How much to charge for cleaning, worked out from what an hour costs you
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Step one: the cost of an hour
Start with the wage, then add what rides on it. Employer Social Security and Medicare is 7.65 per cent. Unemployment insurance, workers compensation and paid sick leave depend on your state and your carrier. Then take your monthly running costs (insurance, vehicles, supplies, software, the phone) and divide them by the labour hours you actually sell in a month, which is usually fewer than the hours you pay for.
The free calculator does this from a wage and a crew size, using rates that carry their source and the date they were checked.
Step two: margin on the price
Divide the cost by 0.8 for a 20 per cent margin. Multiplying by 1.2 gives a 20 per cent markup instead, which is a margin of about 16.7 per cent. On a busy crew that gap is a few hundred dollars a month.
Step three: the hours the job takes
Time the first few visits to each property rather than guessing from square footage. A three-bedroom house with pets and a two-bedroom flat can take the same time or very different times, and the clock is the only thing that knows. Once you have clocked hours, price recurring visits from the average and one-off deep cleans from the longest visit you have seen.
A worked example
Eleven cleaners in California at $27.50 an hour, with running costs of $1,407 a month across 196 labour hours. Payroll costs bring the hour to $35.39, running costs add $7.18, and the full cost is $42.57. A 20 per cent margin lands at $53.21; billed at $55, a three-hour recurring clean is $165.
Had the same business kept pricing from the old contractor wage after moving the crew onto payroll, it would have lost about $2,037 a month on exactly the same work. The example is anonymised and is not a promise about any other business.
Flat rate or hourly
Quote flat rates to clients, since most of them want to know the total. Work them out hourly behind the scenes, then check them against clocked hours every month. A flat rate that took four hours last month when you priced it at three has stopped earning its margin, and you will only see that if the clock and the invoice sit in the same place.
Questions people ask next
- How much should I charge per hour for house cleaning?
- Charge at least your full cost of a labour hour divided by one minus your margin. For a W-2 crew at a $27.50 wage that is about $53 an hour at a 20 per cent margin. Lower wages and lower overheads bring it down; the method stays the same.
- Should cleaning be priced by square foot?
- Square footage is a starting guess for a first quote. Clocked time on the property is the better figure, because clutter, pets and finishes change the hours more than the floor area does.
- What margin should a cleaning business make?
- Enough to leave your own pay intact after labour and running costs; the reference example uses 20 per cent. Whatever you choose, check each client's real margin against clocked hours every month.