MaidBossPro Blog — Quotes & Pricing

Bidding Small Office Cleaning Jobs

Many residential cleaning companies pick up small office work along the way. A homeowner asks if you could also do her dental office. An insurance agent down the street wants someone twice a week. Small offices can be steady, predictable work that fills gaps in a residential schedule. They are also quoted differently from homes, and the differences matter.

How Office Bids Differ From House Quotes

Website sign-ups, covered in Converting a Cleaning Sign-Up Into a Client With One Click, suit standard residential cleans with published prices. Office work almost never fits that. Every office is laid out differently, and the customer is a business making a business decision.

Office customers care about different things. They want consistency more than sparkle, they often want cleaning after hours, they care about restrooms and break rooms more than anything else, and they usually want a monthly price they can budget for. They may also compare your bid with a larger commercial cleaning company.

Always Do a Walkthrough

Do not price an office over the phone. A walkthrough tells you what a description cannot:

• Square footage and layout: open plan, private offices, conference rooms
• Number of restrooms and how many people use them
• Break room or kitchen: sink, fridge, microwave, dishes
• Floor types: carpet, tile, hardwood, entry mats
• Trash and recycling: how many bins, where they go
• Glass: entry doors, interior partitions
• Access: keys, alarm, hours you can be there

Ask who your contact is, who approves the bid, and whether anything has gone wrong with past cleaners. The answer to that last question tells you what they care about most.

Scope and Frequency

Office bids live or die on a clear scope. Write down what gets done on each visit, and what gets done less often:

• Every visit: empty trash, clean and restock restrooms, wipe break room counters and sink, vacuum high-traffic areas, spot-clean entry glass.
• Weekly: dust desks and surfaces, vacuum all carpet, mop hard floors.
• Monthly: baseboards, inside the microwave and fridge, interior glass, vents.

Frequency is usually set by the customer: once a week, twice a week, three nights a week or daily. Be clear about who supplies paper towels, toilet paper and soap. Many small offices buy their own.

Pricing an Office

Office cleaning is often priced per visit and billed monthly. Work it out from time:

• Estimate how long each visit will take your team.
• Price each visit from that time, your labor cost, supplies and travel.
• Multiply by the number of visits per month for a monthly figure.

For example, one company might bid a small office at $95 per visit, three visits a week, billed monthly. That is an example only. Add any monthly tasks as their own line or build them into the visit price. A walkthrough is covered more generally in In-Home Walkthrough or Remote Quote: When to See the House Before You Price It.

Building the Bid in MaidBossPro

In MaidBossPro, add office cleaning to your service list and build the estimate from it, choosing Office / Commercial as the cleaning type. Enter the square feet and any extras, such as interior windows or inside the fridge on the monthly visit. Use the entry and notes field for access: “Key in lockbox by rear door. Alarm code in notes. Clean after 6pm only. Do not touch papers on desks.”

The office manager approves online, and the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job with all of those details on it. A weekly office cleaning is added on Recurring Cleanings like any other recurring work, with a fixed day, time and team, so every visit for the next 3, 6 or 12 months is already on the schedule, and the team sees the cleaning type, size, extras and access notes on their phone.

Put the office bid in writing even if the office manager is happy with a handshake. A written scope with the visit frequency, what is done each visit, what is done monthly and who supplies paper goods is what you will both look at when a question comes up six months later. It also makes it easy to send the right team, because the job says exactly what the visit includes.

Billing the Account

Office customers almost always want one invoice per month, not one per visit. In MaidBossPro, a client set to Monthly gets one statement each month. If the business has more than one location, every location is on the same statement, with each line labeled by address. Quoting accounts like that is covered in the next guide.

Small offices are quoted differently from homes, but they reward the same habits: see it before you price it, write the scope down clearly, and keep the details on the job so every team does it the same way. For how office bids fit with the rest of your estimating, visit the house cleaning estimate software page.