MaidBossPro Blog — Running a Cleaning Business

Small Offices and Rental Properties: Adding Monthly Accounts to a Cleaning Business

Plenty of residential cleaning companies pick up their first office account by accident. A client owns a small insurance office, or a recurring customer manages a few rental homes, and asks whether you could clean those too. Done well, these accounts are some of the steadiest work a cleaning business can have. Done poorly, they become a pile of separate invoices nobody can keep straight.

A Third Kind of Work

Recurring vs One-Time Cleans: Finding the Right Mix for a Cleaning Business looked at the balance between recurring homes and one-time jobs. Office and rental accounts are a third kind: recurring, often after hours or between tenants, and usually paid once a month by a business rather than at each visit by a homeowner.

What Makes These Accounts Different

Before you say yes, it helps to know how this work differs from a house:

• One payer, many places. A dental group may have three offices. A property manager may have a dozen units. One person pays for all of them.
• Different timing. Offices often want cleaning after closing or before opening. Rentals need a turnover clean between one tenant leaving and the next arriving.
• Different checklists. Break rooms, restrooms, trash, entry glass and floors in an office; a full move-in / move-out clean in a rental.
• Monthly billing. Businesses usually want one bill a month, not a charge after every visit.
• Stricter access. Alarm codes, key fobs, and rules about which doors to use.

Set Up One Client With Many Addresses

The clean way to handle a multi-location account is one client record with every location attached as its own address. In MaidBossPro, one client can have many addresses. Each address keeps its own cleaning details and entry notes, so the downtown office's alarm code never gets mixed up with the north office's key-under-the-mat.

For offices, set the cleaning type to Office / Commercial and note anything the team needs: “Alarm code in notes, arm on the way out” or “Skip the server room.” For rentals, a Move-In / Move-Out clean with extras like inside the oven, inside the fridge and inside cabinets usually fits.

Recurring office cleanings work like recurring homes: each location gets a fixed slot (same day, time and team), and Add Recurring Cleaning puts its visits for the next 3, 6 or 12 months straight onto the schedule. Rental turnovers are usually one-time jobs booked when the manager calls.

One Statement a Month

Office managers and property managers don't want twelve separate invoices. Set the account to Monthly in MaidBossPro and it gets ONE statement each month covering every location, with each line labeled with the address. The manager sees exactly which unit or office was cleaned and when, and pays once.

That labeling matters more than it seems. Property managers often bill the cost back to each owner, so a statement that says which address each line belongs to saves them an afternoon of work, and makes you easy to keep.

Scheduling Around Business Hours

Office work fits around residential work in a few common ways:

• Early or late. An evening office route after the residential day, or an early route before homes open up.
• Its own team. As you grow, one team on offices and rentals and the others on homes keeps routes simple.
• A light day. Rental turnovers on the day with the fewest recurring homes.

On the Scheduled List you can filter by team and save a view for the commercial route, so office jobs don't get lost among the homes. Route sheets can be printed for a team that prefers paper in the car.

Pricing Office and Rental Work

Price offices by what the visit really takes: square feet, restrooms, how often, and any extras like interior windows or walls and doors. Rental turnovers are closer to a move-out clean and should be priced like one. The approach in Pricing a Cleaning Business for Profit: Prices That Pay for the Whole Visit applies here too: count the whole visit, including the after-hours drive.

Put each service on your service list so estimates for business accounts are as consistent as estimates for homes. The customer can approve online, and the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job.

Keep the Account Healthy

Business accounts stay when nothing surprises the manager. Take before-and-after photos on rental turnovers so the manager can see the unit is ready without driving over. Use two-way texting for quick questions. And keep entry notes current; nothing ends an office account faster than a team setting off the alarm at 9pm.

Office and rental work is often what pushes a solo cleaner to bring on help, which is the next topic. For more guides, visit the MaidBossPro cleaning business software page.