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Seven steps from walkthrough to margin — the sequence that keeps bids from winning on price and losing on labor.
Building: 10,000 sq ft single-tenant office · 5×/week
Example mopping hours / visit: ~1.87 hr (ISSA public rate)
Burdened wage @ 1.25×: $17.27 × 1.25 = $21.59/hr
Then apply your overhead and target margin to labor.
Illustrative — published inputs only. Your numbers will differ.
Quoting a commercial cleaning job means converting building size and scope into labor hours, then pricing those hours with your fully burdened labor cost plus overhead and target margin. The seven steps are: site walkthrough, measurement, task scoping, production-rate workloading, labor cost with burden multiplier, overhead allocation, and margin.
Illustrative example using published industry figures. Your numbers will differ.
Once hours are locked, price the same assumptions in the cost calculator so wage, burden, overhead, and margin stay consistent.
Turn the finished number into something a buyer can sign by dropping it into a commercial cleaning proposal template with scope, frequency, and terms intact.
A single building total hides restroom load, dense furniture, and elevator waits. The bid looks competitive until the first payroll week shows the hours were wrong.
You price hours you measured. Scope and frequency become levers. Margin is a choice, not whatever is left after an underbuilt labor plan.
Each step removes a common failure mode. Skip one and the price looks competitive until payroll hits.
Look for what changes price: restroom count, floor types, dense furniture, freight elevators, security delays, and areas that only clean on certain nights.
Capture square footage by area — open office, private offices, corridors, break rooms, restrooms — not one building total.
List what happens each visit and how often. Frequency drives hours more than square footage on many sites.
Apply production rates to each area and task. Use the janitorial production rates reference, then adjust for what you saw on the walkthrough.
Start with the median hourly wage for janitors and cleaners: $17.27/hr (BLS, May 2024). Multiply by a burden factor of 1.15–1.30× (payroll taxes, workers comp, PTO). Example: $17.27 × 1.25 = $21.59 fully burdened.
Include supplies, equipment, insurance, admin, travel, and supervision that the hour rate does not carry.
Price for profit that survives a re-clean and turnover. If the number is non-competitive, change scope or frequency before you cut margin to zero. After the bid is whole, compare the implied dollars-per-foot to published commercial cleaning rates per sq ft — a market check only, not a reason to abandon hours. ProTeams-affiliated operations price hourly from workloaded hours — not by a flat dollars-per-square-foot rate. Hourly pricing keeps margin tied to labor reality; fixed-monthly quotes still start from those hours, then convert to a contract price the client buys.
Walk the site, measure by area type, scope tasks and frequencies, workload hours with production rates, cost labor with a burden multiplier, add overhead, then set margin. Skip any step and the price is a guess.
Monthly price equals monthly labor hours times burdened hourly cost, divided by one minus overhead percent minus margin percent. Confirm the hours first — then price them with your wage and margin assumptions.
It turns base wage into true employer cost — payroll taxes, workers compensation, unemployment, and paid time off. Most janitorial operators run between 1.15 and 1.30×. Bidding on raw wage understates cost on every job.
Most commercial contracts quote a monthly or per-visit job price built from hours. Hourly time-and-materials fits day porter and project work. Pick the form that matches how the client buys — but always build from hours first.
Target margin has to absorb a re-clean, turnover, and a slow month. Operators who skip burden often think they have margin when they do not.
Scope by area, frequency schedule, inclusions and exclusions, start date, price, and the service-verification terms you will use if quality is disputed. A quote without frequency is incomplete. Cross-check hours in a janitorial calculator before you send the number.
Damon Cleveland has run commercial cleaning companies across New York, New Jersey, and Texas since 2012 — and written software since 1995. The guidance on this page is drawn from live contracts, not recycled industry averages.
ProTeams operates across 155 commercial properties and 1,000+ doors, including large institutional work such as 12M sq ft/month at MTA, with operations running since 2020.
Continue with the next step in the bidding and pricing path.
Square feet per hour by task and building type. Open the rates →
Scope, frequency, pricing, and protective terms. Get the template →
Price hours with wage, burden, and margin. Open the calculator →
See ProTeams on your real sites — or start free with no credit card.