Is Overpriced Office Cleaning Crushing Your Budget?

How much should you be paying for office cleaning services? Are you paying too much for what you are getting? Are you getting real value for your office cleaning budget? Or do you need to scale back your office cleaning budget without compromising the overall maintenance of your facility? Is your office cleaning budget in line with your needs or is overpriced office cleaning crushing your budget? Office cleaning is a necessary investment to keep your office well maintained and running smoothly, yet spending more doesn’t always get you more. So how can you understand office cleaning prices in order to negotiate good value for your facility and stay on budget?

How Commercial Office Cleaning Pricing is Estimated?

There is no one-size-fits-all commercial cleaning price tag because there are so many variables. And yet, the better you understand how the variable impact janitorial pricing, the better you can negotiate solid value for your facility. Office cleaning prices can depend on a variety of factors including:

1. Geographic Area – Where is your office located?

2. The Scope of Office Cleaning Services – What areas do you want cleaned? What tasks are critical? Do you need outdoor work? Do you services like window cleaning or specialty floor care? Do you want a basic service or a full service?

3. Frequency of Office Cleaning Services – Do you want your office cleaned daily during the work week or is once or twice per week sufficient?

4. Square Footage of Your Facility – Do you manage a 1,000 square foot facility or a 30,000 square foot office building?

5. The breakdown of square footage by flooring type.

6. The density of the building population. 

7. The number of restrooms that need maintenance.

Getting Bids on Commercial Office Cleaning Services

Requesting bids is the easiest and most efficient way to get office cleaning pricing. The challenging part is trying to get clear bids so that you can compare "apples to apples."  If you’re new to this process, you may find the results overwhelming. There are so many size and types of cleaning companies that sifting through the good the bad and the ugly can be overwhelming. The best office cleaning companies offer transparent pricing so you know exactly what you are getting for your office cleaning dollar. Comparing commercial cleaning prices can be tough because more expensive doesn’t automatically mean you are getting more but often very cheap cleaning prices are a sign that you are dealing with an inexperienced office cleaning company that wont be able to deliver what you need for the initial pricing they set. Many companies will also play pricing games with you by providing you with a low initial estimates followed by frequent up-sells and surprise fees down the road. 

To try and get the clearest pricing possible, you can ask your office cleaning companies how many hours they plan to spend a night maintaining your facility. Annualize the cost and divide it by the annualized number of labor hours to calculate an hourly billable rate. If they charge too little, they may be taking illegal shortcut on hiring, taxes and insurance.  If they are charging too much, they may not offer you a good value.  Things that are important in the pricing of your bid will include:

• Labor costs
• Insurance & taxes
• Employee health insurance
• Employee vacation time
• Direct costs (ex. cleaning supplies, toilet paper, etc.).
• A management fee
• Profit

Why Office Cleaning Profit Should Not Be a Taboo Subject

Profit should not be a taboo subject. The reality is that is your office cleaning company has not outlined a healthy profit margin from the start then they will surely look for one later in the form of upsells and hidden charges or go out of business leaving you back at the start looking for an effective office cleaning at a livable price. Outsourcing your office cleaning services is a business partnership that works best with honesty and transparent pricing. Profits create and maintain successful companies and profitable companies can reinvest in their employees, technology, equipment and ultimately you the customer. Profitable companies support their communities through the creation of solid, stable jobs and opportunities.

Shopping Local For Your Office Cleaning Solutions

Everything else being equal, most of us refer to partner with local businesses. With commercial cleaning, buying local instead of going with a national leaning company is ideal but can be tricky. Because of the low perceived cost f entry, new cleaning startups flood the market each year and just as many quickly fall off the radar. Any seasoned business person knows there are no ‘sure things’ only hard work and enough capital to recover from your missteps. All too often, these new start up office cleaning companies will use your facility as training grounds to make and learn from their mistakes. Although all new companies go through this, most of us would prefer the newbies work of the kinks with someone else. After all, you are outsourcing your office cleaning to make your life easier not harder.

Some good resources for finding an effective, experienced office cleaning service contractor include: 

• Referrals from surrounding buildings in your area.
• Referrals from other vendors or contractors you trust.
• Google & Online Directories
• ISSA CIMS Certification

When You Have Cleaning Budget Cuts That You Must Live With

Labor costs generally comprise the single largest component of Janitorial Pricing, so cutting costs means cutting labor. How do you get your Detroit office cleaning service to do more with less and still deliver an acceptable level of clean? When you have a health office cleaning budget and fully staffed janitorial team they can finish a cleaning specification line by line, every night. While a daily, complete cleaning is best, reduced cleaning budgets have created competing needs we must weigh. In this case it is the level of clean balanced with the need to meet our budgets. With Smart Cleaning, your office cleaning services can put the most attention where the need is the greatest. This can mean that those areas of your building that are used most frequently and require the most attention are cleaned with the most frequency. Smart cleaning can be the solution to a tightening janitorial budget but you must enlist an experienced cleaning company in order to do it without sacrificing solid, effective service.

Using CIMS Certification as an ‘Easy Button’

If through the process of searching for a reputable professional Michigan office cleaning company you have wished there was an ‘easy button’ to make the process easier, you are in luck! There is and it is called CIMS certification. In the cleaning industry, CIMS or the Cleaning Industry Management Standard is an industry certification that designates an office cleaning company as particularly professional and skillful at what they do. CIMS certification is a demanding process that requires an office cleaning company to show mastery and compliance in a number of areas critical to exceptional service delivery. The CIMS standard measures:

• Quality Systems: A framework to ensure effective operations & continuous improvement
• Service Delivery: Processes & systems in place to deliver consistent, quality service
• Human Resources: Best practices for managing any service industry’s greatest asset—their people
• Health, Safety, & Environmental Stewardship: Ensuring regulatory compliance, workplace safety, and health and environmental management
• Management Commitment: Establishing our Mission, Vision, and Values and ensuring that the organization's continuity is secured.

Find an office cleaning company that has taken the time and resources to establish that they are doing business in a way that is good for them and good for you and you can rest assured knowing that best practices most typically lead to great service. Sure there are no guarantees, but using CIMS certification to draw u a short list of prospective janitorial companies can assure you a level of quality and value that you can feel good about.

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