A cleaning quote, line by line

An office manager emails asking what it would cost to clean a 4,500-square-foot insurance office. There is no single price to send back. The answer depends on how many nights a week you are there, and the difference between three nights and five is not a discount — it is a different contract.

A painter quotes a job that ends. You are quoting a schedule. Below are three quotes as they would go out: a recurring commercial contract, a one-time move-out clean, and a window add-on. Every dollar figure is invented so the arithmetic is easy to follow. None of it is a benchmark; your own hours come off a timer. For how cleaners set visit prices, see house cleaning rates and DoneQuote for house cleaners.

A recurring office contract, priced by frequency

Northside Facility Services LLC · Quote #2026-114 · August 23, 2026 · valid 30 days For: Brannon & Wells Insurance, Suite 210 — 4,500 sq ft office suite, 2 restrooms, 12 workstations

Monthly total: $1,877.93. Labor priced at $42.00 per cleaner-hour, 3.0 hours on site per visit.

One-time initial deep clean, before service starts: grout, baseboards, vents, interior glass, appliance interiors. 12 hours at $42.00 = $504.00, billed at actual hours, not to exceed 14 hours ($588.00). We will call before passing 12.

That visit creates the baseline the monthly price assumes. Fold the catching-up into the recurring rate instead and you eat it for a year.

Included: all labor, supervision, equipment, and cleaning chemicals; liability and workers' comp coverage on every cleaner on site; a trained replacement from our crew if your regular cleaner is out.

Not included: exterior windows above ground floor, carpet extraction, floor stripping and waxing, dish washing, and removal of anything not in a trash receptacle.

Term: 12 months, then month to month. Either party may cancel with 30 days' written notice. Price reviewed at 12 months.

A one-time move-out clean

Empty house, keys in a lockbox, tenant already gone. Nothing recurs, so nothing is priced per month. You cannot tell how hard the place has been lived in until you are standing in it, so quote the base on the clock with a cap and put the predictable extras on flat lines.

Subtotal: $760.50. Labor billed to the half hour, not to exceed 11 hours. Cabinets and drawers cleaned inside and out, included in the base. Carpet extraction and wall patching are not included.

A window add-on to an account you already have

The frequency does not have to match the contract it attaches to. This one hangs off the Brannon & Wells account and runs on three different cycles.

Annual total: $1,470.00, billed at $122.50 per month alongside the cleaning contract, rather than in four uneven quarters. A flat monthly line is easier for a customer on a budget to approve, and it evens out your cash flow.

Why frequency has to be its own column

Write the actual days, not the word "recurring." "Mon / Wed / Fri" is a schedule someone can hold you to; "3× weekly" is close but leaves the days open, and "regular service" is not a commitment at all.

Then show both totals. Per visit is what the customer compares against the last quote they got; monthly is what they budget. Neither one alone lets them decide.

The conversion is where quotes quietly go wrong. Three nights a week is not 12 visits a month. It is 13, because 52 weeks divided by 12 is 4.33, not 4. Bill as if every month were four weeks and you give away about 12 visits a year. The odd-looking $90.93 line above is that math being honest: a weekly item, priced on 4.33 visits.

Three things to settle before you send

Who supplies what. Put it in writing, whichever way it goes. "We bring all equipment and chemicals; client supplies restroom paper and liners" is normal. So is "client supplies all products; we bring labor and vacuums." Silence is what starts the argument, usually at the first visit when nobody has trash liners.

Who shows up when your cleaner is out. Commercial customers ask this. Answer it in the quote: a trained substitute from your crew on the same scope, or a make-up visit within a set number of days.

How it ends. Put the term and the notice period on the quote itself, even if a service agreement repeats them later. Thirty days both ways is common. Some states also regulate automatic renewal and cancellation terms on consumer contracts, so check your state's rules before you set a term that renews on its own.

Sales tax is a state question

Whether cleaning services are taxable depends entirely on your state. That is why the totals above are shown without tax. Where cleaning is taxable, the rule can still turn on details: residential versus commercial work, and routine janitorial versus one-off or specialty work such as post-construction cleanup or window washing, are treated differently in some states. Local rates may sit on top of the state rate. Do not copy a rate off another company's quote. Your state revenue department publishes the current rule, and a local CPA can tell you how it lands on your mix of work.

Sending the next one

Once these exist, they mostly repeat. Save each scope as a priced service — the three-night office package, the move-out base rate, the per-window price, the deep-clean hourly rate — so the next one is assembled, not rebuilt from memory. Keep those in DoneQuote and the next one starts from a short description of the job, or the customer's forwarded email. The draft comes back with your own prices, the days and the visit math already on it — whether what you hand the customer is a quote, a service agreement or a work order. Check the hours, fix the one line that is unusual about this building, and send.

The number that decides the deal is rarely the total. It is whether the customer can see, on one page, how often you are coming and what you touch when you get there.