How do cleaning companies track job profitability?
Labor typically runs 60-70% of a cleaning company’s costs, so tracking hours by job or client is where profitability tracking starts. If you don’t know how long each account actually takes, you can’t know whether the price you quoted is working.
Use a time tracking system that assigns hours to specific clients. Whether that’s a mobile app, a paper log, or clock-in software, crews need to record start and stop times for each location. “We cleaned from 8 to 4” doesn’t help. “We spent 2.5 hours at Smith Office Building and 1.5 hours at Jones Dental” does. Track drive time separately if travel is significant between jobs.
Calculate your true labor cost per hour, not just the hourly wage. Add payroll taxes, workers comp, any benefits, and paid time off. A $17/hour employee might actually cost you $22/hour loaded. Use that loaded rate when calculating job profitability.
Supplies and chemicals need tracking too. For high-volume clients, track actual supply usage per job. For smaller accounts, estimate supply cost as a percentage of labor or a flat amount per cleaning. The precision matters less than having some reasonable allocation. Many cleaning service owners skip supply tracking entirely and wonder why margins are thinner than expected.
Vehicle costs add up fast. Fuel, maintenance, insurance, and depreciation all factor into job profitability. Allocate vehicle costs based on miles driven or time on the road. If one account requires a 45-minute drive each way, that overhead needs to show up in the job’s cost calculation.
Equipment depreciation and replacement should hit your job costs somehow. Floor machines, vacuums, and pressure washers wear out. Either allocate equipment costs across all jobs or track usage by account if certain clients require specialized equipment.
Compare actual costs to your bid regularly. Pull a report showing labor hours, supplies used, and allocated overhead for each client. Compare that total to what you charge. Some accounts that seemed profitable when you bid them turn out to be losers once you see real numbers. Maybe the scope crept or the building takes longer than estimated.
Your accounting software should track revenue and costs by customer or job. QuickBooks can do this with the customer field on transactions. When your crew logs time against a client and you code supplies to that client, reports show profitability by account. This requires discipline in data entry but pays off in visibility.
Review profitability monthly or quarterly. Identify accounts where actual hours consistently exceed your estimate. Those need repricing, scope reduction, or potentially dropping. Also identify accounts where you’re beating the estimate. Those are the clients you want more of.
Having clean books that actually track job-level performance requires consistent processes. If you’re guessing at profitability or only looking at company-wide margins, you’re flying blind on individual accounts. Small business bookkeeping MetroWest Massachusetts firms can set up systems that make this tracking practical without consuming your time.
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