How to price a house cleaning job using your costs
A useful cleaning quote starts with the work you expect to do and the costs you expect to incur. It should also leave room for the business to earn a profit after paying for that work, including your own time.
This guide walks through a fictional residential cleaning job using CleanScope's calculator. The figures are teaching examples, not local market rates or recommended wages. Replace them with your own costs, a walkthrough of the property and a realistic estimate of the work.
Start with the scope
Before calculating a price, write down what is included. Identify the rooms, cleaning tasks, expected condition and any extras. Note what is excluded and which assumptions would require a revised estimate.
A recurring maintenance clean and a first-time deep clean may take different amounts of time even in the same home. Do not assume that a square-footage figure alone tells you how much work is involved.
Estimate cleaning time and travel time
CleanScope uses cleaning hours per person and travel hours per person. It multiplies their sum by the number of crew members:
Total worker-hours = crew members × (cleaning hours per person + travel hours per person).
For one cleaner spending three hours cleaning and half an hour traveling, that is 3.5 worker-hours. If two cleaners each spend those same hours, it is seven worker-hours, not 3.5.
The model assumes the same hours and pay rate for each crew member. If your crew has different rates or schedules, reconcile that difference separately rather than treating a rough estimate as precise.
Include your own labor
Working for yourself does not make your time free. Enter an hourly labor amount that reflects the cost you intend to assign to the work. Keep owner labor separate from business profit so that a profitable-looking quote does not simply represent unpaid work.
The calculator also has a labor-burden percentage. Use it for additional labor-related costs that belong in your estimate. It applies to both cleaning and travel labor in this model. There is no universal burden percentage: use an appropriate basis for your business and avoid counting the same cost again in overhead.
Add supplies, vehicle costs and overhead
Supplies are the consumables allocated to this job. Vehicle and parking cost is a dollar amount separate from the time spent traveling. Overhead is the portion of other business expenses you assign to the job.
Choose a consistent allocation method. For example, dividing an estimated monthly overhead total by a realistic number of completed jobs can provide a starting point. Revisit the allocation when your workload changes. Count each expense once; do not add a complete vehicle allowance and the same underlying vehicle costs again.
A fictional job, step by step
Our example uses:
- One cleaner.
- Three cleaning hours per person.
- Half an hour of travel per person.
- $25 hourly labor and a 15% labor burden.
- $8 supplies, $6 vehicle/parking cost and $12 overhead.
- A 5% cost contingency.
- A 25% target margin.
- A 3% payment fee plus a $0.30 fixed payment fee.
- A $100 minimum and rounding up to the next $5.
Labor is 3.5 × $25 × 1.15 = $100.625, displayed as $100.63. Adding supplies, vehicle/parking and overhead produces $126.625, displayed as $126.63.
A 5% contingency on that subtotal adds $6.33125. Estimated cost including contingency is $132.95625, displayed as $132.96.
The calculator allows for payment fees and the target margin using:
Target price = (cost including contingency + fixed payment fee) ÷ (1 − percentage payment fee − target margin).
Enter percentages as decimals in this formula. For the example:
($132.95625 + $0.30) ÷ (1 − 0.03 − 0.25) = $185.078125.
The $100 minimum does not change that result. Rounding up to the next $5 produces a $190 suggested price, before sales tax.
At $190, estimated payment fees are $6. Planned profit after the cost contingency is about $51.04. The resulting margin is about 26.9%, slightly above the 25% target because the final price was rounded up.
Displayed intermediate amounts are rounded to cents, while the calculation retains more precision. Calculating from the rounded displays can produce small differences.
Margin is not markup
Margin expresses profit as a percentage of the selling price. Markup expresses the amount added as a percentage of cost.
Ignoring payment fees for this simple comparison, adding 25% to a $100 cost produces a $125 price and $25 profit. That is a 20% margin, not 25%. A 25% margin on a $100 cost requires a price of about $133.33 before considering fees or other adjustments.
A target margin is an input to a planning model. It does not establish what a customer will pay or guarantee what the job will earn.
Review the suggestion before sending a quote
Check the scope, hours, costs and fee assumptions. Decide whether the calculated price is suitable for the work, your business and the customer. If it is not, examine the scope and operating assumptions rather than silently removing your own labor from the calculation.
The homepage sample uses a fixed 5% contingency, $0.30 fixed payment fee, $100 minimum and $5 rounding increment. Use the free quote workspace when you need to adjust these settings. Payment-fee assumptions are examples, not a statement of your processor's actual fees.
Check what happened after the job
Record the amount earned and the actual costs using a consistent basis. Do not enter payment fees in both the actual-cost total and the separate payment-fee fields. Include owner labor in actual costs if you want the comparison to continue valuing your time. Replace estimated allowances with actual costs where appropriate; do not assume an unused contingency was an actual expense.
For example, suppose this fictional job brings in $190 and its actual costs, excluding payment fees, total $145. At the same 3% plus $0.30 fee assumption, fees are $6 and profit is $39. The resulting margin is about 20.5%. That difference is useful information for your next estimate; it is not a reason to rewrite the original result.
Use your own numbers
Try the free job-cost calculator, then open the free quote workspace to save jobs and compare estimated and actual results. Workspace records are stored in your browser on that device. Export backups; do not assume another device will have the same records.
Want a portable copy? The $29 toolkit provides downloadable desktop/offline files with supporting instructions and a scope checklist. The $149 personalized setup is a separate manual service for one business; scope and delivery date are confirmed before work. The free online workspace already includes quoting and job-profit tracking.
CleanScope provides planning tools, not local market rates, tax advice, legal advice or guaranteed earnings. The model excludes sales tax from its quote result; determine any applicable obligations separately with qualified guidance.