[Stacey Harrower]

Hi there first time posting! myself and my husband are in the process of setting up our own residential domestic and kitchen commercial cleaning company I have over 15 years experince in domestic cleaning and my huband has over 20 years experience running hotel kitchens. my husband is currently looking after the commercial side of our business and I am looking after the domestic side in regards to the domestic side Im unsure of my pricing structure for our regular cleans we charge £12.50 an hour per cleaner and then traveling expemses on top (we have a a lot of clients who are at least an hours drive away) and for our end of tennancy cleans we charge a flat rate of £180 plus traveling expenses this is for 2 cleaners for 5 hours (10 hours in total) carpet cleaning if required we charge in addition to the flat rate. we have one girl who currently helps us out but wants to be paid £9ph for residential and £11.50 for end of tenacny. We are based in the lake district and we provide all cleaning products/equipment. so my question is does our pricing structure seem ok and the wage our girl is asking is this reasonable??
P.S any advice from a starting up prospective we would greatly appriciate! we do have a meeting set up with a business advisor next week but we would value any advice or tips from professionals already in the industry!

[Smudger]

Good luck in your venture!

I can’t really help as this is not an area of cleaning we cover but from people I know who do this your not far off the mark I just know the margins are tight

With regards to wages - is the lady worth £9 p/h ? If they are fast, good, reliable then pay it - but also look at your charges if the margin is too skinny then up your rates

Where is minimum wage these days ?

Being honest I dont know how cleaning companies survive on these rates my window cleaning guys need to do £40 p/h turnover for us to cover equipment vans holiday pay etc

Darran

[Adam Bateup]

Hi Stacy ,

We run weekly cleans as well as end of tenancy , deep cleans , oven cleaning, hard floors and carpets .

To me your prices seem cheap but I’m based near Brighton so wages and prices go up .

For a 1 bed flat eot we charge £110 clean only .
For a 4 bed house with carpets and oven it’s more like £400.00
Our weekly prices is £14 and deep clean is £18an hour .
And we pay our staff a flat rate of £10.00 an hour and we don’t pay mileage  but we include everything.

It’s all about time so your eot has to change price with the time it takes . It’s not going to take10 hours to do a 2 bed flat but it might take 12 hours to do a 5 bed house .

[Stacey Harrower]

Thanks both Darran & Adam for your replies its very much appriciated. Yes I agree Adam we seem cheap but northerners dont and wont pay the money thats paid down south and suprisingly we are not the cheapest company in our area and another problem we seem to be facing pricing wise is we are being severly undercut by people who advertise on social media and some clients just dont seem to realise that the cheaper option is not always the best option ive just had one client who has canceled their weekly clean with us as they said they found a girl who is charging £9 an hour and no travelling expenses (im assuming shes unregistered an not insured) once again thank you for your replies ive taken your feedback on board.
stacey

[Smudger]

There will  always be those who are too cheap, they rarely last as you just can’t make a living

Keep persevering  and the good clients will come

Darran

[Michelle H]

The problem is as you said up North, Price is an issue. To be honest with you, I have started to move away from Domestic cleaning. There is simply no money in it. You get maybe a two hour clean with travel costs. You have to keep loads of people happy and of course they let you down by cancelling at the last minute.

I started to move towards more Commercial cleaning last year and this is better money but waiting to be paid ( up to 30 days ) is a pain. This year we move towards cleaning on construction sites. After a outlay on equipment, You can charge a lot more. Most sites shut by 4:30 so evening are your own and with CIS, you pay your tax as you work. So no nasty end of year tax bills to look forward too.