[Adam P]

seen another cleaning company say they longer do domestic cleaning, just one off deep cleans (plus commercial cleans) as it's not worth it any more.

seen many others say this and i am really wondering if it's worth continuing this or not as for me at least it's the worst one having to schedule around not letting regulars down and turning bigger one offs down as i've got a few hours in the middle i have to do.

my biggest reason for continuing them is they're ok for when work goes quiet, and ok employing staff as then we can definitely give them work, and use the staff for the one off irregular cleans.

i thought perhaps it'll be a good idea to team up with just a domestic cleaning company and then give them all our current domestic cleans, and then give them any in the future as we get a few enquiries a week at least through google and also many from eot cleans so would seem like a waste of some money through recommendations.

what are others thoughts?

[Gav Camm lammy 283]

id keep doing em
u may get more

[suffolkclean]

Hi cleansurrey, we provided regular domestic cleans for 18 months when we 1st started it was a good taster on taking on staff, planning, invoicing & dealing with customers expectations!! We work to high standards but found customers expected a full deep clean of their full house.  in 2 hours, it was getting rediculous. eg one customer 2 hrs a fortnight who did nothing in between our cleans we cleaned bathroom, en-suite, cloakroom, 3 bedrooms, kitchen including washing floors, emptying overflowing bins, cleaning leather suite with wipes! Hall, stairs & landing then we'd get a call there was a cobweb inside her lampshade!
We found the costs for providing the service was making it not worth the hassle for us. But on the plus side it did mean we had cleaners on hand as you say to help with the one off's. We often get enquirys for regular domestic cleaning but don't want to go back to it.
Barbara

[Powerwasher]

Never again, its also going to be a pain if your vat registererd like us.....as the vat will be hiked up to 21%....especially as the dom custies can not (in most cases) claim it back...its another kick in the teeth..

[dianegreenwood]

I've made a success of domestic cleaning so far and I have no regrets, however customers can be a pain in the butt and yes commercial cleaning is easier (if rather boring). 

VAT is a big issue for us.  We are about to go flat rate and swallow the drop in profits initially with a view to putting the prices up over the next couple of years on the domestic side.  However, I always knew this would happen so set my pricing accordingly, but I still don't like the thought of giving away thousands every quarter!  We hope to recoup a little on the commercial side because we can charge 17.5% and pay 11%, but its still a nightmare and a bit of a turning point for us.

When I analyse the numbers, the commercial cleaning is FAR more profitable than the domestic per hour but I personally like the fact that I don't have to work evenings and weekends and of course we can take on spring cleans, etc because I have the staff to cover it.  I've also found it difficult to find good people on the commercial side whereas I have a waiting list for people wantiing to work for us on the domestic side.

Cheers

Diane

www.freshlymaid.co.uk

[Daria Taylor]

At this stage we have been specialising on one off cleans rather than regular cleans, however you cannot make a good living, earn a profit and develop a business based on those. We are now looking into more regular contracts whether those are commercial or domestic.

In my view the only way to make good money in our industry is to offer all of the services plus extras.

However as you have mentioned that you don’t want to miss out on the big jobs because you have commitments of doing regular cleaning, i can see this being a real issue because most of one of cleans come through at a very short notice especially EOT's and builders cleans are even worse. So you always have to be there to accommodate for those, the way to get round it is to establish a business where you employ people to do your regular cleans and you are then always available to do one off cleans plus have people on side who are prepared to work as and when or if your regular staff can work extra hours or you have free slots then fill those in with one off cleans.

I do however fully appreciate that this will involve a lot of planning etc but as a business owner you have to make the choice of rather running a business or rather just cleaning yourself. When you do all the cleaning yourself it's hard to find new contracts especially commercial ones as a lot of them will come from meeting people i.e networking and it will take up a lot of your time. But it really is worth it!

Ask Diane i'm sure she has mentioned on here before that she is a member of various networking groups such as BNI etc, to me this is how you take your business to the next level. You will meet people like yourselves who are in charge of decision makers and its a little different compared to when they just ring you to come and price a job. You get to know them, how reliable they are etc. People buy people, plus we are heading towards being a "convenience society" people now don’t do many things themselves anymore and if they have money they will have other doing everything for them, this allows them to make more money and concentrate on their lives i.e spending time with families etc.

So before you go and give up all your cleaning contracts I would sit down and come up with a real business plan and choose areas you want to specialise in.


I trust this helps,
Dash t

[martin19842]

hi there,

client mix is the important thing here, domestic clients provide csh flow for the business, whereas the commercial clients want credit, and some want a lot of credit, the large one off jobs, are most usually commercial and again will require a level of credit funding on your part.

therefore if you have a healthly bank balance and you dont need cashflow, then purely focus on the contract commercial work, however if like most businesses cashflow eases business then maintain the domestic business as part of the client mix.

the domestic business can continue to grow organically, whilst you provide focus into the commercial sector.

regards

Martin

[the cleaning lady]

Hi
first time i've posted on here.
Regular domestic work is a hard way to make a living! I am working on my own 3 days a week and have a friend helping 2 days but agree that people expect a deep clean in 2 hours.I know we do too much in the time we spend in a home but being experienced feel you cant leave any task undone! i leave a completed checklist every visit and am currently reviewing this as i am killing myself to do it.
I started The Cleaning lady last July . Prior to that i worked as Head Housekeeper at a large 4* hotel for 8 years. up to 2001 i ran a domestic and commercial cleaning service employing up to 18 staff and i was charging more then than i can get now!!
maybe its the area i'm in ( Burnley) or more likely the amount of ads for cleaning services offering £ 7-£8 per hour.
People dont think of quality when they need a cleaner as its still looked on as menial. Nvq's have gone some way to change attitudes but still far to go.
I went to quote last week 4 bed , 2 bath, 4 reception and unbelievable amount of clutter, when i gave a price of £210 for initial clean and £67.50 for fortnightly clean she looked at me as if i had two heads!!! i didnt get it.
Its taken almost 12 months for me to fill mon-fri and i still loose a couple to cheaper options.
One offs are slow but by far my favourite type of work.
Chris.

[Londoner]

I have never done domestic cleaning although I am a full time domestic window cleaner. Some years back I tried to start up doing gardening or more to the point grass and hedges maintainance as an add on.

I found I couldn't cope with ever shifting customer expectations. Once everything is tidy they want more and more. In the end I just gave up.

[Pristine Clean]

Hi Vince,

Thats why I never do residential either. They expect to much for too little.

Commercial for me all the way. I may work on a residential building but that is through a management company.


Dave

[martin19842]

hi there

is this not an issue of managing customerclient expectations, we all do it with our comercial clients, and it is done every day of the week by suppliers that sell to general public,

i spoofed a local company several years ago as market research, and the client expectation was well managed,

when we clean for a commercial client we clean to a specification, this spec is held by the office, the client, and the cleaners, so that everyone knows what is done and when.

the private client, must also be given a spec, setting out the terms, and the parameters of the clenaing that will be done.

just an opinion, lets be honest we can all go down to the local market and sell £10 notes for £8 all day long but by the end of the day you will go broke.

regards

martin

[Nathanael Jones]

We hope to recoup a little on the commercial side because we can charge 17.5% and pay 11%,

How is that legal?
I'm not in the UK, but in Ireland there are set VAT rates you have to charge, and whatever you charge has to be paid to the revenue commissioner. If you are charging the wrong rate, your client has every right to ask for a refund when they discover this surely?

[cleaning-team]

We hope to recoup a little on the commercial side because we can charge 17.5% and pay 11%,

How is that legal?
I'm not in the UK, but in Ireland there are set VAT rates you have to charge, and whatever you charge has to be paid to the revenue commissioner. If you are charging the wrong rate, your client has every right to ask for a refund when they discover this surely?

There is a simplified VAT accounting scheme called Flat Rate in the UK - you still charge 17.5% to your customers but you only pay a % of the total to HMRC depending on your line of business (we pay 10.5%) BUT you cannot claim back any VAT you paid out like you can on normal VAT accounting with the exception of large capital purchases like vehicles. It is for smaller companies and it makes accounting MUCH easier.

[cleaning-team]

We found that regular domestic is not worth while if you are either doing the cleaning yourself so are saving your largest outlay OR if you are employing people then you need to have sheer volume to make it worth it. I am not saying you cannot make money employing 5 or 6 people but, for the grief and hassle which comes with it, we just didn't find it worthwhile.

[Adam P]

hmm not sure what to do. reading somes post think it's worth keeping it on, reading others i think not. what i may do is stop in September and let the ones i clean know i will be taking a break from it indefinitely. then if i feel i can take on the work without having to do any of the cleaning myself then i'll restart again.

we're noticing a lot more domestic quotes lately and i don't do any advertising for this so it's a good sign that we can make this work simple because there seems to be lots of people who'd like to give us a try, just not our current high prices.

[Grant Whyte]

Hi

As a new start up we've got regular weekly and bi weekly housecleans - 2, 3 and four hour jobs - two cleaners/job. They are not high earners but we're approaching each house as a facility that requires the full spectrum of services to keep it well maintained and clean. This is our fourth month and on top of these regular house cleans we've secured some deep extraction carpet cleaning, regular external & internal internal window cleaning, fascias and soffits and conservatories. We've also obtained some window deep 'restoration' cleaning (black mould and gunk on the inside when the window is open) - removing, cleaning and polishing up the uPVC. All these add ons are serviced at prices that make the whole project worth while.

We're always trying to look for what we can do to make the building (house in this case) cleaner. Can you add any services to your existing package?

Regards