Not familiar with janitorial workloading? If you want to provide more accurate quotes and win more commercial cleaning bids, now is the time to learn about it.
Your last contract was a disaster. You walked through and eyeballed the job. Rather than janitorial workloading, so you would know exactly what the job entailed, you gave it your best-educated guess. And you got hired. Then halfway through the first day on the job, you realized you were in trouble.
You underquoted. By a lot.
We’ve all been there. It’s not fun. And there’s no easy or graceful way out of it. Your client may or may not be understanding about your mistake, and they may or may not hold you to the contract. You could lose money on a contract like this, and you may even put the future of your commercial cleaning business in jeopardy.
In the end, a mistake like this doesn’t save you time, and it certainly doesn’t save you money. It does, however, teach you a very valuable lesson about taking the time to offer an accurate bid that puts everything out in the open.
Take charge of your cleaning services with Janitorial Manager, where you can manage cleaning jobs, communicate with clients, and so much more. Schedule a free demo today to learn more!
How janitorial workloading can help you improve your bids and win more customers
First, let’s be clear on what we’re talking about. Janitorial workloading breaks down a cleaning job into detailed tasks so you can determine your labor and supply costs. In turn, your customer gets an itemized list of all the work your team will do, as well as the cost for each service.
In the days before software like Janitorial Manager, this took a fair amount of time and effort. You would need to manually enter the square footage of the space you’re cleaning, each task your team would do, as well as the frequency of those tasks, and the amount of time each one of those tasks would take. In other words, you had to do a whole lot of math.
Admittedly, even today, you still need to do a walkthrough and collect a lot of data. But that’s just smart business. A walkthrough allows you to market your services and showcase your professionalism. Here’s what you’ll need to assess:
The square footage of the space you’re cleaning
This is different from the square footage of the facility. You only want to measure the space you’ll be cleaning. This is also the place to note any building variables, such as large equipment or areas that are difficult to access. That gives you an accurate starting number since everything else is based on this.
Cleaning schedule
Here’s where you’ll get into the finer details. You want to break everything down into an itemized list. To make it easy, Janitorial Manager has the ISSA 612 Cleaning Times built right into the software, so bidding is a breeze. But even if you don’t use the ISSA numbers, be sure to create your own chart. Include everything you do as an individual line item, from dusting low surfaces to wiping high surfaces to cleaning telephones to emptying garbage and replacing liners.
There are two reasons for this. First, it gives your customer a detailed look at everything they are paying for, and it shows the value of your services. But it also gives you room to negotiate if they are looking for a lower price. By using software for your janitorial workloading, you can easily show them different price points by simply adding or subtracting variables.
The frequency of cleaning
Daily, weekly, monthly, twice per year – however frequently an item gets done, this is where it goes. This is another place you can work with your client to negotiate costs. It also tells you what to expect in terms of the hours and people you’ll need to plan for.
Hourly rates
There are a couple of ways you can approach this. You can use a flat hourly rate, or you can quote a rate based on your margins. With Janitorial Manager’s built-in calculators, this is a simple matter of a few keystrokes.
Supply costs
Be sure to include supply costs in your janitorial workloading. Labor is undoubtedly your most significant expense, but you can’t ignore the cost of cleaning supplies. It’s also helpful in determining things like whether you or the facility will supply things like a trash can liner and toilet paper.
Janitorial workloading for building service contractors and in-house teams
Janitorial workloading can help you win bids, but it can also help you in your day-to-day operations. You might not be trying to win bids, but you’re almost certainly keeping an eye on budget and payroll expenses. It makes sense that you need to know how much it costs and how much time it takes for the different jobs you do.
This is especially true as cleaning and maintenance staff are asked to take on more responsibilities. You and your team need to work efficiently without getting overworked and burned out. At the same time, it’s vital to make sure you can account for the time you and your team put in.
When you have detailed records as you get with janitorial workloading, there’s no question about the productivity or importance of your team. It may also be just the information you need to justify hiring more people.
And that information is helpful for anyone running a commercial cleaning business or a janitorial team. The more you know about where your money and time is going, the more you can control your expenses. And we all want our janitorial and commercial cleaning businesses to be profitable. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be easier to go work for someone else? But where’s the fun in that?
Bid on jobs, manage projects and inventory, and so much more with Janitorial Manager. Get in touch with us today to schedule a free demo to see all the great features!