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A janitorial bid answers a written solicitation on the buyer’s terms. A proposal answers a buyer who asked you for a price. This page is for the first case.
They get used interchangeably and they are different documents. Using the wrong one costs you the work — sometimes before anyone reads your price.
| Proposal | Janitorial bid | |
|---|---|---|
| Who asked | A buyer approached you directly | A written solicitation was issued, often publicly |
| Whose terms | Yours | Theirs |
| How it is judged | Compared informally, often to one or two others | Scored, or awarded to the lowest responsive bidder |
| Buildings | Usually one | Frequently several, priced separately |
| Required forms | None | Non-collusion, debarment, W-9, bid bond, addenda acknowledgment |
| Can it be rejected unread | No | Yes — for missing a form, a format, or the deadline |
| Typical length | 8–10 pages | 15–20 pages |
If a buyer called you and asked for a price, you want a proposal, not a bid. The proposal template is the shorter, better-fitting document for that. Everything below assumes you are responding to a written solicitation.
This is the structure of the template. Solicitations vary, and where the buyer specifies their own format or their own pricing form, theirs wins — always.
One page. Who you are, that you are bidding, that you have reviewed the solicitation including all addenda,…
One page. Who you are, that you are bidding, that you have reviewed the solicitation including all addenda, and that you take no exception to its terms. Many solicitations require it. The ones that do not still read it first.
Legal name, structure, EIN, years in commercial janitorial, employee count, certifications, union status.
Legal name, structure, EIN, years in commercial janitorial, employee count, certifications, union status. Then a capacity statement, which is the part most bidders skip: what percentage of your current revenue this contract represents and how many people you would need to add. The buyer is deciding whether you can absorb the work without dropping the accounts you already have.
This section also asks directly about terminations for cause, defaults, litigation, debarment, and OSHA citations in recent years. Answer honestly. Buyers verify, and a discovered omission ends a bid faster than a disclosed problem.
Restate the scope in your own words, list every facility with the square footage as stated in the…
Restate the scope in your own words, list every facility with the square footage as stated in the solicitation, record the pre-bid site visit, and name the conditions you actually observed. Then state your exclusions and clarifications plainly. An exclusion written into the bid is a defense; the same exclusion raised after award is a dispute.
Addenda acknowledgment lives here. Check the buyer’s portal the morning you submit.
Twenty-four tasks, one frequency each.
Twenty-four tasks, one frequency each. Where frequencies differ by building, the grid is copied per building rather than averaged. Averaging across buildings is where multi-building bids lose money.
| Task | Nightly | Weekly | Monthly | Quarterly | Annual | N/A |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Selected rows — the full grid is in the download | ||||||
| Empty waste and recycling receptacles; replace liners | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Clean and disinfect toilets, urinals, and fixtures | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Secure building: lights off, doors locked, alarm set | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Machine scrub restroom floors and grout | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| Strip, seal, and refinish hard-surface floors | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
Crew size, hours per night, nights per week, and monthly hours — broken out by facility, not just totalled.
Crew size, hours per night, nights per week, and monthly hours — broken out by facility, not just totalled. Hours are the only input a buyer can independently verify, which is exactly why they compare on them.
Where the solicitation is scored rather than awarded on low bid, showing the method separates you from bidders who guessed. The standard is the ISSA cleaning-times formula: square feet divided by a production rate, multiplied by 60, giving minutes. ISSA publishes the formula and a worked example in their free article on calculating cleaning times.
The section also covers supervision, background screening, employment verification, training hours, key control, and trailing-twelve-month turnover. Include turnover only if it is good — some buyers verify it against your references.
What you provide, what the owner provides, chemical and equipment standards, and your safety program…
What you provide, what the owner provides, chemical and equipment standards, and your safety program including OSHA Experience Modification Rate.
Restroom consumables are the line to get right. Confirm against the solicitation rather than assuming — it is the most common pricing error in janitorial bidding.
What gets recorded, who can see it, and what happens when something is wrong.
What gets recorded, who can see it, and what happens when something is wrong. Time and attendance verification, task completion records, photo documentation, owner portal access, and a written response commitment for each situation.
Where you are displacing an incumbent, this section also carries the transition plan. The buyer’s largest fear in a re-bid is a bad first week; a dated mobilization timeline addresses it directly.
Base bid per facility with square footage, monthly, annual, and dollars per square foot per year.
Base bid per facility with square footage, monthly, annual, and dollars per square foot per year. Those totals should come from locked hours, wage, burden, and margin — the same inputs a cleaning bid calculator uses — before you fill the buyer's pricing form. Then alternates, but only those the solicitation requested. Then unit prices for additional work — carpet extraction, floor refinishing, window cleaning, additional labor, emergency call-out — which is where margin gets protected on everything the buyer asks for after award. For the walkthrough-to-margin sequence on a single building quoted directly, see how to quote a commercial cleaning job.
Match limits to the solicitation, not to your current policy.
Match limits to the solicitation, not to your current policy. If you need higher limits to win, the premium difference belongs in your price. Bid bond, performance bond, and bonding capacity go here, along with references from accounts comparable in size and multi-site structure.
Authorization to bind, non-collusion, accuracy of information, addenda reviewed, site visited, pricing firm,…
Authorization to bind, non-collusion, accuracy of information, addenda reviewed, site visited, pricing firm, not debarred, and compliance with applicable law including prevailing wage where it applies. Attach the buyer’s own certification forms; this page does not replace them.
Every one of these is a bid that would have been competitive on price. None of them are about cleaning.
Buyers issue addenda after the solicitation drops, sometimes days before the deadline, and they usually…
Buyers issue addenda after the solicitation drops, sometimes days before the deadline, and they usually require written acknowledgment. Miss one and the bid can be rejected as non-responsive without anyone reading your number. Check the portal the morning you submit, not the week you started writing.
Where a solicitation includes a pricing form, use it.
Where a solicitation includes a pricing form, use it. Submitting your own layout — even a clearer one — is grounds for rejection in many public procurements. Put your version in an appendix if you want, but fill in theirs.
Most solicitations treat the written amount as controlling where the two conflict.
Most solicitations treat the written amount as controlling where the two conflict. A transposition in one and not the other can bind you to a number you did not intend to bid.
This is the expensive one.
This is the expensive one. Where prevailing wage applies and you priced at your normal rate, you have either bid a job you cannot perform profitably or bid one you will lose badly. Confirm applicability before you price anything, and use the wage determination in effect at the bid date.
Institutional and public buyers usually state minimums, and they are often above what a growing operator…
Institutional and public buyers usually state minimums, and they are often above what a growing operator carries. Discovering the gap after award means either buying coverage out of margin or walking away from the contract.
Non-collusion affidavits, debarment certifications, W-9s, and bid bonds are administrative, unglamorous, and…
Non-collusion affidavits, debarment certifications, W-9s, and bid bonds are administrative, unglamorous, and absolutely disqualifying when absent. Build a checklist from the solicitation’s own table of contents and work it before you seal the envelope.
19 pages, because bids are long. Delete what your solicitation doesn’t ask for. For the blank commercial template use the cleaning proposal template; for a filled-out sample see the cleaning proposal examples.
19 pages, because bids are long. Delete what your solicitation doesn’t ask for.
Download bid templateThe template is the starting point. The proposal generator builds a priced commercial proposal from your actual hours, wage, and margin. A free account is required. Status is still in flux — use it when you want a draft from live numbers, not a finished legal document.
A janitorial bid proposal is a formal response to a written solicitation for cleaning services, submitted on the buyer's terms and scored against competing bidders. It differs from a cleaning proposal in that it usually covers several buildings, requires qualification and certification forms, and can be rejected as non-responsive for a procedural error regardless of how competitive the price is.
Ten sections: a letter of transmittal, bidder information and qualifications, an understanding of the scope with facility list and addenda acknowledgment, a service frequency schedule, a staffing plan with hours by facility, supplies and safety, quality control and verification, the bid pricing schedule with alternates and unit prices, insurance and bonding with references, and a certification and signature page.
Price each building separately and total afterward. Buildings differ in floor type, restroom fixture count, occupancy, and access, and averaging a production rate across them will overprice the simple buildings and underprice the difficult ones. Show square footage, monthly, annual, and dollars per square foot per year for each facility. After hours are locked, figure your cleaning rate per square foot from wage and margin so the $/sq ft line is a check — not a guess.
Most commonly for procedural reasons rather than price: an unacknowledged addendum, pricing submitted on the bidder's own form instead of the buyer's, written and numeric totals that disagree, a missing certification form, or insurance limits below the stated requirement. Any of these can disqualify a bid before the price is evaluated.
Prevailing wage is a legally required minimum wage rate for work on certain public contracts, set by a wage determination for the location and job classification. Where it applies, pricing at market wage rather than the determination will either make the contract unprofitable or make the bid uncompetitive. Confirm applicability before pricing anything.
Typically fifteen to twenty pages, longer than a single-building cleaning proposal, because the buyer requires qualifications, insurance and bonding detail, references, staffing plans by facility, and certification forms. Length is driven by what the solicitation asks for — sections it does not request should be removed rather than padded.
Price the buildings, then present the bid on the buyer’s terms.
A filled-out proposal with weak and strong versions of each section. See examples →
Square feet per hour by task and building type. Open the rates →
Seven steps from walkthrough to margin. Read the walkthrough →