Based on all the information you’ve provided, we expect each turn to take XX hours and our hourly rate is $XX per hour.” Doing this (putting some real numbers behind the quote) has reduced the amount of pushback we get from hosts exponentially.

Here’s Some Help to Make the Switch

If you are still quoting by square foot, that’s fine. But be prepared to make adjustments after the first couple of cleanings. All the information you need in order to quote by amenity is easily found by looking at the Airbnb listing.

Or, to make it easy, you could just steal our formula for how we quote everything. Click this link and I’ll send it to you! Call it a gift for being part of this community 😁 Only available if you submit before 9/28!

P.S: Want to share your story with the community? We’d love to learn from you and all your Airbnb cleaning success. Fill out this Google Form

Until next time,

Logan

Get the goods 🧼 

Want more knowledge to build your cleaning empire? The below are some of the best pieces of information to grow your business, perfect your clean, and become an expert in the field.

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