Production rate: the number that makes or breaks the bid
Production rate is how many square feet one cleaner finishes in an hour. Square footage alone does not price an office, but square footage divided by your production rate does, because it gives you the hours you will pay for every night of the contract.
The example uses 2,700 sq ft an hour. That puts one cleaner in the 6,000 sq ft office for about 133 minutes, and the calculator shows the minutes under the box so you can check it against what you have seen in real buildings.
The figure includes the whole night, not only vacuuming: trash, restrooms, desks, mopping, breakroom, entry glass, plus lock-up and the time to walk the building at the end. Time a full night in a building you already clean, divide its square feet by the hours, and use that number.
What 2,000 or 3,500 square feet an hour does to the same office
The same 6,000 sq ft office bids very differently depending on that one input. At 2,000 sq ft an hour it comes to $150.93 a night. At the example's 2,700 it is $117.33. At 3,500 it falls to $95.39.
Restrooms, breakrooms and lots of desks pull the rate down. Open carpet and empty halls push it up. A medical office with six restrooms will not clean at the pace of a warehouse office with one, even at the same size, so bid each building at its own rate rather than one figure for everything.
Size helps a little. Run the example at 10,000 sq ft and the night is $181.33, about 1.8 cents a square foot against 2 cents at 6,000, because the drive is spread over more floor.
Nights per week and the monthly bid
Clients buy a month, so the calculator multiplies the night price by the nights in a month. A year has 52 weeks, which makes 3 nights a week 13 nights a month, 5 nights 21.67 and once a week 4.33.
The example office is $1,525.29 a month at 3 nights, $2,542.54 at 5 nights and $508.04 once a week, all at the same $117.33 a night. Once a week usually means more trash and dust per visit, so raise the minutes before you quote it. The spreadsheet does that with a set percentage for each frequency.
What a quick bid leaves off an office contract
The $36 break-even rate is the example company's. Yours comes from your cleaners' pay, payroll costs, insurance and supplies. Find it with the true hourly rate calculator, and see how overhead turns into an hourly figure in the overhead and profit guide.
The spreadsheet adds a safety cushion, a start-up charge for the first double-length clean and training on site, price changes by frequency, and a client quote with your terms. Its version of this office is $124.47 a night, not $117.33. The commercial cleaning pricing guide walks through that quote line by line.
The $65 minimum covers small suites. A 1,500 sq ft office that times out under it still pays $65 a night for the drive, keys and lock-up.