Ask a House Cleaner, Price Your Service, Savvy Cleaner

How to Price Your Service for House Cleaning

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_facebook][vc_column_text]”How do you price your service for house cleaning? I mean I want to build my cleaning business but don’t even know how to bid a house cleaning job. Is there a secret to price your service?”

We Ask a House Cleaner common questions and Angela Brown answers. How do you price your service and set your rates? Is there a bidding calculator to help me when bidding on a house? How much should I charge for house cleaning on a walk through? How do I grow my cleaning company when I give a job estimate? What cleaning advice or tips do you have when a customer asks “Can you clean my space on a budget?”

Today’s sponsors are Savvy Cleaner (Training for house cleaners and maids.) My Cleaning Connection (a hub of really cool cleaning stuff.) And HouseCleaning360 (where you can list your business and get leads for cleaning jobs.)

Podcast Rss Spacer Savvy Cleaner

Listen: How to Price Your Service for House Cleaning

YouTube Spacer Savvy Cleaner

Watch: How to Price Your Service for House Cleaning


Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer.

Ask a House Cleaner DIY Question Spacer Savvy Cleaner

Question: How to Price Your Service for House Cleaning

Price Your Service, Woman Relaxing on Couch With Her ComputerHow do I make a price list for my cleaning business? Excellent question from Tanzania.

“Hi Angela. This is Tanzania, and I’m just starting a cleaning service called Clearly Clean in Massachusetts. And I want to know how I would go about doing price lists and making a price list. Any help that you could give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.”

Ask a House Cleaner Answer Spacer Savvy Cleaner

How to Price Your Service for House Cleaning

Price Your Service, Woman Drinking Tea at Her Home ComputerAll righty, how do you create a price list for your business? What it’s going to come down to is a variety of factors. The variety of factors is where do you live? And what is the going rate in your area?

 The third thing to think about is what kind of services do you offer? Because you need to be crystal clear about what services you provide before you create a price sheet.

Be Clear About Your Offerings Before You Make a Price List

Price Your Service, Woman Cleaning RefrigeratorIf you offer cleaning the inside of a refrigerator, that needs to have a price. Because somebody somewhere down the road will ask you, “Can you also clean out my refrigerator?” So that needs to have a price. 

Do you clean windows? Lots of house cleaning companies do not for insurance reasons. And if you don’t see yourself on a two-story ladder on the outside of a house. Or you don’t have long wands and all the things that you need to clean windows. You may decide that’s not part of your house cleaning business.

But if you do clean windows, where do you draw the line? Do you clean the insides of windows that you can reach? Some house cleaning companies do, and then there’s a flat fee for that. 

Do you charge extra for extra people or pets?

There is No Flat Rate Price Sheet Across the Board

Price Your Service, Woman Installing Software On Her ComputerSo, what do you charge? It’s not a flat rate across the board for all services.

Every cleaning company offers different services, and every cleaning company charges different prices.

So, while it can be confusing, there are lots of pieces of software now that are on the market like Launch27 and Zenmaid

The key is to do your homework and compare available apps and software to find out which works best for your needs.

Here’s how it works.

You buy a piece of software. The software, it’s usually called a SAAS which is Software As A Service, and you pay a monthly fee for this to be back-ended onto your website. This is a beautiful thing. When I started my house cleaning business, stuff like this did not exist. It exists now and it makes the house cleaning bidding process so easy. I mean, it will save hours off your week. 

Price Your Service with the Help of a Theme

Price Your Service, Woman Cleaning WindowOkay, so here’s how it works. You buy a theme for your website. And then you buy this back-end piece of software also known as a plugin for your website. So, you end up with this beautiful-looking website with gobs of functionality.

Customers searching for your services find you and they choose the services they are willing to pay for. You price your service and they pay for the pieces that fit their budget.

Let’s suppose a customer has 55 windows in their house and would like them cleaned. You may charge, let’s say, $5 per window. So, they add the 55 windows in and it adds them up a total. And they can look at that and say, “Oh wow, that’s so much money. I’m not prepared to pay that much money. I’ll only have 30 windows cleaned and I’ll save the ones upstairs for another time.” So, they can adjust the pricing on their own before you get there. 

And the built-in beauty of the software is the customer pays with a credit card online – so you don’t have to go collect the money either.

Price Your Service as an Upsell

Price Your Service, Woman Cleaning OvenThere are other things that you may want to consider like cleaning out the inside of an oven. Is that part of your regular cleaning or is that part of an up-sell? Most house cleaning companies do not provide this service during routine cleaning. That falls into deep cleaning. Are you talking about deep cleaning or are you talking about maintenance clean? And if you have this on your website, your customer can decide. “Well, I would like a maintenance clean but I would like to add on the oven.” 

When they add on that feature, it adds on time to your schedule so you can make adjustments to include the oven. 

This way you can arrange to have extra help that day or move another customer back a half hour. But you’re working on a paid schedule, not flying by the seat of your pants.

Price Your Service and Time Needed for Each Job

Price Your Service, Happy Woman Cleaning KitchenYou can also adjust the price if you have no takers. If you are overcharging for a room and nobody is hiring you to clean that room, you can make slight adjustments until you get it right. 

So, after a couple months, you can kind of figure out in your area what customers are willing to pay for your cleaning.  So how do you bid and price your services? It’s going to come down to the area that you live in and the services that you provide. That’s really what it’s all about. 

But like I said, technology has caught up with us, and it now allows you to have a piece of software that will do most of the heavy lifting for you. You can even put recurring customers on a cleaning retainer and offer a discount if they pay a year in advance for cleaning. 

This is a hot topic that comes up a lot. So, we have a growing list of bidding calculators to compare against over at MyCleaningConnection.com. Bookmark this page so you can check back to see which features are available and which best suit you. 

And if you’re reading this and you sell this type of software, contact me so we can include your software in our comparison chart. 

0 Savvy Cleaner Spacer Savvy CleanerDisclosure

During the shows we recommend services, sites, and products to help you improve your cleaning and grow your cleaning business. We have partnerships with these companies to provide you with discounts, and savings. By clicking on and buying from the links in the show notes, we may receive a commission which helps pay for the production costs of the show.

Support the show so we can continue to bring you free tips to improve your cleaning and help you grow your cleaning business.  THANK YOU!

About the Show

Learn how the show came to be, interesting facts about the show host, and other frequently asked questions about the show.

Resources For This Episode

Service Autopilot – https://www.serviceautopilot.com/cleaning-business-scheduling-software

ZenMaid Scheduling Software – www.Zenmaid.com

Markate – Customer Management Software – https://www.markate.com

Launch27 – https://www.launch27.com/#_l_2y

Jobber – https://getjobber.com

How to Price Your Cleaning Services – http://amzn.to/2FSGQd2

Cleaning Business: 7 Steps to earning $50,000+ a Year from a Residential Cleaning Business – http://amzn.to/2GP4V1Z

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Permissions To Share

You Have Our Permission To Share This Episode

Show Sponsor

Savvy Cleaner Training – House Cleaner Training and Certification

HouseCleaning360 – Referral database of the world’s most prominent home service providers and the homeowners they serve. 

My Cleaning Connection – Your hub for all things cleaning.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][product_category per_page=”19″ columns=”1″ orderby=”rand” order=”” category=”price-pricing”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Scroll to Top